Book III

6 of 8 books in The World as Will and Representation, Volume I by Arthur Schopenhauer

Original German

Der Welt als Vorstellung zweite Betrachtung: Die Vorstellung, unabhängig vom Satze des Grundes: die Platonische Idee: das Objekt der Kunst.

Τί τὸ ὂν μὲν ἀεί, γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον; καὶ τί τὸ γιγνόμενον μὲν καὶ ἀπολλύμενον, ὄντως δὲ οὐδέποτε ὄν; ΠΛΑΤΩΝ.

30 Nachdem wir die im ersten Buch als bloße Vorstellung, Objekt für ein Subjekt, dargestellte Welt im zweiten Buch von ihrer andern Seite betrachtet und gefunden haben, daß diese Wille sei, welcher allein als dasjenige sich ergab, was jene Welt noch außer der Vorstellung ist; so nannten wir, dieser Erkenntniß gemäß, die Welt als Vorstellung, sowohl im Ganzen als in ihren Theilen, die Objektität des Willens, welches demnach besagt: der Objekt, d. i. Vorstellung, gewordene Wille. Wir erinnern uns nun ferner, daß solche Objektivation des Willens viele, aber bestimmte Stufen hatte, auf welchen, mit gradweise steigender Deutlichkeit und Vollendung, das Wesen des Willens in die Vorstellung trat, d. h. sich als Objekt darstellte. In diesen Stufen erkannten wir schon dort Platons Ideen wieder, sofern nämlich jene Stufen eben die bestimmten Species, oder die ursprünglichen, nicht wechselnden Formen und Eigenschaften aller natürlichen, sowohl unorganischen, als organischen Körper, wie auch die nach Naturgesetzen sich offenbarenden allgemeinen Kräfte sind. Diese Ideen also insgesammt stellen sich in unzähligen Individuen und Einzelnheiten dar, als deren Vorbild sie sich zu diesen ihren Nachbildern verhalten. Die Vielheit solcher Individuen ist durch Zeit und Raum, das Entstehen und Vergehen derselben durch Kausalität allein vorstellbar, in welchen Formen allen wir nur die verschiedenen Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde erkennen, der das letzte Princip aller Endlichkeit, aller Individuation und die allgemeine Form der Vorstellung, wie sie in die Erkenntniß des Individuums als solchen fällt, ist. Die Idee hingegen geht in jenes Princip nicht ein: daher ihr weder Vielheit noch Wechsel zukommt. Während die Individuen, in denen sie sich darstellt, unzählige sind und unaufhaltsam werden und vergehen, bleibt sie unverändert als die eine und selbe stehen, und der Satz vom Grunde hat für sie keine Bedeutung. Da dieser nun aber die Form ist, unter der alle Erkenntniß des Subjekts steht, sofern dieses als Individuum erkennt; so werden die Ideen auch ganz außerhalb der Erkenntnißsphäre desselben als solchen liegen. Wenn daher die Ideen Objekt der Erkenntniß werden sollen; so wird dies nur unter Aufhebung der Individualität im erkennenden Subjekt geschehen können. Die näheren und ausführlichen Erklärungen hierüber sind nunmehr was uns zunächst beschäftigen wird.

31 Zuvor jedoch noch folgende sehr wesentliche Bemerkung. Ich hoffe, daß es mir im vorhergehenden Buche gelungen ist, die Ueberzeugung hervorzubringen, daß Dasjenige, was in der Kantischen Philosophie das Ding an sich genannt wird und daselbst als eine so bedeutende, aber dunkle und paradoxe Lehre auftritt, besonders aber durch die Art, wie Kant es einführte, nämlich durch den Schluß vom Begründeten auf den Grund, als ein Stein des Anstoßes, ja, als die schwache Seite seiner Philosophie befunden ward, daß, sage ich, dieses, wenn man auf dem ganz andern Wege, den wir gegangen sind, dazu gelangt, nichts Anderes ist, als der Wille, in der auf die angegebene Weise erweiterten und bestimmten Sphäre dieses Begriffs. Ich hoffe ferner, daß man, nach dem Vorgetragenen, kein Bedenken hegen wird, in den bestimmten Stufen der Objektivation jenes, das Ansich der Welt ausmachenden Willens, Dasjenige wiederzuerkennen, was Platon die ewigen Ideen, oder die unveränderlichen Formen (ειδη) nannte, welche, als das hauptsächliche, aber zugleich dunkelste und paradoxeste Dogma seiner Lehre anerkannt, ein Gegenstand des Nachdenkens, des Streites, des Spottes und der Verehrung so vieler und verschieden gesinnter Köpfe in einer Reihe von Jahrhunderten gewesen sind.

Ist uns nun der Wille das Ding an sich, die Idee aber die unmittelbare Objektität jenes Willens auf einer bestimmten Stufe; so finden wir Kants Ding an sich und Platons Idee, die ihm allein οντως ον ist, diese beiden großen dunkeln Paradoxen, der beiden größten Philosophen des Occidents, — zwar nicht als identisch, aber doch als sehr nahe verwandt und nur durch eine einzige Bestimmung unterschieden. Beide große Paradora sind sogar, eben weil sie, bei allem innern Einklang und Verwandtschaft, durch die außerordentlich verschiedenen Individualitäten ihrer Urheber, so höchst verschieden lauten, der beste Kommentar wechselseitig eines des andern, indem sie zwei ganz verschiedenen Wegen gleichen, die zu einem Ziele führen. —

Dies läßt sich mit Wenigem deutlich machen. Nämlich was Kant sagt, ist, dem Wesentlichen nach, Folgendes: „Zeit, Raum und Kausalität sind nicht Bestimmungen des Dinges an sich; sondern gehören nur seiner Erscheinung an, indem sie nichts, als Formen unserer Erkenntniß sind. Da nun aber alle Vielheit und alles Entstehen und Vergehen allein durch Zeit, Raum und Kausalität möglich sind; so folgt, daß auch jene allein der Erscheinung, keineswegs dem Dinge an sich anhängen. Weil unsere Erkenntniß aber durch jene Formen bedingt ist; so ist die gesammte Erfahrung nur Erkenntniß der Erscheinung, nicht des Dinges an sich: daher auch können ihre Gesetze nicht auf das Ding an sich geltend gemacht werden. Selbst auf unser eigenes Ich erstreckt sich das Gesagte, und wir erkennen es nur als Erscheinung, nicht nach dem, was es an sich seyn mag." Dieses ist, in der betrachteten wichtigen Rücksicht, der Sinn und Inhalt der Lehre Kants. — Platon nun aber sagt: „Die Dinge dieser Welt, welche unsere Sinne wahrnehmen, haben gar kein wahres Seyn: sie werden immer, sind aber nie: sie haben nur ein relatives Seyn, sind insgesammt nur in und durch ihr Verhältniß zu einander: man kann daher ihr ganzes Daseyn ebenso wohl ein Nichtseyn nennen. Sie sind folglich auch nicht Objekte einer eigentlichen Erkenntniß (επιστημη): denn nur von dem, was an und für sich und immer auf gleiche Weise ist, kann es eine solche geben: sie hingegen sind nur das Objekt eines durch Empfindung veranlaßten Dafürhaltens (δοξα μετ' αισθησεως αλογου). So lange wir nun auf ihre Wahrnehmung beschränkt sind, gleichen wir Menschen, die in einer finstern Höhle so fest gebunden säßen, daß sie auch den Kopf nicht drehen könnten, und nichts sähen, als beim Lichte eines hinter ihnen brennenden Feuers, an der Wand ihnen gegenüber, die Schattenbilder wirklicher Dinge, welche zwischen ihnen und dem Feuer vorübergeführt würden, und auch sogar von einander, ja jeder von sich selbst, eben nur die Schatten auf jener Wand. Ihre Weisheit aber wäre, die aus Erfahrung erlernte Reihenfolge jener Schatten vorher zu sagen. Was nun hingegen allein wahrhaft Seiend (οντως ον) genannt werden kann, weil es immer ist, aber nie wird, noch vergeht: das sind die realen Urbilder jener Schattenbilder: es sind die ewigen Ideen, die Urformen aller Dinge. Ihnen kommt keine Vielheit zu: denn jedes ist seinem Wesen nach nur Eines, indem es das Urbild selbst ist, dessen Nachbilder, oder Schatten, alle ihm gleichnamige, einzelne, vergängliche Dinge derselben Art sind. Ihnen kommt auch kein Entstehen und Vergehen zu: denn sie sind wahrhaft seiend, nie aber werdend, noch untergehend, wie ihre hinschwindenden Nachbilder. (In diesen beiden verneinenden Bestimmungen ist aber nothwendig als Voraussetzung enthalten, daß Zeit, Raum und Kausalität für sie keine Bedeutung noch Gültigkeit haben, und sie nicht in diesen dasind.) Von ihnen allein daher giebt es eine eigentliche Erkenntniß, da das Objekt einer solchen nur Das seyn kann, was immer und in jedem Betracht (also an sich) ist; nicht Das, was ist, aber auch wieder nicht ist, je nachdem man es ansieht." — Dies ist Platons Lehre. Es ist offenbar und bedarf keiner weitern Nachweisung, daß der innere Sinn beider Lehren ganz derselbe ist, daß beide die sichtbare Welt für eine Erscheinung erklären, die an sich nichtig ist und nur durch das in ihr sich Ausdrückende (dem Einen das Ding an sich, dem Andern die Idee) Bedeutung und geborgte Realität hat; welchem letzteren, wahrhaft Seienden aber, beiden Lehren zufolge, alle, auch die allgemeinsten und wesentlichsten Formen jener Erscheinung durchaus fremd sind. Kant hat, um diese Formen zu verneinen, sie unmittelbar selbst in abstrakten Ausdrücken gefaßt und geradezu Zeit, Raum und Kausalität, als bloße Formen der Erscheinung, dem Ding an sich abgesprochen: Platon dagegen ist nicht bis zum obersten Ausdruck gelangt, und hat jene Formen nur mittelbar seinen Ideen abgesprochen, indem er Das, was allein durch jene Formen möglich ist, von den Ideen verneint, nämlich Vielheit des Gleichartigen, Entstehen und Vergehen. Zum Ueberfluß jedoch will ich jene merkwürdige und wichtige Uebereinstimmung noch durch ein Beispiel anschaulich machen. Es stehe ein Thier vor uns, in voller Lebensthätigkeit. Platon wird sagen: „Dieses Thier hat keine wahrhafte Existenz, sondern nur eine scheinbare, ein beständiges Werden, ein relatives Daseyn, welches ebenso wohl ein Nichtseyn, als ein Seyn heißen kann. Wahrhaft seiend ist allein die Idee, die sich in jenem Thier abbildet, oder das Thier an sich selbst (αυτο το θηριον), welches von nichts abhängig, sondern an und für sich ist (καθ' εαυτο, αει ὡς αυτως), nicht geworden, nicht endend, sondern immer auf gleiche Weise (αει ον, και μηδεποτε ουτε γιγνομενον, ουτε απολλυμενον). Sofern wir nun in diesem Thiere seine Idee erkennen, ist es ganz einerlei und ohne Bedeutung, ob wir dies Thier jetzt vor uns haben, oder seinen vor tausend Jahren lebenden Vorfahr, ferner auch ob es hier oder in einem fernen Lande ist, ob es in dieser oder jener Weise, Stellung, Handlung sich darbietet, ob es endlich dieses, oder irgend ein anderes Individuum seiner Art ist: dieses Alles ist nichtig und geht nur die Erscheinung an: die Idee des Thieres allein hat wahrhaftes Seyn und ist Gegenstand wirklicher Erkenntniß.“ — So Platon. Kant würde etwan sagen: „Dieses Thier ist eine Erscheinung in Zeit, Raum und Kausalität, welche sämmtlich die in unserm Erkenntnißvermögen liegenden Bedingungen a priori der Möglichkeit der Erfahrung sind, nicht Bestimmungen des Dinges an sich. Daher ist dieses Thier, wie wir es zu dieser bestimmten Zeit, an diesem gegebenen Ort, als ein im Zusammenhang der Erfahrung, d. h. an der Kette von Ursachen und Wirkungen, gewordenes und ebenso nothwendig vergängliches Individuum wahrnehmen, kein Ding an sich, sondern eine nur in Beziehung auf unsere Erkenntniß gültige Erscheinung. Um es nach dem, was es an sich seyn mag, folglich unabhängig von allen in der Zeit, dem Raum und der Kausalität liegenden Bestimmungen zu erkennen, wäre eine andere Erkenntnißweise, als die uns allein mögliche, durch Sinne und Verstand, erfordert.“

Um Kants Ausdruck dem Platonischen noch näher zu bringen, könnte man auch sagen: Zeit, Raum und Kausalität sind diejenige Einrichtung unsers Intellekts, vermöge deren das eigentlich allein vorhandene eine Wesen jeglicher Art sich uns darstellt als eine Vielheit gleichartiger, stets von Neuem entstehender und vergehender Wesen, in endloser Succession. Die Auffassung der Dinge mittelst und gemäß besagter Einrichtung ist die immanente; diejenige hingegen, die des Bewandnisses, welches es damit hat, sich bewußt wird, ist die transscendentale. Diese empfängt man in abstracto durch die Kritik der reinen Vernunft: aber ausnahmsweise kann sie sich auch intuitiv einstellen. Dieses Letztere ist mein Zusatz, welchen ich eben durch gegenwärtiges dritte Buch zu erläutern bemüht bin.

Hätte man jemals Kants Lehre, hätte man seit Kant den Platon eigentlich verstanden und gefaßt, hätte man treu und ernst dem innern Sinn und Gehalt der Lehren beider großer Meister nachgedacht, statt mit den Kunstausdrücken des einen um sich zu werfen und den Stil des andern zu parodiren; es hätte nicht fehlen können, daß man längst gefunden hätte, wie sehr die beiden großen Weisen übereinstimmen und die reine Bedeutung, der Zielpunkt beider Lehren, durchaus derselbe ist. Nicht nur hätte man dann nicht den Platon beständig mit Leibniz, auf welchem sein Geist durchaus nicht ruhte, oder gar mit einem noch lebenden bekannten Herrn [1] verglichen, als wollte man die Manen des großen Denkers der Vorzeit verspotten; sondern überhaupt wäre man alsdann viel weiter gekommen als man ist, oder vielmehr man wäre nicht so schmachvoll weit zurückgeschritten, wie man in diesen letzten vierzig Jahren ist: man hätte sich nicht heute von diesem, morgen von einem andern Windbeutel naseführen lassen und nicht das sich so bedeutend ankündigende 19. Jahrhundert in Deutschland mit philosophischen Possenspielen eröffnet, die man über Kants Grabe aufführte (wie die Alten bisweilen bei der Leichenfeier der Ihrigen), unter dem gerechten Spott anderer Nationen, da den ernsthaften und sogar steifen Deutschen Dergleichen am wenigsten kleidet. Aber so klein ist das eigentliche Publikum ächter Philosophen, daß selbst die Schüler, die verstehen, ihnen nur sparsam von den Jahrhunderten gebracht werden. — Εισι δη ναρθηκοφοροι μεν πολλοι, βακχοι [2] F. H. Jacobi. δε γε παυροι. (Thyrsigeri quidem multi, Bacchi vero pauci.) Ἡ ατιμια φιλοσοφιᾳ δια ταυτα προσπεπτωκεν, ὅτι ου κατ' αξιαν αυτης ἁπτονται· ου γαρ νοθους εδει ἁπτεσθαι, αλλα γνησιους. (Eam ob rem philosophia in infamiam incidit, quod non pro dignitate ipsam attingunt: neque enim a spuriis, sed a legitimis erat attrectanda.) Plat.

Man ging den Worten nach, den Worten: „Vorstellungen a priori, unabhängig von der Erfahrung bewußte Formen des Anschauens und Denkens, Urbegriffe des reinen Verstandes“, u. s. w. — und fragte nun ob Platons Ideen, die ja auch Urbegriffe und ferner auch Erinnerungen aus einer dem Leben vorhergegangenen Anschauung der wahrhaft seienden Dinge seyn sollen, etwan das Selbe wären mit Kants Formen des Anschauens und Denkens, die a priori in unserm Bewußtseyn liegen: diese zwei ganz heterogenen Lehren, die Kantische von den Formen, welche die Erkenntniß des Individuums auf die Erscheinung beschränken, und die Platonische von den Ideen, deren Erkenntniß eben jene Formen ausdrücklich verneint, — diese insofern diametral entgegengesetzten Lehren, da sie in ihren Ausdrücken sich ein wenig ähneln, verglich man aufmerksam, berathschlagte und stritt über ihre Einerleiheit, fand dann zuletzt, daß sie doch nicht das Selbe wären, und schloß, daß Platons Ideenlehre und Kants Vernunftkritik gar keine Uebereinstimmung hätten [3]. Aber genug davon.

32 In Folge unserer bisherigen Betrachtungen ist uns, bei aller innern Uebereinstimmung zwischen Kant und Platon, und der Identität des Zieles, das beiden vorschwebte, oder der Weltanschauung, die sie zum Philosophiren aufregte und leitete, dennoch Idee und Ding an sich nicht schlechthin Eines und dasselbe: vielmehr ist uns die Idee nur die unmittelbare und daher adäquate Objektität des Dinges an sich, welches selbst aber der [4] Man sehe z. B. „Immanuel Kant, ein Denkmal von Fr. Bouterweck“, S. 49, — und Buhles „Geschichte der Philosophie“, Bd. 6, S. 802—815 u. 823.

Wille ist, der Wille, sofern er noch nicht objektivirt, noch nicht Vorstellung geworden ist. Denn das Ding an sich soll, eben nach Kant, von allen dem Erkennen als solchen anhängenden Formen frei seyn: und es ist nur (wie im Anhänge gezeigt wird) ein Fehler Kants, daß er zu diesen Formen nicht, vor allen anderen, das Objekt-für-ein-Subjekt-seyn zählte, da eben dieses die erste und allgemeinste Form aller Erscheinung, d. i. Vorstellung, ist; daher er seinem Ding an sich das Objektseyn ausdrücklich hätte absprechen sollen, welches ihn vor jener großen, früh aufgedeckten Inkonsequenz bewahrt hätte. Die Platonische Idee hingegen ist nothwendig Objekt, ein Erkanntes, eine Vorstellung, und eben dadurch, aber auch nur dadurch, vom Ding an sich verschieden. Sie hat bloß die untergeordneten Formen der Erscheinung, welche alle wir unter dem Satz vom Grunde begreifen, abgelegt, oder vielmehr ist noch nicht in sie eingegangen; aber die erste und allgemeinste Form hat sie beibehalten, die der Vorstellung überhaupt, des Objektseyns für ein Subjekt. Die dieser untergeordneten Formen (deren allgemeiner Ausdruck der Satz vom Grunde ist) sind es, welche die Idee zu einzelnen und vergänglichen Individuen vervielfältigen, deren Zahl, in Beziehung auf die Idee völlig gleichgültig ist. Der Satz vom Grund ist also wieder die Form, in welche die Idee eingeht, indem sie in die Erkenntniß des Subjekts als Individuums fällt. Das einzelne, in Gemäßheit des Satzes vom Grunde erscheinende Ding ist also nur eine mittelbare Objektivation des Dinges an sich (welches der Wille ist), zwischen welchem und ihm noch die Idee steht, als die alleinige unmittelbare Objektität des Willens, indem sie keine andere dem Erkennen als solchem eigene Form angenommen hat, als die der Vorstellung überhaupt, d. i. des Objektseyns für ein Subjekt. Daher ist auch sie allein die möglichst adäquate Objektität des Willens oder Dinges an sich, ist selbst das ganze Ding an sich, nur unter der Form der Vorstellung: und hierin liegt der Grund der großen Uebereinstimmung zwischen Platon und Kant, obgleich, der größten Strenge nach, Das, wovon beide reden, nicht das Selbe ist. Die einzelnen Dinge aber sind keine ganz adäquate Objektität des Willens, sondern diese ist hier schon getrübt durch jene Formen, deren gemeinschaftlicher Ausdruck der Satz vom Grunde ist, welche aber Bedingung der Erkenntniß sind, wie sie dem Individuo als solchem möglich ist. — Wir würden in der That, wenn es erlaubt ist, aus einer unmöglichen Voraussetzung zu folgern, gar nicht mehr einzelne Dinge, noch Begebenheiten, noch Wechsel, noch Vielheit erkennen, sondern nur Ideen, nur die Stufenleiter der Objektivation jenes einen Willens, des wahren Dinges an sich, in reiner ungetrübter Erkenntniß auffassen, und folglich würde unsere Welt ein Nunc stans seyn; wenn wir nicht, als Subjekt des Erkennens, zugleich Individuen wären, d. h. unsere Anschauung nicht vermittelt wäre durch einen Leib, von dessen Affektionen sie ausgeht, und welcher selbst nur konkretes Wollen, Objektität des Willens, also Objekt unter Objekten ist und als solches, so wie er in das erkennende Bewußtseyn kommt, dieses nur in den Formen des Satzes vom Grunde kann, folglich die Zeit und alle anderen Formen, die jener Satz ausdrückt, schon vorausgesetzt und dadurch einführt. Die Zeit ist bloß die vertheilte und zerstückelte Ansicht, welche ein individuelles Wesen von den Ideen hat, die außer der Zeit, mithin ewig sind: daher sagt Plato, die Zeit sei das bewegte Bild der Ewigkeit: αιωνος εικων κινητη ὁ χρονος [5].

33 Da wir nun also als Individuen keine andere Erkenntniß haben, als die dem Satz vom Grunde unterworfen ist, diese Form aber die Erkenntniß der Ideen ausschließt; so ist gewiß, daß wenn es möglich ist, daß wir uns von der Erkenntniß einzelner Dinge zu der der Ideen erheben, solches nur geschehen kann dadurch, daß im Subjekt eine Veränderung vorgeht, welche jenem großen Wechsel der ganzen Art des Objekts entsprechend und analog ist, und vermöge welcher das Subjekt, sofern es eine Idee erkennt, nicht mehr Individuum ist.

Es ist uns aus dem vorigen Buch erinnerlich, daß das Erkennen überhaupt selbst zur Objektivation des Willens auf ihren höheren Stufen gehört, und die Sensibilität, Nerven, Gehirn, eben nur, wie andere Theile des organischen Wesens, Ausdruck [6] Hiezu Kap. 29 des zweiten Bandes. des Willens in diesem Grade seiner Objektität sind und daher die durch sie entstehende Vorstellung auch ebenso zu seinem Dienste bestimmt ist, als ein Mittel (μηχανη) zur Erreichung seiner jetzt komplicirteren (πολυτελεστερα) Zwecke, zur Erhaltung eines vielfache Bedürfnisse habenden Wesens. Ursprünglich also und ihrem Wesen nach ist die Erkenntniß dem Willen durchaus dienstbar, und wie das unmittelbare Objekt, welches mittelst Anwendung des Gesetzes der Kausalität ihr Ausgangspunkt wird, nur objektivirter Wille ist, so bleibt auch alle dem Satze vom Grunde nachgehende Erkenntniß in einer näheren oder entfernteren Beziehung zum Willen. Denn das Individuum findet seinen Leib als ein Objekt unter Objekten, zu denen allen derselbe mannigfaltige Verhältnisse und Beziehungen nach dem Satz vom Grunde hat, deren Betrachtung also immer, auf näherem oder fernerem Wege, zu seinem Leibe, also zu seinem Willen, zurückführt. Da es der Satz vom Grunde ist, der die Objekte in diese Beziehung zum Leibe und dadurch zum Willen stellt; so wird die diesem dienende Erkenntniß auch einzig bestrebt seyn, von den Objekten eben die durch den Satz vom Grunde gesetzten Verhältnisse kennen zu lernen, also ihren mannigfaltigen Beziehungen in Raum, Zeit und Kausalität nachgehen. Denn nur durch diese ist das Objekt dem Individuo interessant, d. h. hat ein Verhältniß zum Willen. Daher erkennt denn auch die dem Willen dienende Erkenntniß von den Objekten eigentlich nichts weiter, als ihre Relationen, erkennt die Objekte nur, sofern sie zu dieser Zeit, an diesem Ort, unter diesen Umständen, aus diesen Ursachen, mit diesen Wirkungen dasind, mit Einem Wort, als einzelne Dinge: und höbe man alle diese Relationen auf, so wären ihr auch die Objekte verschwunden, eben weil sie übrigens nichts an ihnen erkannte. — Wir dürfen auch nicht verhehlen, daß Das, was die Wissenschaften an den Dingen betrachten, im Wesentlichen gleichfalls nichts Anderes als alles Jenes ist, nämlich ihre Relationen, die Verhältnisse der Zeit, des Raumes, die Ursachen natürlicher Veränderungen, die Vergleichung der Gestalten, Motive der Begebenheiten, also lauter Relationen. Was sie von der gemeinen Erkenntniß unterscheidet, ist bloß ihre Form, das Systematische, die Erleichterung der Erkenntniß durch Zusammenfassung alles Einzelnen, mittelst Unterordnung der Begriffe, ins Allgemeine, und dadurch erlangte Vollständigkeit derselben. Alle Relation hat selbst nur ein relatives Daseyn: z. B. alles Seyn in der Zeit ist auch wieder ein Nichtseyn: denn die Zeit ist eben nur dasjenige, wodurch dem selben Dinge entgegengesetzte Bestimmungen zukommen können: daher ist jede Erscheinung in der Zeit eben auch wieder nicht: denn was ihren Anfang von ihrem Ende trennt, ist eben nur Zeit, ein wesentlich Hinschwindendes, Bestandloses und Relatives, hier Dauer genannt. Die Zeit ist aber die allgemeinste Form aller Objekte der im Dienste des Willens stehenden Erkenntniß und der Urtypus der übrigen Formen derselben.

Dem Dienste des Willens bleibt nun die Erkenntniß in der Regel immer unterworfen, wie sie ja zu diesem Dienste hervorgegangen, ja dem Willen gleichsam so entsprossen ist, wie der Kopf dem Rumpf. Bei den Thieren ist diese Dienstbarkeit der Erkenntniß unter dem Willen gar nie aufzuheben. Bei den Menschen tritt solche Aufhebung nur als Ausnahme ein, wie wir sogleich näher betrachten werden. Dieser Unterschied zwischen Mensch und Thier ist äußerlich ausgedrückt durch die Verschiedenheit des Verhältnisses des Kopfes zum Rumpf. Bei den unteren Thieren sind beide noch ganz verwachsen: bei allen ist der Kopf zur Erde gerichtet, wo die Objekte des Willens liegen: selbst bei den oberen sind Kopf und Rumpf noch viel mehr Eines, als beim Menschen, dessen Haupt dem Leibe frei aufgesetzt erscheint, nur von ihm getragen, nicht ihm dienend. Diesen menschlichen Vorzug stellt im höchsten Grade der Apoll von Belvedere dar: das weitumherblickende Haupt des Musengottes steht so frei auf den Schultern, daß es dem Leibe ganz entwunden, der Sorge für ihn nicht mehr unterthan erscheint.

34 Der, wie gesagt, mögliche, aber nur als Ausnahme zu betrachtende Uebergang von der gemeinen Erkenntniß einzelner Dinge zur Erkenntniß der Idee geschieht plötzlich, indem die Erkenntniß sich vom Dienste des Willens losreißt, eben dadurch das Subjekt aufhört ein bloß individuelles zu seyn und jetzt reines, willenloses Subjekt der Erkenntniß ist, welches nicht mehr, dem Satze vom Grunde gemäß, den Relationen nachgeht; sondern in fester Kontemplation des dargebotenen Objekts, außer seinem Zusammenhange mit irgend andern, ruht und darin aufgeht.

Dieses bedarf, um deutlich zu werden, nothwendig einer ausführlichen Auseinandersetzung, über deren Befremdendes man sich einstweilen hinauszusetzen hat, bis es, nach Zusammenfassung des ganzen in dieser Schrift mitzutheilenden Gedankens, von selbst verschwunden ist.

Wenn man, durch die Kraft des Geistes gehoben, die gewöhnliche Betrachtungsart der Dinge fahren läßt, aufhört, nur ihren Relationen zu einander, deren letztes Ziel immer die Relation zum eigenen Willen ist, am Leitfaden der Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde, nachzugehen, also nicht mehr das Wo, das Wann, das Warum und das Wozu an den Dingen betrachtet; sondern einzig und allein das Was; auch nicht das abstrakte Denken, die Begriffe der Vernunft, das Bewußtsein einnehmen läßt; sondern, statt alles diesen, die ganze Macht seines Geistes der Anschauung hingiebt, sich ganz in diese versenkt und das ganze Bewußseyn ausfüllen läßt durch die ruhige Kontemplation des gerade gegenwärtigen natürlichen Gegenstandes, sei es eine Landschaft, ein Baum, ein Fels, ein Gebäude oder was auch immer; indem man nach einer sinnvollen Deutschen Redensart, sich gänzlich in diesen Gegenstand verliert, d. h. eben sein Individuum, seinen Willen, vergißt und nur noch als reines Subjekt, als klarer Spiegel des Objekts bestehend bleibt; so daß es ist, als ob der Gegenstand allein da wäre, ohne Jemanden, der ihn wahrnimmt, und man also nicht mehr den Anschauenden von der Anschauung trennen kann, sondern beide Eines geworden sind, indem das ganze Bewußtseyn von einem einzigen anschaulichen Bilde gänzlich gefüllt und eingenommen ist; wenn also solchermaaßen das Objekt aus aller Relation zu etwas außer ihm, das Subjekt aus aller Relation zum Willen getreten ist: dann ist, was also erkannt wird, nicht mehr das einzelne Ding als solches; sondern es ist die Idee, die ewige Form, die unmittelbare Objektität des Willens auf dieser Stufe: und eben dadurch ist zugleich der in dieser Anschauung Begriffene nicht mehr Individuum: denn das Individuum hat sich eben in solche Anschauung verloren: sondern er ist reines, willenloses, schmerzloses, zeitloses Subjekt der Erkenntniß. Dieses für sich jetzt so Auffallende, (von dem ich sehr wohl weiß, daß es den von Thomas Paine herrührenden Ausspruch, du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas, bestätigt) wird durch das Folgende nach und nach deutlicher und weniger befremdend werden. Es war es auch, was dem Spinoza vorschwebte, als er niederschrieb: mens aeterna est, quatenus res sub aeternitatis specie concipit (Eth. V, pr. 31, schol.)⁷. In solcher Kontemplation nun wird mit Einem Schlage das einzelne Ding zur Idee seiner Gattung und das anschauende Individuum zum reinen Subjekt des Erkennens. Das Individuum als solches erkennt nur einzelne Dinge; das reine Subjekt des Erkennens nur Ideen. Denn das Individuum ist das Subjekt des Erkennens in seiner Beziehung auf eine bestimmte einzelne Erscheinung des Willens, und dieser dienstbar. Diese einzelne Willenserscheinung ist als solche dem Satz vom Grunde, in allen seinen Gestaltungen, unterworfen: alle auf dasselbe sich beziehende Erkenntniß folgt daher auch dem Satz vom Grunde, und zum Behuf des Willens taugt auch keine andere als diese, welche immer nur Relationen zum Objekt hat. Das erkennende Individuum als solches und das von ihm erkannte einzelne Ding sind immer irgendwo, irgendwann und Glieder in der Kette der Ursachen und Wirkungen. Das reine Subjekt der Erkenntniß und sein Korrelat, die Idee, sind aus allen jenen Formen des Satzes vom Grunde herausgetreten: die Zeit, der Ort, das Individuum, welches erkennt, und das Individuum, welches erkannt wird, haben für sie keine Bedeutung. Allererst indem auf die beschriebene Weise ein erkennendes Individuum sich zum reinen Subjekt des Erkennens und eben damit das betrachtete Objekt zur Idee erhebt, tritt die Welt als Vorstellung gänzlich und rein hervor, und geschieht die vollkommene Objektivation des Willens, da allein die Idee seine adäquate Objektität ist. Diese schließt Objekt und Subjekt auf gleiche Weise in sich, da solche [8] Auch empfehle ich was er ebendaselbst L. II, prop. 40, schol. 2, imgleichen L. V, prop. 25 bis 38, über die cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva sagt, zur Erläuterung der hier in Rede stehenden Erkenntnißweise nachzulesen, und zwar ganz besonders prop. 29, schol.; prop. 36, schol. und prop. 38 demonstr. et schol. ihre einzige Form sind: in ihr halten sich aber beide ganz das Gleichgewicht: und wie das Objekt auch hier nichts als die Vorstellung des Subjekts ist, so ist auch das Subjekt, indem es im angeschauten Gegenstand ganz aufgeht, dieser Gegenstand selbst geworden, indem das ganze Bewußtseyn nichts mehr ist, als dessen deutlichstes Bild. Dieses Bewußtseyn eben, indem man sämmtliche Ideen, oder Stufen der Objektität des Willens, der Reihe nach, durch dasselbe durchgehend sich denkt, macht eigentlich die ganze Welt als Vorstellung aus. Die einzelnen Dinge aller Zeiten und Räume sind nichts, als die durch den Satz vom Grund (die Form der Erkenntniß der Individuen als solcher) vervielfältigten und dadurch in ihrer reinen Objektität getrübten Ideen. Wie, indem die Idee hervortritt, in ihr Subjekt und Objekt nicht mehr zu unterscheiden sind, weil erst indem sie sich gegenseitig vollkommen erfüllen und durchdringen, die Idee, die adäquate Objektität des Willens, die eigentliche Welt als Vorstellung, ersteht; ebenso sind auch das dabei erkennende und das erkannte Individuum, als Dinge an sich, nicht unterschieden. Denn sehen wir von jener eigentlichen Welt als Vorstellung gänzlich ab, so bleibt nichts übrig, denn die Welt als Wille. Der Wille ist das Ansich der Idee, die ihn vollkommen objektivirt; er auch ist das Ansich des einzelnen Dinges und des dasselbe erkennenden Individuums, die ihn unvollkommen objektiviren. Als Wille, außer der Vorstellung und allen ihren Formen, ist er einer und derselbe im kontemplirten Objekt und im Individuo, welches sich an dieser Kontemplation emporschwingend als reines Subjekt seiner bewußt wird: jene beiden sind daher an sich nicht unterschieden: denn an sich sind sie der Wille, der hier sich selbst erkennt, und nur als die Art und Weise wie ihm diese Erkenntniß wird, d. h. nur in der Erscheinung, ist, vermöge ihrer Form, des Satzes vom Grund, Vielheit und Verschiedenheit. So wenig ich ohne das Objekt, ohne die Vorstellung, erkennendes Subjekt bin, sondern bloßer blinder Wille; ebenso wenig ist ohne mich, als Subjekt des Erkennens, das erkannte Ding Objekt, sondern bloßer Wille, blinder Drang. Dieser Wille ist an sich, d. h. außer der Vorstellung, mit dem meinigen Einer und derselbe: nur in der Welt als Vorstellung, deren Form allemal wenigstens Subjekt und Objekt ist, treten wir aus einander als erkanntes und erkennendes Individuum. Sobald das Erkennen, die Welt als Vorstellung, aufgehoben ist, bleibt überhaupt nichts übrig, als bloßer Wille, blinder Drang. Daß er Objektität erhalte, zur Vorstellung werde, setzt, mit Einem Schlage, sowohl Subjekt als Objekt: daß aber diese Objektität rein, vollkommen, adäquate Objektität des Willens sei, setzt das Objekt als Idee, frei von den Formen des Satzes vom Grunde, und das Subjekt als reines Subjekt der Erkenntniß, frei von Individualität und Dienstbarkeit dem Willen.

Wer nun besagtermaaßen sich in die Anschauung der Natur so weit vertieft und verloren hat, daß er nur noch als rein erkennendes Subjekt da ist, wird eben dadurch unmittelbar inne, daß er als solches die Bedingung, also der Träger, der Welt und alles objektiven Daseyns ist, da dieses nunmehr als von dem seinigen abhängig sich darstellt. Er zieht also die Natur in sich hinein, so daß er sie nur noch als ein Accidenz seines Wesens empfindet. In diesem Sinne sagt Byron:

Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? [9]

Wie aber sollte, wer dieses fühlt, sich selbst, im Gegensatz der unvergänglichen Natur, für absolut vergänglich halten? Ihn wird vielmehr das Bewußtseyn dessen ergreifen, was der Upanischad des Veda ausspricht: Hae omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est. (Oupnekhat, I, 122.)¹⁰

35 Um eine tiefere Einsicht in das Wesen der Welt zu erlangen, ist unumgänglich nöthig, daß man unterscheiden lerne den Willen als Ding an sich von seiner adäquaten Objektität, sodann die verschiedenen Stufen, auf welchen diese deutlicher und vollendeter hervortritt, d. i. die Ideen selbst, von der bloßen Erscheinung der Ideen in den Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde, der befangenen Erkenntnißweise der Individuen. Dann wird man [11] Sind Berge, Wellen, Himmel, nicht ein Theil Von mir und meiner Seele, ich von ihnen?

12 Hiezu Kap. 30 des zweiten Bandes. dem Platon beistimmen, wenn er nur den Ideen eigentliches Seyn beilegt, hingegen den Dingen in Raum und Zeit, dieser für das Individuum realen Welt, nur eine scheinbare, traumartige Existenz zuerkennt. Dann wird man einsehen, wie die eine und selbe Idee sich in so vielen Erscheinungen offenbart und den erkennenden Individuen ihr Wesen nur stückweise, eine Seite nach der andern, darbietet. Man wird dann auch die Idee selbst unterscheiden von der Art und Weise wie ihre Erscheinung in die Beobachtung des Individuums fällt, jene für wesentlich, diese für unwesentlich erkennen. Wir wollen dieses im Geringsten und dann im Größten beispielsweise betrachten. — Wann die Wolken ziehen, sind die Figuren, welche sie bilden, ihnen nicht wesentlich, sind für sie gleichgültig: aber daß sie als elastischer Dunst, vom Stoß des Windes zusammengepreßt, weggetrieben, ausgedehnt, zerrissen werden; dies ist ihre Natur, ist das Wesen der Kräfte, die sich in ihnen objektiviren, ist die Idee: nur für den individuellen Beobachter sind die jedesmaligen Figuren. — Dem Bach, der über Steine abwärts rollt, sind die Strudel, Wellen, Schaumgebilde, die er sehen läßt, gleichgültig und unwesentlich: daß er der Schwere folgt, sich als unelastische, gänzlich verschiebbare, formlose, durchsichtige Flüssigkeit verhält; dies ist sein Wesen, dies ist, wenn anschaulich erkannt, die Idee: nur für uns, solange wir als Individuen erkennen, sind jene Gebilde. — Das Eis an der Fensterscheibe schießt an nach den Gesetzen der Krystallisation, die das Wesen der hier hervortretenden Naturkraft offenbaren, die Idee darstellen; aber die Bäume und Blumen, die es dabei bildet, sind unwesentlich und nur für uns da. — Was in Wolken, Bach und Krystall erscheint, ist der schwächste Nachhall jenes Willens, der vollendeter in der Pflanze, noch vollendeter im Thier, am vollendetesten im Menschen hervortritt. Aber nur das Wesentliche aller jener Stufen seiner Objektivation macht die Idee aus: hingegen die Entfaltung dieser, indem sie in den Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde auseinandergezogen wird zu mannigfaltigen und vielseitigen Erscheinungen; dieses ist der Idee unwesentlich, liegt bloß in der Erkenntnißweise des Individuums und hat auch nur für dieses Realität. Das Selbe nun gilt nothwendig auch von der Entfaltung derjenigen Idee, welche die vollendeteste Objektität des Willens ist: folglich ist die Geschichte des Menschengeschlechts, das Gedränge der Begebenheiten, der Wechsel der Zeiten, die vielgestalteten Formen des menschlichen Lebens in verschiedenen Ländern und Jahrhunderten, dieses Alles ist nur die zufällige Form der Erscheinung der Idee, gehört nicht dieser selbst, in der allein die adäquate Objektität des Willens liegt, sondern nur der Erscheinung an, die in die Erkenntniß des Individuums fällt, und ist der Idee selbst so fremd, unwesentlich und gleichgültig, wie den Wolken die Figuren, die sie darstellen, dem Bach die Gestalt seiner Strudel und Schaumgebilde, dem Eise seine Bäume und Blumen.

Wer dieses wohl gefaßt hat und den Willen von der Idee, und diese von ihrer Erscheinung zu unterscheiden weiß, dem werden die Weltbegebenheiten nur noch sofern sie die Buchstaben sind, aus denen die Idee des Menschen sich lesen läßt, Bedeutung haben, nicht aber an und für sich. Er wird nicht mit den Leuten glauben, daß die Zeit etwas wirklich Neues und Bedeutsames hervorbringe, daß durch sie oder in ihr etwas schlechthin Reales zum Daseyn gelange, oder gar sie selbst als ein Ganzes Anfang und Ende, Plan und Entwickelung habe, und etwan zum letzten Ziel die höchste Vervollkommnung (nach ihren Begriffen) des letzten, dreißig Jahre lebenden Geschlechts. Daher wird er so wenig mit Homer einen ganzen Olymp voll Götter zur Lenkung jener Zeitbegebenheiten bestellen, als mit Ossian die Figuren der Wolken für individuelle Wesen halten, da, wie gesagt, Beides, in Bezug auf die darin erscheinende Idee, gleich viel Bedeutung hat. In den mannigfaltigen Gestalten des Menschenlebens und dem unaufhörlichen Wechsel der Begebenheiten wird er als das Bleibende und Wesentliche nur die Idee betrachten, in welcher der Wille zum Leben seine vollkommenste Objektität hat, und welche ihre verschiedenen Seiten zeigt in den Eigenschaften, Leidenschaften, Irrthümern und Vorzügen des Menschengeschlechts, in Eigennutz, Haß, Liebe, Furcht, Kühnheit, Leichtsinn, Stumpfheit, Schlauheit, Witz, Genie u. s. w., welche alle, zu tausendfältigen Gestalten (Individuen) zusammenlaufend und gerinnend, fortwährend die große und die kleine Weltgeschichte aufführen, wobei es an sich gleichviel ist, ob, was sie in Bewegung setzt, Nüsse oder Kronen sind. Er wird endlich finden, daß es in der Welt ist, wie in den Dramen des Gozzi, in welchen allen immer die selben Personen auftreten, mit gleicher Absicht und gleichem Schicksal: die Motive und Begebenheiten freilich sind in jedem Stücke andere; aber der Geist der Begebenheiten ist der selbe: die Personen des einen Stücks wissen auch nichts von den Vorgängen im andern, in welchem doch sie selbst agirten: daher ist, nach allen Erfahrungen der früheren Stücke, doch Pantalone nicht behender oder freigebiger, Tartaglia nicht gewissenhafter, Brighella nicht beherzter und Kolombine nicht sittsamer geworden. —

Gesetzt es würde uns einmal ein deutlicher Blick in das Reich der Möglichkeit und über alle Ketten der Ursachen und Wirkungen gestattet, es träte der Erdgeist hervor und zeigte uns in einem Bilde die vortrefflichsten Individuen, Welterleuchter und Helden, die der Zufall vor der Zeit ihrer Wirksamkeit zerstört hat, — dann die großen Begebenheiten, welche die Weltgeschichte geändert und Perioden der höchsten Kultur und Aufklärung herbeigeführt haben würden, die aber das blindeste Ungefähr, der unbedeutendeste Zufall, bei ihrer Entstehung hemmte, endlich die herrlichen Kräfte großer Individuen, welche ganze Weltalter befruchtet haben würden, die sie aber, durch Irrthum oder Leidenschaft verleitet, oder durch Nothwendigkeit gezwungen, an unwürdigen und unfruchtbaren Gegenständen nutzlos verschwendeten, oder gar spielend vergeudeten: — sähen wir das Alles, wir würden schaudern und wehklagen über die verlorenen Schätze ganzer Weltalter. Aber der Erdgeist würde lächeln und sagen: „Die Quelle, aus der die Individuen und ihre Kräfte fließen, ist unerschöpflich und unendlich wie Zeit und Raum: denn jene sind, eben wie diese Formen aller Erscheinung, doch auch nur Erscheinung, Sichtbarkeit des Willens. Jene unendliche Quelle kann kein endliches Maaß erschöpfen: daher steht jeder im Keime erstickten Begebenheit, oder Werk, zur Wiederkehr noch immer die unverminderte Unendlichkeit offen. In dieser Welt der Erscheinung ist so wenig wahrer Verlust, als wahrer Gewinn möglich. Der Wille allein ist: er, das Ding an sich, er, die Quelle aller jener Erscheinungen. Seine Selbsterkenntniß und darauf sich entscheidende Bejahung oder Verneinung ist die einzige Begebenheit an sich.“ — [13]

14 Dieser letzte Satz kann ohne Bekanntschaft mit dem folgenden Buch nicht verstanden werden.

36 Dem Faden der Begebenheiten geht die Geschichte nach: sie ist pragmatisch, sofern sie dieselben nach dem Gesetze der Motivation ableitet, welches Gesetz den erscheinenden Willen da bestimmt, wo er von der Erkenntniß beleuchtet ist. Auf den niedrigeren Stufen seiner Objektität, wo er noch ohne Erkenntniß wirkt, betrachtet die Gesetze der Veränderungen seiner Erscheinungen die Naturwissenschaft als Aetiologie, und das Bleibende an ihnen als Morphologie, welche ihr fast unendliches Thema sich durch Hülfe der Begriffe erleichtert, das Allgemeine zusammenfassend, um das Besondere daraus abzuleiten. Endlich die bloßen Formen, in welchen, für die Erkenntniß des Subjekts als Individuums, die Ideen zur Vielheit auseinandergezogen erscheinen, also Zeit und Raum, betrachtet die Mathematik. Diese alle, deren gemeinsamer Name Wissenschaft ist, gehen also dem Satz vom Grunde in seinen verschiedenen Gestaltungen nach, und ihr Thema bleibt die Erscheinung, deren Gesetze, Zusammenhang und daraus entstehende Verhältnisse. — Welche Erkenntnißart nun aber betrachtet jenes außer und unabhängig von aller Relation bestehende, allein eigentlich Wesentliche der Welt, den wahren Gehalt ihrer Erscheinungen, das keinem Wechsel Unterworfene und daher für alle Zeit mit gleicher Wahrheit Erkannte, mit Einem Wort, die Ideen, welche die unmittelbare und adäquate Objektität des Dinges an sich, des Willens, sind? — Es ist die Kunst, das Werk des Genius. Sie wiederholt die durch reine Kontemplation aufgefaßten ewigen Ideen, das Wesentliche und Bleibende aller Erscheinungen der Welt, und je nachdem der Stoff ist, in welchem sie wiederholt, ist sie bildende Kunst, Poesie oder Musik. Ihr einziger Ursprung ist die Erkenntniß der Ideen; ihr einziges Ziel Mittheilung dieser Erkenntniß. — Während die Wissenschaft, dem rast- und bestandlosen Strom vierfach gestalteter Gründe und Folgen nachgehend, bei jedem erreichten Ziel immer wieder weiter gewiesen wird und nie ein letztes Ziel, noch völlige Befriedigung finden kann, so wenig als man durch Laufen den Punkt erreicht, wo die Wolken den Horizont berühren; so ist dagegen die Kunst überall am Ziel. Denn sie reißt das Objekt ihrer Kontemplation heraus aus dem Strome des Weltlaufs und hat es isolirt vor sich: und dieses Einzelne, was in jenem Strom ein verschwindend kleiner Theil war, wird ihr ein Repräsentant des Ganzen, ein Aequivalent des in Raum und Zeit unendlich Vielen: sie bleibt daher bei diesem Einzelnen stehen: das Rad der Zeit hält sie an: die Relationen verschwinden ihr: nur das Wesentliche, die Idee, ist ihr Objekt. — Wir können sie daher geradezu bezeichnen als die Betrachtungsart der Dinge unabhängig vom Satze des Grundes, im Gegensatz der gerade diesem nachgehenden Betrachtung, welche der Weg der Erfahrung und Wissenschaft ist. Diese letztere Art der Betrachtung ist einer unendlichen, horizontal laufenden Linie zu vergleichen; die erstere aber der sie in jedem beliebigen Punkte schneidenden senkrechten. Die dem Satz vom Grunde nachgehende ist die vernünftige Betrachtungsart, welche im praktischen Leben, wie in der Wissenschaft, allein gilt und hilft: die vom Inhalt jenes Satzes wegsehende ist die geniale Betrachtungsart, welche in der Kunst allein gilt und hilft. Die erstere ist die Betrachtungsart des Aristoteles; die zweite ist im Ganzen die des Platon. Die erstere gleicht dem gewaltigen Sturm, der ohne Anfang und Ziel dahinfährt, Alles beugt, bewegt, mit sich fortreißt; die zweite dem ruhigen Sonnenstrahl, der den Weg dieses Sturmes durchschneidet, von ihm ganz unbewegt. Die erstere gleicht den unzähligen, gewaltsam bewegten Tropfen des Wasserfalls, die stets wechselnd, keinen Augenblick rasten: die zweite dem auf diesem tobenden Gewühl stille ruhenden Regenbogen. — Nur durch die oben beschriebene, im Objekt ganz aufgehende, reine Kontemplation werden Ideen aufgefaßt, und das Wesen des Genius besteht eben in der überwiegenden Fähigkeit zu solcher Kontemplation: da nun diese ein gänzliches Vergessen der eigenen Person und ihrer Beziehungen verlangt; so ist Genialität nichts Anderes, als die vollkommenste Objektivität, d. h. objektive Richtung des Geistes, entgegengesetzt der subjektiven, auf die eigene Person, d. i. den Willen, gehenden. Demnach ist Genialität die Fähigkeit, sich rein anschauend zu verhalten, sich in die Anschauung zu verlieren und die Erkenntniß, welche ursprünglich nur zum Dienste des Willens da ist, diesem Dienste zu entziehen, d. h. sein Interesse, sein Wollen, seine Zwecke, ganz aus den Augen zu lassen, sonach seiner Persönlichkeit sich auf eine Zeit völlig zu entäußern, um als rein erkennendes Subjekt, klares Weltauge, übrig zu bleiben: und dieses nicht auf Augenblicke; sondern so anhaltend und mit so viel Besonnenheit, als nöthig ist, um das Aufgefaßte durch überlegte Kunst zu wiederholen und „was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt, zu befestigen in dauernden Gedanken“. — Es ist als ob, damit der Genius in einem Individuo hervortrete, diesem ein Maaß der Erkenntnißkraft zugefallen seyn müsse, welches das zum Dienste eines individuellen Willens erforderliche weit übersteigt; welcher frei gewordene Ueberschuß der Erkenntniß, jetzt zum willensreinen Subjekt, zum hellen Spiegel des Wesens der Welt wird. — Daraus erklärt sich die Lebhaftigkeit bis zur Unruhe in genialen Individuen, indem die Gegenwart ihnen selten genügen kann, weil sie ihr Bewußtseyn nicht ausfüllt: dieses giebt ihnen jene rastlose Strebsamkeit, jenes unaufhörliche Suchen neuer und der Betrachtung würdiger Objekte, dann auch jenes fast nie befriedigte Verlangen nach ihnen ähnlichen, ihnen gewachsenen Wesen, denen sie sich mittheilen könnten; während der gewöhnliche Erdensohn, durch die gewöhnliche Gegenwart ganz ausgefüllt und befriedigt, in ihr aufgeht, und dann auch seines Gleichen überall findend, jene besondere Behaglichkeit im Alltagsleben hat, die dem Genius versagt ist. — Man hat als einen wesentlichen Bestandtheil der Genialität die Phantasie erkannt, ja, sie sogar bisweilen für mit jener identisch gehalten: ersteres mit Recht; letzteres mit Unrecht. Da die Objekte des Genius als solchen die ewigen Ideen, die beharrenden wesentlichen Formen der Welt und aller ihrer Erscheinungen sind, die Erkenntniß der Idee aber nothwendig anschaulich, nicht abstrakt ist; so würde die Erkenntniß des Genius beschränkt seyn auf die Ideen der seiner Person wirklich gegenwärtigen Objekte und abhängig von der Verkettung der Umstände, die ihm jene zuführten, wenn nicht die Phantasie seinen Horizont weit über die Wirklichkeit seiner persönlichen Erfahrung erweiterte und ihn in den Stand setzte, aus dem Wenigen, was in seine wirkliche Apperception gekommen, alles Uebrige zu konstruiren und so fast alle möglichen Lebensbilder an sich vorübergehen zu lassen. Zudem sind die wirklichen Objekte fast immer nur sehr mangelhafte Exemplare der in ihnen sich darstellenden Idee: daher der Genius der Phantasie bedarf, um in den Dingen nicht Das zu sehen, was die Natur wirklich gebildet hat, sondern was sie zu bilden sich bemühte, aber, wegen des im vorigen Buche erwähnten Kampfes ihrer Formen unter einander, nicht zu Stande brachte. Wir werden hierauf unten, bei Betrachtung der Bildhauerei, zurückkommen. Die Phantasie also erweitert den Gesichtskreis des Genius über die seiner Person sich in der Wirklichkeit darbietenden Objekte, sowohl der Qualität, als der Quantität nach. Dieserwegen nun ist ungewöhnliche Stärke der Phantasie Begleiterin, ja Bedingung der Genialität. Nicht aber zeugt umgekehrt jene von dieser; vielmehr können selbst höchst ungeniale Menschen viel Phantasie haben. Denn wie man ein wirkliches Objekt auf zweierlei entgegengesetzte Weisen betrachten kann: rein objektiv, genial, die Idee desselben erfassend; oder gemein, bloß in seinen dem Satz vom Grund gemäßen Relationen zu anderen Objekten und zum eigenen Willen; so kann man auch eben so ein Phantasma auf beide Weisen anschauen: in der ersten Art betrachtet, ist es ein Mittel zur Erkenntniß der Idee, deren Mittheilung das Kunstwerk ist: im zweiten Fall wird das Phantasma verwendet, Luftschlösser zu bauen, die der Selbstsucht und der eigenen Laune zusagen, momentan täuschen und ergötzen; wobei von den so verknüpften Phantasmen eigentlich immer nur ihre Relationen erkannt werden. Der dieses Spiel Treibende ist ein Phantast: er wird leicht die Bilder, mit denen er sich einsam ergötzt, in die Wirklichkeit mischen und dadurch für diese untauglich werden: er wird die Gaukeleien seiner Phantasie vielleicht niederschreiben, wo sie die gewöhnlichen Romane aller Gattungen geben, die seines Gleichen und das große Publikum unterhalten, indem die Leser sich an die Stelle des Helden träumen und dann die Darstellung sehr „gemüthlich“ finden.

Der gewöhnliche Mensch, diese Fabrikwaare der Natur, wie sie solche täglich zu Tausenden hervorbringt, ist, wie gesagt, einer in jedem Sinn völlig uninteressirten Betrachtung, welches die eigentliche Beschaulichkeit ist, wenigstens durchaus nicht anhaltend fähig: er kann seine Aufmerksamkeit auf die Dinge nur insofern richten, als sie irgend eine, wenn auch nur sehr mittelbare Beziehung auf seinen Willen haben. Da in dieser Hinsicht, welche immer nur die Erkenntniß der Relationen erfordert, der abstrakte Begriff des Dinges hinlänglich und meistens selbst tauglicher ist; so weilt der gewöhnliche Mensch nicht lange bei der bloßen Anschauung, heftet daher seinen Blick nicht lange auf einen Gegenstand; sondern sucht bei Allem, was sich ihm darbietet, nur schnell den Begriff, unter den es zu bringen ist, wie der Träge den Stuhl sucht, und dann interessirt es ihn nicht weiter. Daher wird er so schnell mit Allem fertig, mit Kunstwerken, schönen Naturgegenständen und dem eigentlich überall bedeutsamen Anblick des Lebens in allen seinen Scenen. Er aber weilt nicht: nur seinen Weg im Leben sucht er, allenfalls auch Alles, was irgend einmal sein Weg werden könnte, also topographische Notizen im weitesten Sinn: mit der Betrachtung des Lebens selbst als solchen verliert er keine Zeit. Der Geniale dagegen, dessen Erkenntnißkraft, durch ihr Uebergewicht, sich dem Dienste seines Willens, auf einen Theil seiner Zeit, entzieht, verweilt bei der Betrachtung des Lebens selbst, strebt die Idee jedes Dinges zu erfassen, nicht dessen Relationen zu anderen Dingen: darüber vernachlässigt er häufig die Betrachtung seines eigenen Weges im Leben, und geht solchen daher meistens ungeschickt genug. Während dem gewöhnlichen Menschen sein Erkenntnißvermögen die Laterne ist, die seinen Weg beleuchtet, ist es dem Genialen die Sonne, welche die Welt offenbar macht. Diese so verschiedene Weise in das Leben hineinzusehen, wird bald sogar im Aeußern Beider sichtbar. Der Blick des Menschen, in welchem der Genius lebt und wirkt, zeichnet ihn leicht aus, indem er, lebhaft und fest zugleich, den Charakter der Beschaulichkeit, der Kontemplation trägt; wie wir an den Bildnissen der wenigen genialen Köpfe, welche die Natur unter den zahllosen Millionen dann und wann hervorgebracht hat, sehen können: hingegen wird im Blicke der Anderen, wenn er nicht, wie meistens, stumpf oder nüchtern ist, leicht der wahre Gegensatz der Kontemplation sichtbar, das Spähen. Demzufolge besteht der „geniale Ausdruck“ eines Kopfes darin, daß ein entschiedenes Uebergewicht des Erkennens über das Wollen darin sichtbar ist, folglich auch ein Erkennen ohne alle Beziehung auf ein Wollen, d. i. ein reines Erkennen, sich darin ausdrückt. Hingegen ist bei Köpfen, wie sie in der Regel sind, der Ausdruck des Wollens vorherrschend, und man sieht, daß das Erkennen immer erst auf Antrieb des Wollens in Thätigkeit geräth, also bloß auf Motive gerichtet ist.

Da die geniale Erkenntniß, oder Erkenntniß der Idee, diejenige ist, welche dem Satz vom Grunde nicht folgt, hingegen die, welche ihm folgt, im Leben Klugheit und Vernünftigkeit ertheilt und die Wissenschaften zu Stande bringt; so werden geniale Individuen mit den Mängeln behaftet seyn, welche die Vernachlässigung der letztern Erkenntnißweise nach sich zieht. Jedoch ist hiebei die Einschränkung zu merken, daß was ich in dieser Hinsicht anführen werde, sie nur trifft insofern und während sie in der genialen Erkenntnißweise wirklich begriffen sind, was keineswegs in jedem Augenblick ihres Lebens der Fall ist, da die große, wiewohl spontane Anspannung, welche zur willensfreien Auffassung der Ideen erfordert wird, nothwendig wieder nachläßt und große Zwischenräume hat, in welchen Jene, sowohl in Hinsicht auf Vorzüge als auf Mängel, den gewöhnlichen Menschen ziemlich gleich stehen. Man hat dieserhalb von jeher das Wirken des Genius als eine Inspiration, ja wie der Name selbst bezeichnet, als das Wirken eines vom Individuo selbst verschiedenen übermenschlichen Wesens angesehen, das nur periodisch jenes in Besitz nimmt. Die Abneigung genialer Individuen, die Aufmerksamkeit auf den Inhalt des Satzes vom Grunde zu richten, wird sich zuerst in Hinsicht auf den Grund des Seyns zeigen, als Abneigung gegen Mathematik, deren Betrachtung auf die allgemeinsten Formen der Erscheinung, Raum und Zeit, welche selbst nur Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde sind, geht und daher ganz das Gegentheil derjenigen Betrachtung ist, die gerade nur den Inhalt der Erscheinung, die sich darin aussprechende Idee, aufsucht, von allen Relationen absehend. Außerdem wird noch die logische Behandlung der Mathematik dem Genius widerstehen, da diese, die eigentliche Einsicht verschließend, nicht befriedigt, sondern eine bloße Verkettung von Schlüssen, nach dem Satz des Erkenntnißgrundes darbietend, von allen Geisteskräften am meisten das Gedächtniß in Anspruch nimmt, um nämlich immer alle die früheren Sätze, darauf man sich beruft, gegenwärtig zu haben. Auch hat die Erfahrung bestätigt, daß große Genien in der Kunst zur Mathematik keine Fähigkeit haben: nie war ein Mensch zugleich in beiden sehr ausgezeichnet. Alfieri erzählt, daß er sogar nie nur den vierten Lehrsatz des Eukleides begreifen gekonnt. Goethen ist der Mangel mathematischer Kenntniß zur Genüge vorgeworfen worden von den unverständigen Gegnern seiner Farbenlehre: freilich hier, wo es nicht auf Rechnen und Messen nach hypothetischen Datis, sondern auf unmittelbare Verstandeserkenntniß der Ursache und Wirkung ankam, war jener Vorwurf so ganz queer und am unrechten Ort, daß jene ihren totalen Mangel an Urtheilskraft dadurch eben so sehr, als durch ihre übrigen Midas-Aussprüche an den Tag gelegt haben. Daß noch heute, fast ein halbes Jahrhundert nach dem Erscheinen der Goethe'schen Farbenlehre, sogar in Deutschland, die Neutonischen Flausen ungestört im Besitz der Lehrstühle bleiben und man fortfährt, ganz ernsthaft von den sieben homogenen Lichtern und ihrer verschiedenen Brechbarkeit zu reden, — wird einst unter den großen intellektualen Charakterzügen der Menschheit überhaupt und der Deutschheit insbesondere aufgezählt werden. — Aus demselben oben angegebenen Grunde erklärt sich die eben so bekannte Thatsache, daß umgekehrt, ausgezeichnete Mathematiker wenig Empfänglichkeit für die Werke der schönen Kunst haben, was sich besonders naiv ausspricht in der bekannten Anekdote von jenem französischen Mathematiker, der nach Durchlesung der Iphigenia des Racine achselzuckend fragte: Qu’est-ce-quece la prouve? — Da ferner scharfe Auffassung der Beziehungen gemäß dem Gesetze der Kausalität und Motivation eigentlich die Klugheit ausmacht, die geniale Erkenntniß aber nicht auf die Relationen gerichtet ist; so wird ein Kluger, sofern und während er es ist, nicht genial, und ein Genialer, sofern und während er es ist, nicht klug seyn. — Endlich steht überhaupt die anschauliche Erkenntniß, in deren Gebiet die Idee durchaus liegt, der vernünftigen oder abstrakten, welche der Satz vom Grunde des Erkennens leitet, gerade entgegen. Auch findet man bekanntlich selten große Genialität mit vorherrschender Vernünftigkeit gepaart, vielmehr sind umgekehrt geniale Individuen oft heftigen Affekten und unvernünftigen Leidenschaften unterworfen. Der Grund hievon ist dennoch nicht Schwäche der Vernunft, sondern theils ungewöhnliche Energie der ganzen Willenserscheinung, die das geniale Individuum ist, und welche sich durch Heftigkeit aller Willensakte äußert, theils Uebergewicht der anschauenden Erkenntniß durch Sinne und Verstand über die abstrakte, daher entschiedene Richtung auf das Anschauliche, dessen bei ihnen höchst energischer Eindruck die farblosen Begriffe so sehr überstrahlt, daß nicht mehr diese, sondern jener das Handeln leitet, welches eben dadurch unvernünftig wird: demnach ist der Eindruck der Gegenwart auf sie sehr mächtig, reißt sie hin zum Unüberlegten, zum Affekt, zur Leidenschaft Daher auch, und überhaupt weil ihre Erkenntniß sich zum Theil dem Dienste des Willens entzogen hat, werden sie im Gespräche nicht sowohl an die Person denken, zu der, sondern mehr an die Sache, wovon sie reden, die ihnen lebhaft vorschwebt: daher werden sie für ihr Interesse zu objektiv urtheilen oder erzählen, nicht verschweigen, was klüger verschwiegen bliebe u. s. w. Daher endlich sind sie zu Monologen geneigt und können überhaupt mehrere Schwächen zeigen, die sich wirklich dem Wahnsinn nähern. Daß Genialität und Wahnsinn eine Seite haben, wo sie an einander gränzen, ja in einander übergehen, ist oft bemerkt und sogar die dichterische Begeisterung eine Art Wahnsinn genannt worden: amabilis insania nennt sie Horaz (Od. III, 4) und „holder Wahnsinn“ Wieland im Eingang zum „Oberon“. Selbst Aristoteles soll, nach Seneka’s Anführung (de tranq. animi, 15, 16), gesagt haben: Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit. Platon drückt es, im oben angeführten Mythos von der finstern Höhle (de Rep. 7), dadurch aus, daß er sagt: Diejenigen, welche außerhalb der Höhle das wahre Sonnenlicht und die wirklich seienden Dinge (die Ideen) geschaut haben, können nachmals in der Höhle, weil ihre Augen der Dunkelheit entwöhnt sind, nicht mehr sehen, die Schattenbilder da unten nicht mehr recht erkennen, und werden deshalb, bei ihren Mißgriffen, von den Anderen verspottet, die nie aus dieser Höhle und von diesen Schattenbildern fortkamen. Auch sagt er im Phädros (S. 317) geradezu, daß ohne einen gewissen Wahnsinn kein ächter Dichter seyn könne, ja (S. 327) daß Jeder, welcher in den vergänglichen Dingen die ewigen Ideen erkennt, als wahnsinnig erscheine. Auch Cicero führt an: Negat enim, sine furore, Democritus, quemquam poëtam magnum esse posse; quod idem dicit Plato (de divin. I, 37). Und endlich sagt Pope:

Great wits to madness sure are near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide¹⁵.

Besonders lehrreich in dieser Hinsicht ist Goethe’s „Torquato Tasso“, in welchem er uns nicht nur das Leiden, das wesentliche Märtyrerthum des Genius als solchen, sondern auch dessen stetigen Uebergang zum Wahnsinn vor die Augen stellt. Endlich wird die Thatsache der unmittelbaren Berührung zwischen Genialität und Wahnsinn durch die Biographien sehr genialer Menschen, z. B. Rousseau’s, Byron’s, Alfieri’s, und durch Anekdoten aus dem Leben anderer bestätigt; theils muß ich andererseits erwähnen, bei häufiger Besuchung der Irrenhäuser, einzelne Subjekte von unverkennbar großen Anlagen gefunden zu haben, deren Genialität deutlich durch den Wahnsinn durchblickte, welcher hier aber völlig die Oberhand erhalten hatte. Dieses kann nun nicht dem Zufall zugeschrieben werden, weil einerseits die Anzahl der Wahnsinnigen verhältnißmäßig sehr klein ist, andererseits aber ein geniales Individuum eine über alle gewöhnliche Schätzung seltene und nur als die größte Ausnahme in der Natur hervortretende Erscheinung ist; wovon man sich allein dadurch überzeugen kann, daß man die wirklich großen Genien, welche das ganze kultivirte Europa in der ganzen alten und neuen Zeit hervorgebracht hat, wohin aber allein diejenigen zu rechnen sind, welche Werke lieferten, die durch alle Zeiten einen bleibenden Werth für die Menschheit behalten haben, — daß man, sage ich, diese Einzelnen aufzählt und ihre Zahl vergleicht mit den 250 Millionen, welche, sich alle dreißig Jahre erneuernd, beständig in Europa leben. Ja, ich will nicht unerwähnt lassen, daß ich einige Leute von zwar nicht bedeutender, aber doch entschiedener, geistiger Ueberlegenheit gekannt habe, die zugleich einen leisen Anstrich von Verrücktheit verriethen. Danach möchte es scheinen, daß jede Steigerung des Intellekts über das gewöhnliche Maaß hinaus, als eine Abnormität, schon zum Wahnsinn disponirt. Inzwischen will ich über den rein intellektuellen Grund jener Verwandtschaft zwischen Genialität und Wahnsinn meine Meinung möglichst kurz vortragen, da diese Erörterung allerdings zur Erklärung¹⁶ Dem Wahnsinn ist der große Geist verwandt, Und Beide trennt nur eine dünne Wand. des eigentlichen Wesens der Genialität, d. h. derjenigen Geisteseigenschaft, welche allein ächte Kunstwerke schaffen kann, beitragen wird. Dies macht aber eine kurze Erörterung des Wahnsinnes selbst nothwendig [17].

Eine klare und vollständige Einsicht in das Wesen des Wahnsinnes, ein richtiger und deutlicher Begriff Desjenigen, was eigentlich den Wahnsinnigen vom Gesunden unterscheidet, ist, meines Wissens, noch immer nicht gefunden. — Weder Vernunft, noch Verstand kann den Wahnsinnigen abgesprochen werden: denn sie reden und vernehmen, sie schließen oft sehr richtig; auch schauen sie in der Regel das Gegenwärtige ganz richtig an und sehen den Zusammenhang zwischen Ursache und Wirkung ein. Visionen, gleich Fieberphantasien, sind kein gewöhnliches Symptom des Wahnsinnes: das Delirium verfälscht die Anschauung, der Wahnsinn die Gedanken. Meistens nämlich irren die Wahnsinnigen durchaus nicht in der Kenntniß des unmittelbar Gegenwärtigen; sondern ihr Irrereden bezieht sich immer auf das Abwesende und Vergangene, und nur dadurch auf dessen Verbindung mit dem Gegenwärtigen. Daher nun scheint mir ihre Krankheit besonders das Gedächtniß zu treffen; zwar nicht so, daß es ihnen ganz fehlte: denn Viele wissen Vieles auswendig und erkennen bisweilen Personen, die sie lange nicht gesehen, wieder; sondern vielmehr so, daß der Faden des Gedächtnisses zerrissen, der fortlaufende Zusammenhang desselben aufgehoben und keine gleichmäßig zusammenhängende Rückerinnerung der Vergangenheit möglich ist. Einzelne Scenen der Vergangenheit stehen richtig da, so wie die einzelne Gegenwart; aber in ihrer Rückerinnerung sind Lücken, welche sie dann mit Fiktionen ausfüllen, die entweder, stets die selben, zu fixen Ideen werden: dann ist es fixer Wahn, Melancholie; oder jedesmal andere sind, augenblickliche Einfälle: dann heißt es Narrheit, fatuitas. Dieserhalb ist es so schwer, einem Wahnsinnigen, bei seinem Eintritt ins Irrenhaus, seinen frühern Lebenslauf abzufragen. Immer mehr nun vermischt sich in seinem Gedächtnisse Wahres mit Falschem. Obgleich die unmittelbare Gegenwart richtig erkannt wird, so wird sie verfälscht durch den fingirten Zusammenhang mit einer gewähnten¹⁸ Hiezu Kap. 31 des zweiten Bandes. Vergangenheit: sie halten daher sich selbst und Andere für identisch mit Personen, die bloß in ihrer fingirten Vergangenheit liegen, erkennen manche Bekannte gar nicht wieder, und haben so, bei richtiger Vorstellung des gegenwärtigen Einzelnen, lauter falsche Relationen desselben zum Abwesenden. Erreicht der Wahnsinn einen hohen Grad, so entsteht völlige Gedächtnißlosigkeit, weshalb dann der Wahnsinnige durchaus keiner Rücksicht auf irgend etwas Abwesendes, oder Vergangenes fähig ist, sondern ganz allein durch die augenblickliche Laune, in Verbindung mit den Fiktionen, welche in seinem Kopf die Vergangenheit füllen, bestimmt wird: man ist alsdann bei ihm, wenn man ihm nicht stets die Uebermacht vor Augen hält, keinen Augenblick vor Mißhandlung, oder Mord gesichert. — Die Erkenntniß des Wahnsinnigen hat mit der des Thieres dies gemein, daß beide auf das Gegenwärtige beschränkt sind: aber was sie unterscheidet ist dieses: das Thier hat eigentlich gar keine Vorstellung von der Vergangenheit als solcher, obwohl dieselbe durch das Medium der Gewohnheit auf das Thier wirkt, daher z. B. der Hund seinen frühern Herrn auch nach Jahren wiedererkennt, d. h. von dessen Anblick den gewohnten Eindruck erhält; aber von der seitdem verflossenen Zeit hat er doch keine Rückerinnerung: der Wahnsinnige dagegen trägt in seiner Vernunft auch immer eine Vergangenheit in abstracto herum, aber eine falsche, die nur für ihn existirt und dies entweder allezeit, oder auch nur eben jetzt: der Einfluß dieser falschen Vergangenheit verhindert nun auch den Gebrauch der richtig erkannten Gegenwart, den doch das Thier macht. Daß heftiges geistiges Leiden, unerwartete entsetzliche Begebenheiten häufig Wahnsinn veranlassen, erkläre ich mir folgendermaaßen. Jedes solches Leiden ist immer als wirkliche Begebenheit auf die Gegenwart beschränkt, also nur vorübergehend und insofern noch immer nicht übermäßig schwer: überschwänglich groß wird es erst, sofern es bleibender Schmerz ist: aber als solcher ist es wieder allein ein Gedanke und liegt daher im Gedächtniß; wenn nun ein solcher Kummer, ein solches schmerzliches Wissen, oder Andenken, so quaalvoll ist, daß es schlechterdings unerträglich fällt, und das Individuum ihm unterliegen würde, — dann greift die dermaaßen geängstigte Natur zum Wahnsinn als zum letzten Rettungsmittel des Lebens: der so sehr gepeinigte Geist zerreißt nun gleichsam den Faden seines Gedächtnisses, füllt die Lücken mit Fiktionen aus und flüchtet so sich von dem seine Kräfte übersteigenden geistigen Schmerz zum Wahnsinn, — wie man ein vom Brande ergriffenes Glied abnimmt und es dur ein hölzernes ersetzt. — Als Beispiel betrachte man den rasenden Ajax, den König Lear und die Ophelia: denn die Geschöpfe des ächten Genius, auf welche allein man sich hier, als allgemein bekannt, berufen kann, sind wirklichen Personen an Wahrheit gleich zu setzen: übrigens zeigt auch die häufige wirkliche Erfahrung hier durchaus das Selbe. Ein schwaches Analogon jener Art des Ueberganges vom Schmerz zum Wahnsinn ist dieses, daß wir Alle oft ein peinigendes Andenken, das uns plötzlich einfällt, wie mechanisch, durch irgend eine laute Aeußerung oder Bewegung zu verscheuchen, uns selbst davon abzulenken, mit Gewalt uns zu zerstreuen suchen. —

Sehen wir nun angegebenermaaßen den Wahnsinnigen das einzelne Gegenwärtige, auch manches einzelne Vergangene, richtig erkennen, aber den Zusammenhang, die Relationen verkennen und daher irren und irrereden; so ist eben dieses der Punkt seiner Berührung mit dem genialen Individuo: denn auch dieses, da es die Erkenntniß der Relationen, welches die gemäß dem Satze des Grundes ist, verläßt, um in den Dingen nur ihre Ideen zu sehen und zu suchen, ihr sich anschaulich aussprechendes eigentliches Wesen zu ergreifen, in Hinsicht auf welches ein Ding seine ganze Gattung repräsentirt und daher, wie Goethe sagt, ein Fall für Tausende gilt, — auch der Geniale läßt darüber die Erkenntniß des Zusammenhangs der Dinge aus den Augen: das einzelne Objekt seiner Beschauung, oder die übermäßig lebhaft von ihm aufgefaßte Gegenwart, erscheinen in so hellem Licht, daß gleichsam die übrigen Glieder der Kette, zu der sie gehören, dadurch in Dunkel zurücktreten, und dies giebt eben Phänomene, die mit denen des Wahnsinns eine längst erkannte Aehnlichkeit haben. Was im einzelnen vorhandenen Dinge nur unvollkommen und durch Modifikationen geschwächt da ist, steigert die Betrachtungsweise des Genius zur Idee davon, zum Vollkommenen: er sieht daher überall Extreme, und eben dadurch geräth sein Handeln auf Ertreme: er weiß das rechte Maaß nicht zu treffen, ihm fehlt die Nüchternheit, und das Resultat ist das besagte. Er erkennt die Ideen vollkommen, aber nicht die Individuen. Daher kann, wie man bemerkt hat, ein Dichter den Menschen tief und gründlich kennen, die Menschen aber sehr schlecht; er ist leicht zu hintergehen und ein Spiel in der Hand des Listigen [19].

37 Obgleich nun, unserer Darstellung zufolge, der Genius in der Fähigkeit besteht, unabhängig vom Satze des Grundes und daher, statt der einzelnen Dinge, welche ihr Daseyn nur in der Relation haben, die Ideen derselben zu erkennen und diesen gegenüber selbst das Korrelat der Idee, also nicht mehr Individuum, sondern reines Subjekt des Erkennens zu seyn; so muß dennoch diese Fähigkeit, in geringerem und verschiedenem Grade auch allen Menschen einwohnen; da sie sonst eben so wenig fähig wären die Werke der Kunst zu genießen, als sie hervorzubringen, und überhaupt für das Schöne und Erhabene durchaus keine Empfänglichkeit besitzen, ja diese Worte für sie keinen Sinn haben könnten. Wir müssen daher in allen Menschen, wenn es nicht etwan welche giebt, die durchaus keines ästhetischen Wohlgefallens fähig sind, jenes Vermögen in den Dingen ihre Ideen zu erkennen, und eben damit sich ihrer Persönlichkeit augenblicklich zu entäußern, als vorhanden annehmen. Der Genius hat vor ihnen nur den viel höhern Grad und die anhaltendere Dauer jener Erkenntnißweise voraus, welche ihn bei derselben die Besonnenheit behalten lassen, die erfordert ist, um das so Erkannte in einem willkürlichen Werk zu wiederholen, welche Wiederholung das Kunstwerk ist. Durch dasselbe theilt er die aufgefaßte Idee den Anderen mit. Diese bleibt daher unverändert und die selbe: daher ist das ästhetische Wohlgefallen wesentlich Eines und dasselbe, es mag durch ein Werk der Kunst, oder unmittelbar durch die Anschauung der Natur und des Lebens hervorgerufen seyn. Das Kunstwerk ist bloß ein Erleichterungsmittel derjenigen Erkenntniß, in welcher jenes Wohlgefallen besteht. Daß aus dem Kunstwerk die Idee uns leichter entgegentritt, als unmittelbar aus der Natur und der Wirklichkeit, kommt daher, daß der Künstler, der [20] Hiezu Kap. 32 des zweiten Bandes. nur die Idee, nicht mehr die Wirklichkeit erkannte, in seinem Werk auch nur die Idee rein wiederholt hat, sie ausgesondert hat aus der Wirklichkeit, mit Auslassung aller störenden Zufälligkeiten. Der Künstler läßt uns durch seine Augen in die Welt blicken. Daß er diese Augen hat, daß er das Wesentliche, außer allen Relationen liegende der Dinge erkennt, ist eben die Gabe des Genius, das Angeborene; daß er aber im Stande ist, auch uns diese Gabe zu leihen, uns seine Augen aufzusetzen: dies ist das Erworbene, das Technische der Kunst. Dieserhalb nun wird, nachdem ich im Vorhergehenden das innere Wesen der ästhetischen Erkenntnißart in seinen allgemeinsten Grundlinien dargestellt habe, die jetzt folgende nähere philosophische Betrachtung des Schönen und Erhabenen Beide in der Natur und in der Kunst zugleich erörtern, ohne diese weiter zu trennen. Was im Menschen vorgeht, wann ihn das Schöne, wann ihn das Erhabene rührt, werden wir zunächst betrachten: ob er diese Rührung unmittelbar aus der Natur, aus dem Leben schöpft, oder nur durch die Vermittelung der Kunst ihrer theilhaft wird, begründet keinen wesentlichen, sondern nur einen äußerlichen Unterschied.

38 Wir haben in der ästhetischen Betrachtungsweise zwei unzertrennliche Bestandtheile gefunden: die Erkenntniß des Objekts, nicht als einzelnen Dinges, sondern als Platonischer Idee, d. h. als beharrender Form dieser ganzen Gattung von Dingen; sodann das Selbstbewußtseyn des Erkennenden, nicht als Individuums, sondern als reinen, willenlosen Subjekts der Erkenntniß. Die Bedingung, unter welcher beide Bestandtheile immer vereint eintreten, war das Verlassen der an den Satz vom Grund gebundenen Erkenntnißweise, welche hingegen zum Dienste des Willens, wie auch zur Wissenschaft, die allein taugliche ist. — Auch das Wohlgefallen, das durch die Betrachtung des Schönen erregt wird, werden wir aus jenen beiden Bestandtheilen hervorgehen sehen, und zwar bald mehr aus dem einen, bald mehr aus dem andern, je nachdem der Gegenstand der ästhetischen Kontemplation ist.

Alles Wollen entspringt aus Bedürfniß, also aus Mangel, also aus Leiden. Diesem macht die Erfüllung ein Ende; jedoch gegen einen Wunsch, der erfüllt wird, bleiben wenigstens zehn versagt: ferner, das Begehren dauert lange, die Forderungen gehen ins Unendliche; die Erfüllung ist kurz und kärglich gemessen. Sogar aber ist die endliche Befriedigung selbst nur scheinbar: der erfüllte Wunsch macht gleich einem neuen Platz: jener ist ein erkannter, dieser noch ein unerkannter Irrthum. Dauernde, nicht mehr weichende Befriedigung kann kein erlangtes Objekt des Wollens geben: sondern es gleicht immer nur dem Almosen, das dem Bettler zugeworfen, sein Leben heute fristet, um seine Quaal auf Morgen zu verlängern. — Darum nun, solange unser Bewußtseyn von unserm Willen erfüllt ist, solange wir dem Drange der Wünsche, mit seinem steten Hoffen und Fürchten, hingegeben sind, solange wir Subjekt des Wollens sind, wird uns nimmermehr dauerndes Glück, noch Ruhe. Ob wir jagen, oder fliehen, Unheil fürchten, oder nach Genuß streben, ist im Wesentlichen einerlei: die Sorge für den stets fordernden Willen, gleichviel in welcher Gestalt, erfüllt und bewegt fortdauernd das Bewußtseyn; ohne Ruhe aber ist durchaus kein wahres Wohlseyn möglich. So liegt das Subjekt des Wollens beständig auf dem drehenden Rade des Ixion, schöpft immer im Siebe der Danaiden, ist der ewig schmachtende Tantalus.

Wann aber äußerer Anlaß, oder innere Stimmung, uns plötzlich aus dem endlosen Strome des Wollens heraushebt, die Erkenntniß dem Sklavendienste des Willens entreißt, die Aufmerksamkeit nun nicht mehr auf die Motive des Wollens gerichtet wird, sondern die Dinge frei von ihrer Beziehung auf den Willen auffaßt, also ohne Interesse, ohne Subjektivität, rein objektiv sie betrachtet, ihnen ganz hingegeben, sofern sie bloß Vorstellungen, nicht sofern sie Motive sind: dann ist die auf jenem ersten Wege des Wollens immer gesuchte, aber immer entfliehende Ruhe mit einem Male von selbst eingetreten, und uns ist völlig wohl. Es ist der schmerzenlose Zustand, den Epikuros als das höchste Gut und als den Zustand der Götter pries: denn wir sind, für jenen Augenblick, des schnöden Willensdranges entledigt, wir feiern den Sabbath der Zuchthausarbeit des Wollens, das Rad des Ixion steht still.

Dieser Zustand ist aber eben der, welchen ich oben beschrieb als erforderlich zur Erkenntniß der Idee, als reine Kontemplation, Aufgehen in der Anschauung, Verlieren ins Objekt, Vergessen aller Individualität, Aufhebung der dem Satz vom Grunde folgenden und nur Relationen fassenden Erkenntnißweise, wobei zugleich und unzertrennlich das angeschaute einzelne Ding zur Idee seiner Gattung, das erkennende Individuum zum reinen Subjekt des willenlosen Erkennens sich erhebt, und nun Beide als solche nicht mehr im Strome der Zeit und aller anderen Relationen stehen. Es ist dann einerlei, ob man aus dem Kerker, oder aus dem Palast die Sonne untergehen sieht.

Innere Stimmung, Uebergewicht des Erkennens über das Wollen, kann unter jeder Umgebung diesen Zustand hervorrufen. Dies zeigen uns jene trefflichen Niederländer, welche solche rein objektive Anschauung auf die unbedeutendesten Gegenstände richteten und ein dauerndes Denkmal ihrer Objektivität und Geistesruhe im Stillleben hinstellten, welches der ästhetische Beschauer nicht ohne Rührung betrachtet, da es ihm den ruhigen, stillen, willensfreien Gemüthszustand des Künstlers vergegenwärtigt, der nöthig war, um so unbedeutende Dinge so objektiv anzuschauen, so aufmerksam zu betrachten und diese Anschauung so besonnen zu wiederholen: und indem das Bild auch ihn zur Theilnahme an solchen Zustand auffordert, wird seine Rührung oft noch vermehrt durch den Gegensatz der eigenen, unruhigen, durch heftiges Wollen getrübten Gemüthsverfassung, in der er sich eben befindet. Im selben Geiste haben oft Landschaftsmaler, besonders Ruisdael, höchst unbedeutende landschaftliche Gegenstände gemalt, und dadurch die selbe Wirkung noch erfreulicher hervorgebracht.

So viel leistet ganz allein die innere Kraft eines künstlerischen Gemüthes: aber erleichtert und von Außen befördert wird jene rein objektive Gemüthsstimmung durch entgegenkommende Objekte, durch die zu ihrem Anschauen einladende, ja sich aufdringende Fülle der schönen Natur. Ihr gelingt es, so oft sie mit einem Male unserm Blicke sich aufthut, fast immer, uns, wenn auch nur auf Augenblicke, der Subjektivität, dem Sklavendienste des Willens zu entreißen und in den Zustand des reinen Erkennens zu versetzen. Darum wird auch der von Leidenschaften, oder Noth und Sorge Gequälte durch einen einzigen freien Blick in die Natur so plötzlich erquickt, erheitert und aufgerichtet: der Sturm der Leidenschaften, der Drang des Wunsches und der Furcht und alle Quaal des Wollens sind dann sogleich auf eine wundervolle Art beschwichtigt. Denn in dem Augenblicke, wo wir, vom Wollen losgerissen, uns dem reinen willenlosen Erkennen hingegeben haben, sind wir gleichsam in eine andere Welt getreten, wo Alles, was unsern Willen bewegt und dadurch uns so heftig erschüttert, nicht mehr ist. Jenes Freiwerden der Erkenntniß hebt uns aus dem Allen eben so sehr und ganz heraus, wie der Schlaf und der Traum: Glück und Unglück sind verschwunden: wir sind nicht mehr das Individuum, es ist vergessen, sondern nur noch reines Subjekt der Erkenntniß: wir sind nur noch da als das eine Weltauge, was aus allen erkennenden Wesen blickt, im Menschen allein aber völlig frei vom Dienste des Willens werden kann, wodurch aller Unterschied der Individualität so gänzlich verschwindet, daß es alsdann einerlei ist, ob das schauende Auge einem mächtigen König, oder einem gepeinigten Bettler angehört. Denn weder Glück noch Jammer wird über jene Gränze mit hinüber genommen. So nahe liegt uns beständig ein Gebiet, auf welchem wir allem unserm Jammer gänzlich entronnen sind; aber wer hat die Kraft, sich lange darauf zu erhalten? Sobald irgend eine Beziehung eben jener also rein angeschauten Objekte zu unserm Willen, zu unserer Person, wieder ins Bewußtseyn tritt, hat der Zauber ein Ende: wir fallen zurück in die Erkenntniß, welche der Satz vom Grunde beherrscht, erkennen nun nicht mehr die Idee, sondern das einzelne Ding, das Glied einer Kette, zu der auch wir gehören, und wir sind allem unserm Jammer wieder hingegeben. — Die meisten Menschen stehen, weil ihnen Objektivität, d. i. Genialität, gänzlich abgeht, fast immer auf diesem Standpunkt. Daher sind sie nicht gern allein mit der Natur: sie brauchen Gesellschaft, wenigstens ein Buch. Denn ihr Erkennen bleibt dem Willen dienstbar: sie suchen daher an den Gegenständen nur die etwanige Beziehung auf ihren Willen, und bei Allem, was keine solche Beziehung hat, ertönt in ihrem Innern, gleichsam wie ein Grundbaß, ein beständiges, trostloses „Es hilft mir nichts“: dadurch erhält in der Einsamkeit auch die schönste Umgebung ein ödes, finsteres, fremdes, feindliches Ansehen für sie.

Jene Seeligkeit des willenlosen Anschauens ist es endlich auch, welche über die Vergangenheit und Entfernung einen so wundersamen Zauber verbreitet und sie in so sehr verschönerndem Lichte uns darstellt, durch eine Selbsttäuschung. Denn indem wir längst vergangene Tage, an einem fernen Orte verlebt, uns vergegenwärtigen, sind es die Objekte allein, welche unsere Phantasie zurückruft, nicht das Subjekt des Willens, das seine unheilbaren Leiden damals eben so wohl mit sich herumtrug, wie jetzt: aber diese sind vergessen, weil sie seitdem schon oft andern Platz gemacht haben. Nun wirkt die objektive Anschauung in der Erinnerung eben so, wie die gegenwärtige wirken würde, wenn wir es über uns vermöchten, uns willensfrei ihr hinzugeben. Daher kommt es, daß besonders wann mehr als gewöhnlich irgend eine Noth uns beängstiget, die plötzliche Erinnerung an Scenen der Vergangenheit und Entfernung wie ein verlorenes Paradies an uns vorüberfliegt. Bloß das Objektive, nicht das Individuell-Subjektive ruft die Phantasie zurück, und wir bilden uns ein, daß jenes Objektive damals eben so rein, von keiner Beziehung auf den Willen getrübt vor uns gestanden habe, wie jetzt sein Bild in der Phantasie: da doch vielmehr die Beziehung der Objekte auf unser Wollen uns damals Quaal schuf, so gut wie jetzt. Wir können durch die gegenwärtigen Objekte eben so wohl, wie durch die entfernten, uns allen Leiden entziehen, sobald wir uns zur rein objektiven Betrachtung derselben erheben und so die Illusion hervorzubringen vermögen, daß allein jene Objekte, nicht wir selbst gegenwärtig wären: dann werden wir, des leidigen Selbst entledigt, als reines Subjekt des Erkennens mit jenen Objekten völlig Eins, und so fremd unsere Noth ihnen ist, so fremd ist sie, in solchen Augenblicken, uns selbst. Die Welt als Vorstellung ist dann allein noch übrig, und die Welt als Wille ist verschwunden.

Durch alle diese Betrachtungen wünsche ich deutlich gemacht zu haben, welcher Art und wie groß der Antheil sei, den am ästhetischen Wohlgefallen die subjektive Bedingung desselben hat, nämlich die Befreiung des Erkennens vom Dienste des Willens, das Vergessen seines Selbst als Individuums und die Erhöhung des Bewußtseyns zum reinen, willenlosen, zeitlosen, von allen Relationen unabhängigen Subjekt des Erkennens. Mit dieser subjektiven Seite der ästhetischen Beschauung tritt als nothwendiges Korrelat immer zugleich die objektive Seite derselben ein, die intuitive Auffassung der Platonischen Idee. Bevor wir uns aber zur nähern Betrachtung dieser und zu den Leistungen der Kunst in Beziehung auf dieselbe wenden, ist es zweckmäßiger, noch etwas bei der subjektiven Seite des ästhetischen Wohlgefallens zu verweilen, um deren Betrachtung durch die Erörterung des von ihr allein abhängigen und durch eine Modifikation derselben entstehenden Eindrucks des Erhabenen zu vollenden. Danach wird unsere Untersuchung des ästhetischen Wohlgefallens, durch die Betrachtung der objektiven Seite desselben, ihre ganze Vollständigkeit erhalten.

Dem Bisherigen aber gehören zuvor noch folgende Bemerkungen an. Das Licht ist das Erfreulichste der Dinge: es ist das Symbol alles Guten und Heilbringenden geworden. Jn allen Religionen bezeichnet es das ewige Heil, und die Finsterniß die Verdammniß. Ormuzd wohnt im reinsten Lichte, Ahriman in ewiger Nacht. In Dante's Paradiese sieht es ungefähr aus wie im Vauxhall zu London, indem alle seeligen Geister daselbst als Lichtpunkte erscheinen, die sich zu regelmäßigen Figuren zusammenstellen. Die Abwesenheit des Lichtes macht uns unmittelbar traurig; seine Wiederkehr beglückt: die Farben erregen unmittelbar ein lebhaftes Ergötzen, welches, wenn sie transparent sind, den höchsten Grad erreicht. Dies Alles kommt allein daher, daß das Licht das Korrelat und die Bedingung der vollkommensten anschaulichen Erkenntnißweise ist, der einzigen, die unmittelbar durchaus nicht den Willen affizirt. Denn das Sehen ist gar nicht, wie die Affektion der anderen Sinne, an sich, unmittelbar und durch seine sinnliche Wirkung, einer Annehmlichkeit oder Unannehmlichkeit der Empfindung im Organ fähig, d. h. hat keine unmittelbare Verbindung mit dem Willen: sondern erst die im Verstande entspringende Anschauung kann eine solche haben, die dann in der Relation des Objekts zum Willen liegt. Schon beim Gehör ist dies anders: Töne können unmittelbar Schmerz erregen und auch unmittelbar sinnlich, ohne Bezug auf Harmonie oder Melodie, angenehm seyn. Das Getast, als mit dem Gefühl des ganzen Leibes Eines, ist diesem unmittelbaren Einfluß auf den Willen noch mehr unterworfen: doch giebt es noch ein schmerz- und wollustloses Tasten. Gerüche aber sind immer angenehm oder unangenehm: Geschmäcke noch mehr. Die beiden letzteren Sinne sind also am meisten mit dem Willen inquinirt: daher sind sie immer die unedelsten und von Kant die subjektiven Sinne genannt worden. Die Freude über das Licht ist also in der That nur die Freude über die objektive Möglichkeit der reinsten und vollkommensten anschaulichen Erkenntnißweise und als solche daraus abzuleiten, daß das reine von allem Wollen befreite und entledigte Erkennen höchst erfreulich ist und schon als solches einen großen Antheil am ästhetischen Genusse hat. — Aus dieser Ansicht des Lichtes ist wieder die unglaublich große Schönheit abzuleiten, die wir der Abspiegelung der Objekte im Wasser zuerkennen. Jene leichteste, schnellste, feinste Art der Einwirkung von Körpern auf einander, sie, der auch wir die bei weitem vollkommenste und reinste unserer Wahrnehmungen verdanken: die Einwirkung mittelst zurückgeworfener Lichtstrahlen: diese wird uns hier ganz deutlich, übersehbar und vollständig, in Ursache und Wirkung, und zwar im Großen, vor die Augen gebracht: daher unsere ästhetische Freude darüber, welche, der Hauptsache nach, ganz im subjektiven Grunde des ästhetischen Wohlgefallens wurzelt und Freude über das reine Erkennen und seine Wege ist [21].

39 An alle diese Betrachtungen nun, welche den subjektiven Theil des ästhetischen Wohlgefallens hervorheben sollen, also dieses Wohlgefallen, sofern es Freude über das bloße, anschauliche Erkennen als solches, im Gegensatz des Willens, ist, — schließt sich, als unmittelbar damit zusammenhängend, folgende Erklärung derjenigen Stimmung, welche man das Gefühl des Erhabenen genannt hat.

Es ist schon oben bemerkt, daß das Versetzen in den Zustand des reinen Anschauens am leichtesten eintritt, wenn die Gegenstände demselben entgegenkommen, d. h. durch ihre mannigfaltige und zugleich bestimmte und deutliche Gestalt leicht zu Repräsentanten ihrer Ideen werden, worin eben die Schönheit, im [22] Hiezu Kap. 33 des zweiten Bandes. objektiven Sinne, besteht. Vor Allem hat die schöne Natur diese Eigenschaft und gewinnt dadurch selbst dem Unempfindlichsten wenigstens ein flüchtiges ästhetisches Wohlgefallen ab: ja, es ist so auffallend, wie besonders die Pflanzenwelt zur ästhetischen Betrachtung auffordert und sich gleichsam derselben aufdringt, daß man sagen möchte, dieses Entgegenkommen stände damit in Verbindung, daß diese organischen Wesen nicht selbst, wie die thierischen Leiber, unmittelbares Objekt der Erkenntniß sind, daher sie des fremden verständigen Individuums bedürfen, um aus der Welt des blinden Wollens in die der Vorstellung einzutreten, weshalb sie gleichsam nach diesem Eintritt sich sehnten, um wenigstens mittelbar zu erlangen, was ihnen unmittelbar versagt ist. Ich lasse übrigens diesen gewagten und vielleicht an Schwärmerei gränzenden Gedanken ganz und gar dahingestellt seyn, da nur eine sehr innige und hingebende Betrachtung der Natur ihn erregen oder rechtfertigen kann [23]. Solange nun dieses Entgegenkommen der Natur, die Bedeutsamkeit und Deutlichkeit ihrer Formen, aus denen die in ihnen individualisirten Ideen uns leicht ansprechen, es ist, die uns aus der dem Willen dienstbaren Erkenntniß bloßer Relationen in die ästhetische Kontemplation versetzt und eben damit zum willensfreien Subjekt des Erkennens erhebt: so lange ist es bloß das Schöne, was auf uns wirkt, und Gefühl der Schönheit was erregt ist. Wenn nun aber eben jene Gegenstände, deren bedeutsame Gestalten uns zu ihrer reinen Kontemplation einladen, gegen den menschlichen Willen überhaupt, wie er in seiner Objektität, dem menschlichen Leibe, sich darstellt, ein feindliches Verhältniß haben, ihm entgegen sind, durch ihre allen Widerstand aufhebende Uebermacht ihn bedrohen, oder vor ihrer unermeßlichen Größe ihn bis zum Nichts verkleinern; der Betrachter aber dennoch nicht auf dieses sich aufdringende²⁴ Um so mehr erfreut und überrascht mich jetzt, 40 Jahre nachdem ich obigen Gedanken so schüchtern und zaudernd hingeschrieben habe, die Entdeckung, daß schon der heilige Augustinus ihn ausgesprochen hat: Arbusta formas suas varias, quibus mundi hujus visibilis structura formosa est, sentiendas sensibus praebent; ut, pro eo quod nosse non possunt, quasi innotescere velle videantur. (De civ. Dei, XI, 27.) feindliche Verhältniß zu seinem Willen seine Aufmerksamkeit richtet; sondern, obwohl es wahrnehmend und anerkennend, sich mit Bewußtseyn davon abwendet, indem er sich von seinem Willen und dessen Verhältnissen gewaltsam losreißt und allein der Erkenntniß hingegeben, eben jene dem Willen furchtbaren Gegenstände als reines willensloses Subjekt des Erkennens ruhig kontemplirt, ihre jeder Relation fremde Idee allein auffassend, daher gerne bei ihrer Betrachtung weilend, folglich eben dadurch über sich selbst, seine Person, sein Wollen und alles Wollen hinausgehoben wird: — dann erfüllt ihn das Gefühl des Erhabenen, er ist im Zustand der Erhebung, und deshalb nennt man auch den solchen Zustand veranlassenden Gegenstand erhaben. Was also das Gefühl des Erhabenen von dem des Schönen unterscheidet, ist dieses: beim Schönen hat das reine Erkennen ohne Kampf die Oberhand gewonnen, indem die Schönheit des Objekts, d. h. dessen die Erkenntniß seiner Idee erleichternde Beschaffenheit, den Willen und die seinem Dienste fröhnende Erkenntniß der Relationen, ohne Widerstand und daher unmerklich aus dem Bewußtseyn entfernte und dasselbe als reines Subjekt des Erkennens übrig ließ, so daß selbst keine Erinnerung an den Willen nachbleibt: hingegen bei dem Erhabenen ist jener Zustand des reinen Erkennens allererst gewonnen durch ein bewußtes und gewaltsames Losreißen von den als ungünstig erkannten Beziehungen desselben Objekts zum Willen, durch ein freies, von Bewußtseyn begleitetes Erheben über den Willen und die auf ihn sich beziehende Erkenntniß. Diese Erhebung muß mit Bewußtseyn nicht nur gewonnen, sondern auch erhalten werden und ist daher von einer steten Erinnerung an den Willen begleitet, doch nicht an ein einzelnes, individuelles Wollen, wie Furcht oder Wunsch, sondern an das menschliche Wollen überhaupt, sofern es durch seine Objektität, den menschlichen Leib, allgemein ausgedrückt ist. Träte ein realer einzelner Willensakt ins Bewußtseyn, durch wirkliche, persönliche Bedrängniß und Gefahr vom Gegenstande; so würde der also wirklich bewegte individuelle Wille alsbald die Oberhand gewinnen, die Ruhe der Kontemplation unmöglich werden, der Eindruck des Erhabenen verloren gehen, indem er der Angst Platz macht, in welcher das Streben des Individuums, sich zu retten, jeden andern Gedanken verdrängte. — Einige Beispiele werden sehr viel beitragen, diese Theorie des Aesthetisch-Erhabenen deutlich zu machen und außer Zweifel zu setzen; zugleich werden sie die Verschiedenheit der Grade jenes Gefühls des Erhabenen zeigen. Denn da dasselbe mit dem des Schönen in der Hauptbestimmung, dem reinen, willensfreien Erkennen und der mit demselben nothwendig eintretenden Erkenntniß der außer aller durch den Satz des Grundes bestimmten Relation stehenden Ideen, Eines ist und nur durch einen Zusatz, nämlich die Erhebung über das erkannte feindliche Verhältniß eben des kontemplirten Objekts zum Willen überhaupt, sich vom Gefühl des Schönen unterscheidet; so entstehen, je nachdem dieser Zusatz stark, laut, dringend, nah, oder nur schwach, fern, bloß angedeutet ist, mehrere Grade des Erhabenen, ja, Uebergänge des Schönen zum Erhabenen. Ich halte es der Darstellung angemessener, diese Uebergänge und überhaupt die schwächeren Grade des Eindrucks des Erhabenen zuerst in Beispielen vor die Augen zu bringen, obwohl Diejenigen, deren ästhetische Empfänglichkeit überhaupt nicht sehr groß und deren Phantasie nicht lebhaft ist, bloß die später folgenden Beispiele der höheren, deutlicheren Grade jenes Eindrucks verstehen werden, an welche allein sie sich daher zu halten und die zuerst anzuführenden Beispiele der sehr schwachen Grade des besagten Eindrucks auf sich beruhen zu lassen haben.

Wie der Mensch zugleich ungestümer und finsterer Drang des Wollens (bezeichnet durch den Pol der Genitalien als seinen Brennpunkt) und ewiges, freies, heiteres Subjekt des reinen Erkennens (bezeichnet durch den Pol des Gehirns) ist; so ist, diesem Gegensatz entsprechend, die Sonne zugleich Quelle des Lichtes, der Bedingung zur vollkommensten Erkenntnißart, und eben dadurch des erfreulichsten der Dinge, — und Quelle der Wärme, der ersten Bedingung alles Lebens, d. i. aller Erscheinung des Willens auf den höheren Stufen derselben. Was daher für den Willen die Wärme, das ist für die Erkenntniß das Licht. Das Licht ist eben daher der größte Demant in der Krone der Schönheit und hat auf die Erkenntniß jedes schönen Gegenstandes den entschiedensten Einfluß: seine Anwesenheit überhaupt ist unerläßliche Bedingung; seine günstige Stellung erhöht auch die Schönheit des Schönsten. Vor allem Andern aber wird das Schöne der Baukunst durch seine Gunst erhöht, durch welche jedoch selbst das Unbedeutendeste zum schönsten Gegenstande wird. — Sehen wir nun im strengen Winter, bei der allgemeinen Erstarrung der Natur, die Strahlen der niedrig stehenden Sonne von steinernen Massen zurückgeworfen, wo sie erleuchten, ohne zu wärmen, also nur der reinsten Erkenntnißweise, nicht dem Willen günstig sind; so versetzt die Betrachtung der schönen Wirkung des Lichtes auf diese Massen, uns, wie alle Schönheit, in den Zustand des reinen Erkennens, der jedoch hier durch die leise Erinnerung an den Mangel der Erwärmung durch eben jene Strahlen, also des belebenden Princips, schon ein gewisses Erheben über das Interesse des Willens verlangt, eine leise Aufforderung zum Verharren im reinen Erkennen, mit Abwendung von allem Wollen, enthält, eben dadurch aber ein Uebergang vom Gefühl des Schönen zu dem des Erhabenen ist. Es ist der schwächste Anhauch des Erhabenen am Schönen, welches letztere selbst hier nur in geringem Grade hervortritt. Ein fast noch eben so schwaches Beispiel ist folgendes.

Versetzen wir uns in eine sehr einsame Gegend, mit unbeschränktem Horizont, unter völlig wolkenlosem Himmel, Bäume und Pflanzen in ganz unbewegter Luft, keine Thiere, keine Menschen, keine bewegte Gewässer, die tiefste Stille; — so ist solche Umgebung wie ein Aufruf zum Ernst, zur Kontemplation, mit Losreißung von allem Wollen und dessen Dürftigkeit: eben dieses aber giebt schon einer solchen, bloß einsamen und tiefruhenden Umgebung einen Anstrich des Erhabenen. Denn weil sie für den des steten Strebens und Erreichens bedürftigen Willen keine Objekte darbietet, weder günstige noch ungünstige, so bleibt nur der Zustand der reinen Kontemplation übrig, und wer dieser nicht fähig ist, wird der Leere des nichtbeschäftigten Willens, der Quaal der Langenweile, mit beschämender Herabsetzung Preis gegeben. Sie giebt insofern ein Maaß unseres eignen intellektualen Werthes, für welchen überhaupt der Grad unserer Fähigkeit zum Ertragen, oder Lieben der Einsamkeit ein guter Maaßstab ist. Die geschilderte Umgebung giebt also ein Beispiel des Erhabenen in niedrigem Grad, indem in ihr dem Zustand des reinen Erkennens, in seiner Ruhe und Allgenugsamkeit, als Kontrast, eine Erinnerung an die Abhängigkeit und Armsäligkeit des eines steten Treibens bedürftigen Willens beigemischt ist. — Dies ist die Gattung des Erhabenen, welche dem Anblick der endlosen Prärien im Innern Nord-Amerikas nachgerühmt wird.

Lassen wir nun aber eine solche Gegend auch der Pflanzen entblößt seyn und nur nackte Felsen zeigen; so wird, durch die gänzliche Abwesenheit des zu unserer Subsistenz nöthigen Organischen, der Wille schon geradezu beängstigt: die Oede gewinnt einen furchtbaren Charakter; unsere Stimmung wird mehr tragisch: die Erhebung zum reinen Erkennen geschieht mit entschiedenerem Losreißen vom Interesse des Willens, und indem wir im Zustande des reinen Erkennens beharren, tritt das Gefühl des Erhabenen deutlich hervor.

In noch höherem Grade kann es folgende Umgebung veranlassen. Die Natur in stürmischer Bewegung; Helldunkel, durch drohende schwarze Gewitterwolken; ungeheure, nackte, herabhängende Felsen, welche durch ihre Verschränkung die Aussicht verschließen; rauschende schäumende Gewässer; gänzliche Oede; Wehklage der durch die Schluchten streichenden Luft. Unsere Abhängigkeit, unser Kampf mit der feindlichen Natur, unser darin gebrochener Wille, tritt uns jetzt anschaulich vor Augen: so lange aber nicht die persönliche Bedrängniß die Oberhand gewinnt, sondern wir in ästhetischer Beschauung bleiben, blickt durch jenen Kampf der Natur, durch jenes Bild des gebrochenen Willens, das reine Subjekt des Erkennens durch und faßt ruhig, unerschüttert, nicht mitgetroffen (unconcerned), an eben den Gegenständen, welche dem Willen drohend und furchtbar sind, die Ideen auf. In diesem Kontrast eben liegt das Gefühl des Erhabenen.

Aber noch mächtiger wird der Eindruck, wenn wir den Kampf der empörten Naturkräfte im Großen vor Augen haben, wenn in jener Umgebung ein fallender Strom durch sein Toben uns die Möglichkeit die eigene Stimme zu hören benimmt; — oder wenn wir am weiten, im Sturm empörten Meere stehen: häuserhohe Wellen steigen und sinken, gewaltsam gegen schroffe Uferklippen geschlagen, spritzen sie den Schaum hoch in die Luft, der Sturm heult, das Meer brüllt, Blitze aus schwarzen Wolken zucken und Donnerschläge übertönen Sturm und Meer. Dann erreicht im unerschütterten Zuschauer dieses Auftritts die Duplicität seines Bewußtseyns die höchste Deutlichkeit: er empfindet sich zugleich als Individuum, als hinfällige Willenserscheinung, die der geringste Schlag jener Kräfte zertrümmern kann, hülflos gegen die gewaltige Natur, abhängig, dem Zufall Preis gegeben, ein verschwindendes Nichts, ungeheuren Mächten gegenüber; und dabei nun zugleich als ewiges ruhiges Subjekt des Erkennens, welches, als Bedingung des Objekts, der Träger eben dieser ganzen Welt ist und der furchtbare Kampf der Natur nur seine Vorstellung, es selbst in ruhiger Auffassung der Ideen, frei und fremd allem Wollen und allen Nöthen. Es ist der volle Eindruck des Erhabenen. Hier veranlaßt ihn der Anblick einer dem Individuo Vernichtung drohenden, ihm ohne allen Vergleich überlegenen Macht.

Auf ganz andere Weise kann er entstehen bei der Vergegenwärtigung einer bloßen Größe in Raum und Zeit, deren Unermeßlichkeit das Individuum zu Nichts verkleinert. Wir können die erstere Art das Dynamisch-, die zweite das Mathematisch-Erhabene nennen, Kants Benennungen und seine richtige Eintheilung beibehaltend, obgleich wir in der Erklärung des innern Wesens jenes Eindrucks ganz von ihm abweichen und weder moralischen Reflexionen, noch Hypostasen aus der scholastischen Philosophie einen Antheil dabei zugestehen.

Wenn wir uns in die Betrachtung der unendlichen Größe der Welt in Raum und Zeit verlieren, den verflossenen Jahrtausenden und den kommenden nachsinnen, — oder auch, wenn der nächtliche Himmel uns zahllose Welten wirklich vor Augen bringt, und so die Unermeßlichkeit der Welt auf das Bewußtseyn eindringt, — so fühlen wir uns selbst zu Nichts verkleinert, fühlen uns als Jundividuum, als belebter Leib, als vergängliche Willenserscheinung, wie ein Tropfen im Ocean, dahin schwinden, ins Nichts zerfließen. Aber zugleich erhebt sich gegen solches Gespenst unserer eigenen Nichtigkeit, gegen solche lügende Unmöglichkeit, das unmittelbare Bewußtseyn, daß alle diese Welten ja nur in unserer Vorstellung dasind, nur als Modifikationen des ewigen Subjekts des reinen Erkennens, als welches wir uns finden, sobald wir die Individualität vergessen, und welches der nothwendige, der bedingende Träger aller Welten und aller Zeiten ist. Die Größe der Welt, die uns vorher beunruhigte, ruht jetzt in uns: unsere Abhängigkeit von ihr wird aufgehoben durch ihre Abhängigkeit von uns. — Dieses Alles kommt jedoch nicht sofort in die Reflexion, sondern zeigt sich als ein nur gefühltes Bewußtseyn, daß man,in irgend einem Sinne (den allein die Philosophie deutlich macht), mit der Welt Eines ist und daher durch ihre Unermeßlichkeit nicht niedergedrückt, sondern gehoben wird. Es ist das gefühlte Bewußtseyn Dessen, was die Upanischaden der Veden in so mannigfaltigen Wendungen wiederholt aussprechen, vorzüglich in dem schon oben beigebrachten Spruch: Illae omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est. (Oupnek’hat, Bd. 1, S. 122). Es ist Erhebung über das eigene Individuum, Gefühl des Erhabenen.

Auf eine ganz unmittelbare Weise erhalten wir diesen Eindruck des Mathematisch-Erhabenen schon durch einen Raum, der zwar gegen das Weltgebäude betrachtet klein ist, der aber dadurch daß er uns unmittelbar ganz wahrnehmbar geworden ist, nach allen drei Dimensionen mit seiner ganzen Größe auf uns wirkt, welche hinreicht, das Maaß unsers eigenen Leibes fast unendlich klein zu machen. Dies kann ein für die Wahrnehmung leerer Raum nie, daher nie ein offener, sondern nur ein durch die Begränzung nach allen Dimensionen unmittelbar wahrnehmbarer, also ein sehr hohes und großes Gewölbe, wie das der Peterskirche in Rom, oder der Paulskirche in London. Das Gefühl des Erhabenen entsteht hier durch das Innewerden des verschwindenden Nichts unseres eigenen Leibes vor einer Größe, die andererseits selbst wieder nur in unserer Vorstellung liegt und deren Träger wir als erkennendes Subjekt sind, also hier wie überall durch den Kontrast der Unbedeutsamkeit und Abhängigkeit unseres Selbst als Individuums, als Willenserscheinung, gegen das Bewußtseyn unserer als reinen Subjekts des Erkennens. Selbst das Gewölbe des gestirnten Himmels wirkt, wenn es ohne Reflexion betrachtet wird, nur eben so wie jenes steinerne Gewölbe, und nicht mit seiner wahren, sondern nur mit seiner scheinbaren Größe. — Manche Gegenstände unserer Anschauung erregen den Eindruck des Erhabenen dadurch, daß, sowohl vermöge ihrer räumlichen Größe, als ihres hohen Alters, also ihrer zeitlichen Dauer, wir ihnen gegenüber uns zu Nichts verkleinert fühlen, und dennoch im Genusse ihres Anblicks schwelgen: der Art sind sehr hohe Berge, Aegyptische Pyramiden, kolossale Ruinen von hohem Alterthume.

Ja, auch auf das Ethische läßt unsere Erklärung des Erhabenen sich übertragen, nämlich auf Das, was man als den erhabenen Charakter bezeichnet. Auch dieser nämlich entspringt daraus, daß der Wille nicht erregt wird durch Gegenstände, welche allerdings geeignet wären, ihn zu erregen; sondern das Erkennen auch dabei die Oberhand behält. Ein solcher Charakter wird demnach die Menschen rein objektiv betrachten, nicht aber nach den Beziehungen, welche sie zu seinem Willen haben könnten: er wird z. B. ihre Fehler, sogar ihren Haß und ihre Ungerechtigkeit gegen ihn selbst, bemerken, ohne dadurch seinerseits zum Haß erregt zu werden; er wird ihr Glück ansehen, ohne Neid zu empfinden; er wird ihre guten Eigenschaften erkennen, ohne jedoch nähere Verbindung mit ihnen zu wünschen; er wird die Schönheit der Weiber wahrnehmen, ohne ihrer zu begehren. Sein persönliches Glück oder Unglück wird ihn nicht stark affiziren, vielmehr wird er seyn, wie Hamlet den Horatio beschreibt: for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man, that fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks. etc. (A. 3. sc. 2.) [25]

Denn er wird in seinem eigenen Lebenslauf und dessen Unfällen weniger sein individuelles, als das Loos der Menschheit überhaupt erblicken, und demnach sich dabei mehr erkennend als leidend verhalten.

40 Weil die Gegensätze sich erläutern, mag hier die Bemerkung ihre Stelle finden, daß das eigentliche Gegentheil des Erhabenen etwas ist, was man auf den ersten Blick wohl nicht dafür erkennt: das Reizende. Ich verstehe aber hierunter Dasjenige, [26] Denn du warst stets als hättest, Indem dich Alles traf, du nichts zu leiden: Des Schicksals Schläge und Geschenke hast Mit gleichem Dank du hingenommen, u. s. w. was den Willen, dadurch daß es ihm die Gewährung, die Erfüllung, unmittelbar vorhält, aufregt. — Entstand das Gefühl des Erhabenen dadurch, daß ein dem Willen geradezu ungünstiger Gegenstand Objekt der reinen Kontemplation wird, die dann nur durch eine stete Abwendung vom Willen und Erhebung über sein Interesse erhalten wird, welches eben die Erhabenheit der Stimmung ausmacht; so zieht dagegen das Reizende den Beschauer aus der reinen Kontemplation, die zu jeder Auffassung des Schönen erfordert ist, herab, indem es seinen Willen, durch demselben unmittelbar zusagende Gegenstände, nothwendig aufreizt, wodurch der Betrachter nicht mehr reines Subjekt des Erkennens bleibt, sondern zum bedürftigen, abhängigen Subjekt des Wollens wird. — Daß man gewöhnlich jedes Schöne von der heitern Art reizend nennt, ist ein, durch Mangel an richtiger Unterscheidung, zu weit gefaßter Begriff, den ich ganz bei Seite setzen, ja mißbilligen muß. — Im angegebenen und erklärten Sinn aber, finde ich im Gebiete der Kunst nur zwei Arten des Reizenden und beide ihrer unwürdig. Die eine, recht niedrige, im Stillleben der Niederländer, wenn es sich dahin verirrt, daß die dargestellten Gegenstände Eßwaaren sind, die durch ihre täuschende Darstellung nothwendig den Appetit darauf erregen, welches eben eine Aufregung des Willens ist, die jeder ästhetischen Kontemplation des Gegenstandes ein Ende macht. Gemaltes Obst ist noch zulässig, da es als weitere Entwickelung der Blume und durch Form und Farbe als ein schönes Naturprodukt sich darbietet, ohne daß man geradezu genöthigt ist, an seine Eßbarkeit zu denken; aber leider finden wir oft, mit täuschender Natürlichkeit, aufgetischte und zubereitete Speisen, Austern, Heringe, Seekrebse, Butterbrod, Bier, Wein u. s. w., was ganz verwerflich ist. — In der Historienmalerei und Bildhauerei besteht das Reizende in nackten Gestalten, deren Stellung, halbe Bekleidung und ganze Behandlungsart darauf hinzielt im Beschauer Lüsternheit zu erregen, wodurch die rein ästhetische Betrachtung sogleich aufgehoben, also dem Zweck der Kunst entgegengearbeitet wird. Dieser Fehler entspricht ganz und gar dem soeben an den Niederländern gerügten. Die Antiken sind, bei aller Schönheit und völliger Nacktheit der Gestalten, fast immer davon frei, weil der Künstler selbst mit rein objektivem, von der idealen Schönheit erfülltem Geiste sie schuf, nicht im Geiste subjektiver, schnöder Begierde. — Das Reizende ist also in der Kunst überall zu vermeiden.

Es giebt auch ein Negativ-Reizendes, welches noch verwerflicher, als das eben erörterte Positiv-Reizende ist: und dieses ist das Ekelhafte. Eben wie das eigentlich Reizende erweckt es den Willen des Beschauers und zerstört dadurch die rein ästhetische Betrachtung. Aber es ist ein heftiges Nichtwollen, ein Widerstreben, was dadurch angeregt wird: es erweckt den Willen, indem es ihm Gegenstände seines Abscheus vorhält. Daher hat man von je erkannt, daß es in der Kunst durchaus unzulässig sei, wo doch selbst das Häßliche, solange es nicht ekelhaft ist, an der rechten Stelle gelitten werden kann, wie wir weiter unten sehen werden.

41 Der Gang unserer Betrachtung hat es nothwendig gemacht, die Erörterung des Erhabenen hier einzuschalten, wo die des Schönen erst zur Hälfte, bloß ihrer einen, der subjektiven, Seite nach vollendet war. Denn eben nur eine besondere Modifikation dieser subjektiven Seite war es, die das Erhabene vom Schönen unterschied. Ob nämlich der Zustand des reinen willenlosen Erkennens, den jede ästhetische Kontemplation voraussetzt und fordert, sich, indem das Objekt dazu einlud und hinzog, ohne Widerstand, durch bloßes Verschwinden des Willens aus dem Bewußtseyn, wie von selbst einfand; oder ob derselbe erst errungen ward durch freie bewußte Erhebung über den Willen, zu welchem der kontemplirte Gegenstand selbst ein ungünstiges, feindliches Verhältniß hat, welchem nachzuhängen die Kontemplation aufheben würde; — dies ist der Unterschied zwischen dem Schönen und dem Erhabenen. Im Objekte sind beide nicht wesentlich unterschieden: denn in jedem Falle ist das Objekt der ästhetischen Betrachtung nicht das einzelne Ding, sondern die in demselben zur Offenbarung strebende Idee, d. h. adäquate Objektität des Willens auf einer bestimmten Stufe: ihr nothwendiges, wie sie selbst, dem Satz vom Grunde entzogenes Korrelat ist das reine Subjekt des Erkennens, wie das Korrelat des einzelnen Dinges das erkennende Individuum ist, welche beide im Gebiete des Satzes vom Grunde liegen.

Indem wir einen Gegenstand schön nennen, sprechen wir dadurch aus, daß er Objekt unserer ästhetischen Betrachtung ist, welches zweierlei in sich schließt, einerseits nämlich, daß sein Anblick uns objektiv macht, d. h. daß wir in der Betrachtung desselben nicht mehr unserer als Individuen, sondern als reinen willenlosen Subjekts des Erkennens uns bewußt sind; und andererseits, daß wir im Gegenstande nicht das einzelne Ding, sondern eine Idee erkennen, welches nur geschehen kann, sofern unsere Betrachtung des Gegenstandes nicht dem Satz vom Grunde hingegeben ist, nicht seiner Beziehung zu irgend etwas außer ihm (welche zuletzt immer mit Beziehungen auf unser Wollen zusammenhängt) nachgeht, sondern auf dem Objekte selbst ruhet. Denn die Idee und das reine Subjekt des Erkennens treten als nothwendige Korrelata immer zugleich ins Bewußtseyn, bei welchem Eintritt auch aller Zeitunterschied sogleich verschwindet, da beide dem Satz vom Grunde in allen seinen Gestaltungen völlig fremd sind und außerhalb der durch ihn gesetzten Relationen liegen, dem Regenbogen und der Sonne zu vergleichen, die an der steten Bewegung und Succession der fallenden Tropfen keinen Theil haben. Daher, wenn ich z. B. einen Baum ästhetisch, d. h. mit künstlerischen Augen betrachte, also nicht ihn, sondern seine Idee erkenne, es sofort ohne Bedeutung ist, ob es dieser Baum oder sein vor tausend Jahren blühender Vorfahr ist, und eben so ob der Betrachter dieses, oder irgend ein anderes, irgendwann und irgendwo lebendes Individuum ist; mit dem Satz vom Grunde ist das einzelne Ding und das erkennende Individuum aufgehoben und nichts bleibt übrig, als die Idee und das reine Subjekt des Erkennens, welche zusammen die adäquate Objektität des Willens auf dieser Stufe ausmachen. Und nicht allein der Zeit, sondern auch dem Raum ist die Idee enthoben: denn nicht die mir vorschwebende räumliche Gestalt, sondern der Ausdruck, die reine Bedeutung derselben, ihr innerstes Wesen, das sich mir aufschließt und mich anspricht, ist eigentlich die Idee und kann ganz das Selbe seyn, bei großem Unterschied der räumlichen Verhältnisse der Gestalt.

Da nun einerseits jedes vorhandene Ding rein objektiv und außer aller Relation betrachtet werden kann; da ferner auch andererseits in jedem Dinge der Wille, auf irgend einer Stufe seiner Objektität, erscheint, und dasselbe sonach Ausdruck einer Idee ist; so ist auch jedes Ding schön. — Daß auch das Unbedeutendeste die rein objektive und willenlose Betrachtung zuläßt und dadurch sich als schön bewährt, bezeugt das schon oben (§. 38) in dieser Hinsicht erwähnte Stillleben der Niederländer. Schöner ist aber Eines als das Andere dadurch, daß es jene rein objektive Betrachtung erleichtert, ihr entgegenkommt, ja gleichsam dazu zwingt, wo wir es dann sehr schön nennen. Dies ist der Fall theils dadurch, daß es als einzelnes Ding, durch das sehr deutliche, rein bestimmte, durchaus bedeutsame Verhältniß seiner Theile die Idee seiner Gattung rein ausspricht und durch in ihm vereinigte Vollständigkeit aller seiner Gattung möglichen Aeußerungen die Idee derselben vollkommen offenbart, so daß es dem Betrachter den Uebergang vom einzelnen Ding zur Idee und eben damit auch den Zustand der reinen Beschaulichkeit sehr erleichtert; theils liegt jener Vorzug besonderer Schönheit eines Objekts darin, daß die Idee selbst, die uns aus ihm anspricht, eine hohe Stufe der Objektität des Willens und daher durchaus bedeutend und vielsagend sey. Darum ist der Mensch vor allem Andern schön und die Offenbarung seines Wesens das höchste Ziel der Kunst. Menschliche Gestalt und menschlicher Ausdruck sind das bedeutendeste Objekt der bildenden Kunst, so wie menschliches Handeln das bedeutendeste Objekt der Poesie. — Es hat aber dennoch jedes Ding seine eigenthümliche Schönheit: nicht nur jedes Organische und in der Einheit einer Individualität sich darstellende; sondern auch jedes Unorganische, Formlose, ja jedes Artefakt. Denn alle diese offenbaren die Ideen, durch welche der Wille sich auf den untersten Stufen objektivirt, geben gleichsam die tiefsten, verhallenden Baßtöne der Natur an. Schwere, Starrheit, Flüssigkeit, Licht u. s. w. sind die Ideen, welche sich in Felsen, Gebäuden, Gewässern aussprechen. Die schöne Gartenkunst und Baukunst können nichts weiter, als ihnen helfen, jene ihre Eigenschaften deutlich, vielseitig und vollständig zu entfalten, ihnen Gelegenheit geben, sich rein auszusprechen, wodurch sie eben zur ästhetischen Beschauung auffordern und dieselbe erleichtern. Dies leisten dagegen schlechte Gebäude und Gegenden, welche die Natur vernachlässigte oder die Kunst verdarb, wenig oder gar nicht: dennoch können auch aus ihnen jene allgemeinen Grundideen der Natur nicht ganz verschwinden. Den sie suchenden Betrachter sprechen sie auch hier an, und selbst schlechte Gebäude u. dgl. sind noch einer ästhetischen Betrachtung fähig: die Ideen der allgemeinsten Eigenschaften ihres Stoffes sind noch in ihnen erkennbar, nur daß die ihnen künstlich gegebene Form kein Erleichterungsmittel, ja vielmehr ein Hinderniß ist, das die ästhetische Betrachtung erschwert. Auch Artefakta dienen folglich dem Ausdruck von Ideen: nur ist es nicht die Idee des Artefakts, die aus ihnen spricht, sondern die Idee des Materials, dem man diese künstliche Form gab. Jn der Sprache der Scholastiker läßt sich dieses sehr bequem mit zwei Worten ausdrücken, nämlich im Artefakt spricht sich die Idee seiner forma substantialis, nicht die seiner forma accidentalis aus, welche letztere auf keine Idee, sondern nur auf einen menschlichen Begriff, von dem sie ausgegangen, leitet. Es versteht sich, daß hier mit dem Artefakt ausdrücklich kein Werk der bildenden Kunst gemeint ist. Uebrigens verstanden die Scholastiker in der That unter forma substantialis Dasjenige, was ich den Grad der Objektivation des Willens in einem Dinge nenne. Wir werden sogleich, bei Betrachtung der schönen Baukunst, auf den Ausdruck der Idee des Materials zurückkommen. — Unserer Ansicht zufolge können wir nun aber nicht dem Platon beistimmen, wenn er (De Rep., X, p. 284–285, et Parmen., p. 79, ed. Bip.) behauptet, Tisch und Stuhl drückten die Ideen Tisch und Stuhl aus; sondern wir sagen, daß sie die Ideen ausdrücken, die schon in ihrem bloßen Material als solchem sich aussprechen. Nach dem Aristoteles (Metaph., XI, Kap. 3) hätte jedoch Plato selbst nur von den Naturwesen Ideen statuirt: ὁ Πλατων εφη, ὁτι ειδη εστιν ὁποσα φυσει. (Plato dixit, quod ideae eorum sunt, quae natura sunt) und Kap. 5 wird gesagt, daß es, nach den Platonikern, keine Ideen von Haus und Ring gebe. Jedenfalls haben schon Platons nächste Schüler, wie uns Alkinoos (introductio in Platonicam philosophiam, Kap. 9) berichtet, geleugnet, daß es Ideen von Artefakten gäbe. Dieser sagt nämlich: Ὁριζονται δε την ιδεαν, παραδειγμα των κατα φυσιν αἰωνιον. Ουτε γαρ τοις πλειστοις των απο Πλατωνος αρεσκει, των τεχνικων ειναι ιδεας, οἱον ασπιδος η λυρας, ουτε μην των παρα φυσιν, οἱον πυρετου και χολερας, ουτε των κατα μερος, οἱον Σωκρατους και Πλατωνος, αλλ’ ουτε των ευτελων τινος, οἱον ρυπου και καρφους, ουτε των προς τι, οἱον μειζονος και ὑπερεχοντος· ειναι γαρ τας ιδεας νοησεις θεου αιωνιους τε και αυτοτελεις. — (Definiunt autem ideam exemplar aeternum eorum, quae secundum naturam existunt. Nam plurimis ex iis, qui Platonem secuti sunt, minime placuit, arte factorum ideas esse, ut clypei atque lyrae; neque rursus eorum, quae praeter naturam, ut febris et cholerae; neque particularium, ceu Socratis et Platonis; neque etiam rerum vilium, veluti sordium et festucae; neque relationum, ut majoris et excedentis: esse namque ideas intellectiones dei aeternas, ac seipsis perfectas.) — Bei dieser Gelegenheit mag noch ein anderer Punkt erwähnt werden, in welchem unsere Ideenlehre von der des Platon gar sehr abweicht. Er lehrt nämlich (De Rep., X, S. 288), daß der Gegenstand, den die schöne Kunst darzustellen beabsichtigt, das Vorbild der Malerei und Poesie, nicht die Idee wäre, sondern das einzelne Ding. Unsere ganze bisherige Auseinandersetzung behauptet gerade das Gegentheil, und Platons Meinung wird uns hierin um so weniger irre machen, als dieselbe die Quelle eines der größten und anerkannten Fehler jenes großen Mannes ist, nämlich seiner Geringschätzung und Verwerfung der Kunst, besonders der Poesie: sein falsches Urtheil über diese knüpft er unmittelbar an die angeführte Stelle.

42 Ich kehre zu unserer Auseinandersetzung des ästhetischen Eindrucks zurück. Die Erkenntniß des Schönen setzt zwar immer rein erkennendes Subjekt und erkannte Idee als Objekt zugleich und unzertrennlich. Dennoch aber wird die Quelle des ästhetischen Genusses bald mehr in der Auffassung der erkannten Idee liegen, bald mehr in der Seeligkeit und Geistesruhe des von allem Wollen und dadurch von aller Individualität und der aus ihr hervorgehenden Pein befreiten reinen Erkennens: und zwar wird dieses Vorherrschen des einen oder des andern Bestandtheils des ästhetischen Genusses davon abhängen, ob die intuitiv aufgefaßte Idee eine höhere oder niedere Stufe der Objektität des Willens ist. So wird bei ästhetischer Betrachtung (in der Wirklichkeit, oder durch das Medium der Kunst) der schönen Natur im Anorganischen und Vegetabilischen und der Werke der schönen Baukunst, der Genuß des reinen willenlosen Erkennens überwiegend seyn, weil die hier aufgefaßten Ideen nur niedrige Stufen der Objektität des Willens, daher nicht Erscheinungen von tiefer Bedeutsamkeit und vielsagendem Inhalt sind. Hingegen wird, wenn Thiere und Menschen der Gegenstand der ästhetischen Betrachtung oder Darstellung sind, der Genuß mehr in der objektiven Auffassung dieser Ideen, welche die deutlichsten Offenbarungen des Willens sind, bestehen; weil solche die größte Mannigfaltigkeit der Gestalten, Reichthum und tiefe Bedeutsamkeit der Erscheinungen darlegen und uns am vollkommensten das Wesen des Willens offenbaren, sei es in seiner Heftigkeit, Schrecklichkeit, Befriedigung, oder in seiner Brechung (letzteres in den tragischen Darstellungen), endlich sogar in seiner Wendung oder Selbstaufhebung, welche besonders das Thema der Christlichen Malerei ist; wie überhaupt die Historienmalerei und das Drama die Idee des vom vollen Erkennen beleuchteten Willens zum Objekt haben. — Wir wollen nunmehr die Künste einzeln durchgehen, wodurch eben die aufgestellte Theorie des Schönen Vollständigkeit und Deutlichkeit erhalten wird.

43 Die Materie als solche kann nicht Darstellung einer Idee seyn. Denn sie ist, wie wir im ersten Buche fanden, durch und durch Kausalität: ihr Seyn ist lauter Wirken. Kausalität aber ist Gestaltung des Satzes vom Grunde: Erkenntniß der Idee hingegen schließt wesentlich den Inhalt jenes Satzes aus. Auch fanden wir im zweiten Buch die Materie als das gemeinsame Substrat aller einzelnen Erscheinungen der Ideen, folglich als das Verbindungsglied zwischen der Idee und der Erscheinung oder dem einzelnen Ding. Also aus dem einen sowohl, als aus dem andern Grunde kann die Materie für sich keine Idee darstellen. A posteriori aber bestätigt sich dieses dadurch, daß von der Materie als solcher gar keine anschauliche Vorstellung, sondern nur ein abstrakter Begriff möglich ist: in jener nämlich stellen allein die Formen und Qualitäten sich dar, deren Trägerin die Materie ist, und in welchen allen sich Ideen offenbaren. Dieses entspricht auch Dem, daß Kausalität (das ganze Wesen der Materie) für sich nicht anschaulich darstellbar ist, sondern allein eine bestimmte Kausalverknüpfung. — Dagegen muß andererseits jede Erscheinung einer Idee, da sie als solche eingegangen ist in die Form des Satzes vom Grund, oder in das principium individuationis, an der Materie, als Qualität derselben, sich darstellen. Insofern ist also, wie gesagt, die Materie das Bindungsglied zwischen der Idee und dem principio individuationis, welches die Form der Erkenntniß des Individuums, oder der Satz vom Grund ist. — Platon hat daher ganz richtig neben der Idee und ihrer Erscheinung, dem einzelnen Dinge, welche beide sonst alle Dinge der Welt unter sich begreifen, nur noch die Materie als ein drittes, von beiden Verschiedenes aufgestellt (Timaeus, S. 345). Das Jundividuum ist, als Erscheinung der Idee, immer Materie. Auch ist jede Qualität der Materie immer Erscheinung einer Idee, und als solche auch einer ästhetischen Betrachtung, d. i. Erkenntniß der in ihr sich darstellenden Idee, fähig. Dies gilt nun selbst von den allgemeinsten Qualitäten der Materie, ohne welche sie nie ist, und deren Ideen die schwächste Objektität des Willens sind. Solche sind: Schwere, Kohäsion, Starrheit, Flüssigkeit, Reaktion gegen das Licht u. s. f.

Wenn wir nun die Baukunst, bloß als schöne Kunst, abgesehen von ihrer Bestimmung zu nützlichen Zwecken, in welchen sie dem Willen, nicht der reinen Erkenntniß dient und also nicht mehr Kunst in unserm Sinne ist, betrachten; so können wir ihr keine andere Absicht unterlegen, als die, einige von jenen Ideen, welche die niedrigsten Stufen der Objektität des Willens sind, zu deutlicher Anschaulichkeit zu bringen: nämlich Schwere, Kohäsion, Starrheit, Härte, diese allgemeinen Eigenschaften des Steines, diese ersten, einfachsten, dumpfesten Sichtbarkeiten des Willens, Grundbaßtöne der Natur; und dann neben ihnen das Licht, welches in vielen Stücken ein Gegensatz jener ist. Selbst auf dieser tiefen Stufe der Objektität des Willens sehen wir schon sein Wesen sich in Zwietracht offenbaren: denn eigentlich ist der Kampf zwischen Schwere und Starrheit der alleinige ästhetische Stoff der schönen Architektur: ihn auf mannigfaltige Weise vollkommen deutlich hervortreten zu lassen, ist ihre Aufgabe. Sie löst solche, indem sie jenen unvertilgbaren Kräften den kürzesten Weg zu ihrer Befriedigung benimmt und sie durch einen Umweg hinhält, wodurch der Kampf verlängert und das unerschöpfliche Streben beider Kräfte auf mannigfaltige Weise sichtbar wird. — Die ganze Masse des Gebäudes würde, ihrer ursprünglichen Neigung überlassen, einen bloßen Klumpen darstellen, so fest als möglich dem Erdkörper verbunden, zu welchem die Schwere, als welche hier der Wille erscheint, unablässig drängt, während die Starrheit, ebenfalls Objektität des Willens, widersteht. Aber eben diese Neigung, dieses Streben, wird von der Baukunst an der unmittelbaren Befriedigung verhindert und ihm nur eine mittelbare, auf Umwegen, gestattet. Da kann nun z. B. das Gebälk nur mittelst der Säule die Erde drücken; das Gewölbe muß sich selbst tragen und nur durch Vermittelung der Pfeiler kann es sein Streben zur Erdmasse hin befriedigen u. s. f. Aber eben auf diesen erzwungenen Umwegen, eben durch diese Hemmungen entfalten sich auf das deutlichste und mannigfaltigste jene der rohen Steinmasse inwohnenden Kräfte: und weiter kann der rein ästhetische Zweck der Baukunst nicht gehen. Daher liegt allerdings die Schönheit eines Gebäudes in der augenfälligen Zweckmäßigkeit jedes Theiles, nicht zum äußern willkürlichen Zweck des Menschen (insofern gehört das Werk der nützlichen Baukunst an); sondern unmittelbar zum Bestande des Ganzen, zu welchem die Stelle, Größe und Form jedes Theiles ein so nothwendiges Verhältniß haben muß, daß, wo möglich, wenn irgend ein Theil weggezogen würde, das Ganze einstürzen müßte. Denn nur indem jeder Theil soviel trägt, als er füglich kann, und jeder gestützt ist gerade da und gerade so sehr, als er muß, entfaltet sich jenes Widerspiel, jener Kampf zwischen Starrheit und Schwere, welche das Leben, die Willensäußerungen des Steines ausmachen, zur vollkommensten Sichtbarkeit, und es offenbaren sich deutlich diese tiefsten Stufen der Objektität des Willens. Ebenso muß auch die Gestalt jedes Theiles bestimmt seyn durch seinen Zweck und sein Verhältniß zum Ganzen, nicht durch Willkür. Die Säule ist die allereinfachste, bloß durch den Zweck bestimmte Form der Stütze: die gewundene Säule ist geschmacklos: der viereckige Pfeiler ist in der That weniger einfach, wiewohl zufällig leichter zu machen, als die runde Säule. Eben so sind die Formen von Fries, Balken, Bogen, Kuppel durch ihren unmittelbaren Zweck ganz und gar bestimmt und erklären dadurch sich selbst. Die Verzierungen der Kapitelle u. s. w. gehören der Skulptur, nicht der Architektur an, von der sie, als hinzukommender Schmuck, bloß zugelassen werden und auch wegfallen könnten. — Dem Gesagten gemäß ist es zum Verständniß und ästhetischen Genuß eines Werkes der Architektur unumgänglich nöthig, von seiner Materie, nach ihrem Gewicht, ihrer Starrheit und Kohäsion, eine unmittelbare, anschauliche Kenntniß zu haben, und unsere Freude an einem solchen Werke würde plötzlich sehr verringert werden, durch die Eröffnung, daß Bimmstein das Baumaterial sei: denn da würde es uns wie eine Art Scheingebäude vorkommen. Fast eben so würde die Nachricht wirken, daß es nur von Holz sei, während wir Stein voraussetzten; eben weil dies nunmehr das Verhältniß zwischen Starrheit und Schwere, und dadurch die Bedeutung und Nothwendigkeit aller Theile, ändert und verschiebt, da jene Naturkräfte am hölzernen Gebäude viel schwächer sich offenbaren. Daher auch kann aus Holz eigentlich kein Werk der schönen Baukunst werden, so sehr dasselbe auch alle Formen annimmt: dies ist ganz allein durch unsere Theorie erklärlich. Wenn man aber vollends uns sagte, das Gebäude, dessen Anblick uns erfreut, bestehe aus ganz verschiedenen Materien, von sehr ungleicher Schwere und Konsistenz, die aber durch das Auge nicht zu unterscheiden wären; so würde dadurch das ganze Gebäude uns so ungenießbar, wie ein Gedicht in einer uns unbekannten Sprache. Dieses Alles beweist eben, daß die Baukunst nicht bloß mathematisch wirkt, sondern dynamisch, und daß was durch sie zu uns redet, nicht etwan bloße Form und Symmetrie, sondern vielmehr jene Grundkräfte der Natur sind, jene ersten Ideen, jene niedrigsten Stufen der Objektität des Willens. — Die Regelmäßigkeit des Gebäudes und seiner Theile wird theils durch die unmittelbare Zweckmäßigkeit jedes Gliedes zum Bestande des Ganzen herbeigeführt, theils dient sie, die Uebersicht und das Verständniß des Ganzen zu erleichtern, theils endlich tragen die regelmäßigen Figuren, indem sie die Gesetzmäßigkeit des Raumes als solchen offenbaren, zur Schönheit bei. Dies Alles ist aber nur von untergeordnetem Werth und Nothwendigkeit und keineswegs die Hauptsache, da sogar die Symmetrie nicht unnachläßlich erfordert ist, indem ja auch Ruinen noch schön sind.

Eine ganz besondere Beziehung haben nun noch die Werke der Baukunst zum Lichte: sie gewinnen doppelte Schönheit im vollen Sonnenschein, den blauen Himmel zum Hintergrund, und zeigen wieder eine ganz andere Wirkung im Mondenschein. Daher auch bei Aufführung eines schönen Werkes der Baukunst immer besondere Rücksicht auf die Wirkungen des Lichtes und auf die Himmelsgegenden genommen wird. Dieses Alles hat seinen Grund zwar großentheils darin, daß helle und scharfe Beleuchtung alle Theile und ihre Verhältnisse erst recht sichtbar macht: außerdem aber bin ich der Meinung, daß die Baukunst, so wie Schwere und Starrheit, auch zugleich das diesen ganz entgegengesetzte Wesen des Lichtes zu offenbaren bestimmt ist. Indem nämlich das Licht von den großen, undurchsichtigen, scharfbegränzten und mannigfach gestalteten Massen aufgefangen, gehemmt, zurückgeworfen wird, entfaltet es seine Natur und Eigenschaften am reinsten und deutlichsten, zum großen Genuß des Beschauers, da das Licht das erfreulichste der Dinge ist, als die Bedingung und das objektive Korrelat der vollkommensten anschaulichen Erkenntnißweise.

Weil nun die Ideen, welche durch die Baukunst zur deutlichen Anschauung gebracht werden, die niedrigsten Stufen der Objektität des Willens sind und folglich die objektive Bedeutsamkeit Dessen, was uns die Baukunst offenbart, verhältnißmäßig gering ist; so wird der ästhetische Genuß beim Anblick eines schönen und günstig beleuchteten Gebäudes, nicht so sehr in der Auffassung der Idee, als in dem mit dieser Auffassung gesetzten subjektiven Korrelat derselben liegen, also überwiegend darin bestehen, daß an diesem Anblick der Beschauer von der Erkenntnißart des Individuums, die dem Willen dient und dem Satz vom Grunde nachgeht, losgerissen und emporgehoben wird zu der des reinen willensfreien Subjekts des Erkennens; also in der reinen, von allem Leiden des Wollens und der Individualität befreiten Kontemplation selbst. — In dieser Hinsicht ist der Gegensatz der Architektur und das andere Extrem in der Reihe der schönen Künste das Drama, welches die allerbedeutsamsten Ideen zur Erkenntniß bringt, daher im ästhetischen Genuß desselben die objektive Seite durchaus überwiegend ist.

Die Baukunst hat von den bildenden Künsten und der Poesie das Unterscheidende, daß sie nicht ein Nachbild, sondern die Sache selbst giebt: nicht wiederholt sie, wie jene, die erkannte Idee, wodurch der Künstler dem Beschauer seine Augen leiht; sondern hier stellt der Künstler dem Beschauer bloß das Objekt zurecht, erleichtert ihm die Auffassung der Idee, dadurch daß er das wirkliche individuelle Objekt zum deutlichen und vollständigen Ausdruck seines Wesens bringt.

Die Werke der Baukunst werden sehr selten, gleich den übrigen Werken der schönen Kunst, zu rein ästhetischen Zwecken aufgeführt: vielmehr werden diese anderen, der Kunst selbst fremden, nützlichen Zwecken untergeordnet, und da besteht denn das große Verdienst des Baukünstlers darin, die rein ästhetischen Zwecke, in jener ihrer Unterordnung unter fremdartige, doch durchzusetzen und zu erreichen, indem er sie auf mannigfaltige Weise dem jedesmaligen willkürlichen Zwecke geschickt anpaßt, und richtig beurtheilt, welche ästhetisch-architektonische Schönheit sich mit einem Tempel, welche mit einem Palast, welche mit einem Zeughause u. s. w. verträgt und vereinigen läßt. Je mehr ein rauhes Klima jene Forderungen des Bedürfnisses, der Nützlichkeit vermehrt, sie fester bestimmt und unerläßlicher vorschreibt, desto weniger Spielraum hat das Schöne in der Baukunst. Im milden Klima Indiens, Aegyptens, Griechenlands und Roms, wo die Forderungen der Nothwendigkeit geringer und loser bestimmt waren, konnte die Baukunst ihre ästhetischen Zwecke am freiesten verfolgen: unter dem nordischen Himmel wurden ihr diese sehr verkümmert: hier, wo Kasten, spitze Dächer und Thürme die Forderung waren, mußte die Baukunst, da sie ihre eigene Schönheit nur in sehr engen Schranken entfalten durfte, sich zum Ersatz desto mehr mit dem von der Skulptur geborgten Schmucke zieren, wie an der Gothischen schönen Baukunst zu sehen.

Muß nun diesergestalt die Baukunst, durch die Forderungen der Nothwendigkeit und Nützlichkeit, große Beschränkungen leiden; so hat sie andererseits an eben diesen eine kräftige Stütze, da sie, bei dem Umfange und der Kostbarkeit ihrer Werke und der engen Sphäre ihrer ästhetischen Wirkungsart, sich als bloß schöne Kunst gar nicht erhalten könnte, wenn sie nicht zugleich als nützliches und nothwendiges Gewerbe einen festen und ehrenvollen Platz unter den menschlichen Handtierungen hätte. Der Mangel dieses letztern eben ist es, der eine andere Kunst verhindert, ihr als Schwester zur Seite zu stehen, obgleich dieselbe, in ästhetischer Rücksicht, ganz eigentlich ihr als Seitenstück beizuordnen ist: ich meyne die schöne Wasserleitungskunst. Denn was die Baukunst für die Idee der Schwere, wo diese mit der Starrheit verbunden erscheint, leistet, dasselbe leistet jene für dieselbe Idee, da, wo ihr die Flüssigkeit, d. h. Formlosigkeit, leichteste Verschiebbarkeit, Durchsichtigkeit, beigesellt ist. Schäumend und brausend über Felsen stürzende Wasserfälle, still zerstäubende Katarakte, als hohe Wassersäulen emportreibende Springbrunnen und klarspiegelnde Seen offenbaren die Ideen der flüssigen schweren Materie gerade so, wie die Werke der Baukunst die Ideen der starren Materie entfalten. An der nützlichen Wasserleitungskunst findet die schöne keine Stütze; da die Zwecke dieser sich mit den ihrigen, in der Regel, nicht vereinigen lassen, sondern dies nur ausnahmsweise Statt findet, z. B. in der Cascata di Trevi zu Rom [27].

44 Was für jene untersten Stufen der Objektität des Willens die zwei erwähnten Künste leisten, das leistet für die höhere Stufe der vegetabilischen Natur gewissermaaßen die schöne Gartenkunst. Die landschaftliche Schönheit eines Fleckes beruht großentheils auf der Mannigfaltigkeit der auf ihm sich beisammenfindenden natürlichen Gegenstände, und sodann darauf, daß diese sich rein aussondern, deutlich hervortreten und doch in passender Verbindung und Abwechselung sich darstellen. Diese beiden Bedingungen sind es, denen die schöne Gartenkunst nachhilft: jedoch ist sie ihres Stoffes lange nicht so sehr Meister, wie die Baukunst des ihrigen, und daher ihre Wirkung beschränkt. Das Schöne, was sie vorzeigt, gehört fast ganz der Natur: sie selbst hat wenig dazu gethan: und andererseits kann sie gegen die Ungunst der Natur sehr wenig ausrichten, und wo ihr diese nicht vor- sondern entgegenarbeitet; sind ihre Leistungen gering.

Sofern also die Pflanzenwelt, welche ohne Vermittelung der Kunst sich überall zum ästhetischen Genusse anbietet, Objekt der [28] Hiezu Kap. 35 des zweiten Bandes.

Kunst ist, gehört sie hauptsächlich der Landschaftsmalerei an. Im Gebiete dieser liegt mit ihr auch die ganze übrige erkenntnißlose Natur. — Beim Stillleben und gemalter bloßer Architektur, Ruinen, Kirche von Innen u. dgl. ist die subjektive Seite des ästhetischen Genusses die überwiegende: d. h. unsere Freude daran liegt nicht hauptsächlich in der Auffassung der dargestellten Ideen unmittelbar, sondern mehr im subjektiven Korrelat dieser Auffassung, in dem reinen willenlosen Erkennen; da, indem der Maler uns die Dinge durch seine Augen sehen läßt, wir hier zugleich eine Mitempfindung und das Nachgefühl der tiefen Geistesruhe und des gänzlichen Schweigens des Willens erhalten, welche nöthig waren, um die Erkenntniß so ganz in jene leblosen Gegenstände zu versenken und sie mit solcher Liebe, d. h. hier mit solchem Grade der Objektivität, aufzufassen. — Die Wirkung der eigentlichen Landschaftsmalerei ist nun zwar im Ganzen auch noch von dieser Art: allein weil die dargestellten Ideen, als höhere Stufen der Objektität des Willens, schon bedeutsamer und vielsagender sind; so tritt die objektive Seite des ästhetischen Wohlgefallens schon mehr hervor und hält der subjektiven das Gleichgewicht. Das reine Erkennen als solches ist nicht mehr ganz die Hauptsache; sondern mit gleicher Macht wirkt die erkannte Idee, die Welt als Vorstellung auf einer bedeutenden Stufe der Objektivation des Willens.

Aber eine noch viel höhere Stufe offenbart die Thiermalerei und Thierbildhauerei, von welcher letzteren wir bedeutende antike Ueberreste haben, z. B. Pferde, in Venedig, auf Monte cavallo, auf den Elginschen Reliefs, auch zu Florenz, in Bronce und Marmor, ebendaselbst der antike Eber, die heulenden Wölfe, ferner die Löwen am Arsenal zu Venedig, auch im Vatikan ein ganzer Saal voll meist antiker Thiere u. s. w. Bei diesen Darstellungen erhält nun die objektive Seite des ästhetischen Wohlgefallens ein entschiedenes Uebergewicht über die subjektive. Die Ruhe des diese Ideen erkennenden Subjekts, das den eigenen Willen beschwichtigt hat, ist zwar, wie bei jeder ästhetischen Betrachtung, vorhanden: aber ihre Wirkung wird nicht empfunden: denn uns beschäftigt die Unruhe und Heftigkeit des dargestellten Willens. Es ist jenes Wollen, welches auch unser Wesen ausmacht, das uns hier vor Augen tritt, in Gestalten, in denen seine Erscheinung nicht, wie in uns, durch die Besonnenheit beherrscht und gemildert ist, sondern sich in stärkern Zügen und mit einer Deutlichkeit, die an das Groteske und Monstrose streift, darstellt, dafür aber auch ohne Verstellung, naiv und offen, frei zu Tage liegend, worauf gerade unser Interesse an den Thieren beruht. Das Charakteristische der Gattungen trat schon bei der Darstellung der Pflanzen hervor, zeigte sich jedoch nur in den Formen: hier wird es viel bedeutender und spricht sich nicht nur in der Gestalt, sondern in Handlung, Stellung und Geberde aus, obwohl immer nur noch als Charakter der Art, nicht des Individuums. — Dieser Erkenntniß der Ideen höherer Stufen, welche wir in der Malerei durch fremde Vermittelung empfangen, können wir auch unmittelbar theilhaft werden, durch rein kontemplative Anschauung der Pflanzen und Beobachtung der Thiere, und zwar letzterer in ihrem freien, natürlichen und behaglichen Zustande. Die objeftive Betrachtung ihrer mannigfaltigen, wundersamen Gestalten und ihres Thuns und Treibens ist eine lehrreiche Lektion aus dem großen Buche der Natur, ist eine Entzifferung der wahren Signatura rerum [29]: wir sehen in ihr die vielfachen Grade und Weisen der Manifestation des Willens, welcher, in allen Wesen der Eine und selbe, überall das Selbe will, was eben als Leben, als Daseyn, sich objektivirt, in so endloser Abwechselung, so verschiedenen Gestalten, die alle Akkomodationen zu den verschiedenen äußeren Bedingungen sind, vielen Variationen desselben Themas zu vergleichen. Sollten wir aber dem Betrachter den Aufschluß über ihr inneres Wesen auch für die Reflexion und in Einem Worte mittheilen; so würden wir am besten jene Sanskrit-Formel, die in den heiligen Büchern der Hindu so oft vorkommt und Mahavakya, d. h. das große Wort, genannt wird, dazu gebrauchen³⁰ Jakob Böhm, in seinem Buche de Signatura rerum, Kap. 1, §. 15, 16, 17, sagt: „Und ist kein Ding in der Natur, es offenbart seine innere Gestalt auch äußerlich: denn das Innerliche arbeitet stets zur Offenbarung. — — — Ein jedes Ding hat seinen Mund zur Offenbarung. — — — Und das ist die Natursprache, darin jedes Ding aus seiner Eigenschaft redet und sich immer selber offenbart und darstellt. — — — Denn ein jedes Ding offenbart seine Mutter, die die Essenz und den Willen zur Gestaltniß also giebt.“ können: „Tat twam asi“, das heißt: „dieses Lebende bist du.“

45 Die Idee, in welcher der Wille den höchsten Grad seiner Objektivation erreicht, unmittelbar anschaulich darzustellen, ist endlich die große Aufgabe der Historienmalerei und der Skulptur. Die objektive Seite der Freude am Schönen ist hier durchaus überwiegend und die subjektive in den Hintergrund getreten. Ferner ist zu beachten, daß noch auf der nächsten Stufe unter dieser, in der Thiermalerei, das Charakteristische völlig Eins mit dem Schönen ist: der am meisten charakteristische Löwe, Wolf, Pferd, Schaaf, Stier, war auch allemal der schönste. Der Grund hievon ist, daß die Thiere nur Gattungscharakter, keinen Individualcharakter haben. Bei der Darstellung des Menschen sondert sich nun aber der Gattungscharakter vom Charakter des Individuums: jener heißt nun Schönheit (gänzlich im objektiven Sinn), dieser aber behält den Namen Charakter oder Ausdruck bei, und es tritt die neue Schwierigkeit ein, beide zugleich im nämlichen Individuo vollkommen darzustellen.

Menschliche Schönheit ist ein objektiver Ausdruck, welcher die vollkommenste Objektivation des Willens auf der höchsten Stufe seiner Erkennbarkeit bezeichnet, die Idee des Menschen überhaupt, vollständig ausgedrückt in der angeschauten Form. So sehr hier aber auch die objektive Seite des Schönen hervortritt; so bleibt die subjektive doch ihre stete Begleiterin: und eben weil kein Objekt uns so schnell zum rein ästhetischen Anschauen hinreißt, wie das schönste Menschenantlitz und Gestalt, bei deren Anblick uns augenblicklich ein unaussprechliches Wohlgefallen ergreift und über uns selbst und Alles was uns quält hinaushebt; so ist dieses nur dadurch möglich, daß diese allerdeutlichste und reinste Erkennbarkeit des Willens uns auch am leichtesten und schnellsten in den Zustand des reinen Erkennens versetzt, in welchem unsere Persönlichkeit, unser Wollen mit seiner steten Pein, verschwindet, so lange die rein ästhetische Freude anhält: daher sagt Goethe: „Wer die menschliche Schönheit erblickt, den kann nichts Uebles anwehen: er fühlt sich mit sich selbst und mit der Welt in Uebereinstimmung.“ — Daß nun der Natur eine schöne Menschengestalt gelingt, müssen wir daraus erklären, daß der Wille, indem er sich auf dieser höchsten Stufe in einem Individuo objektivirt, durch glückliche Umstände und seine Kraft, alle die Hindernisse und den Widerstand vollkommen besiegt, welche ihm die Willenserscheinungen niedriger Stufen entgegensetzen, dergleichen die Naturkräfte sind, welchen er die Allen angehörende Materie immer erst abgewinnen und entreißen muß. Ferner hat die Erscheinung des Willens auf den obern Stufen immer die Mannigfaltigkeit in ihrer Form: schon der Baum ist nur ein systematisches Aggregat der zahllos wiederholten sprossenden Fasern: diese Zusammensetzung nimmt höher herauf immer mehr zu, und der menschliche Körper ist ein höchst kombinirtes System ganz verschiedener Theile, deren jeder ein dem Ganzen untergeordnetes, aber doch auch eigenthümliches Leben, vita propria, hat: daß nun alle diese Theile gerade auf die gehörige Weise dem Ganzen untergeordnet und einander nebengeordnet seien, harmonisch zur Darstellung des Ganzen konspiriren, nichts übermäßig, nichts verkümmert sei; — dies Alles sind die seltenen Bedingungen, deren Resultat die Schönheit, der vollkommen ausgeprägte Gattungscharakter ist. — So die Natur. Wie aber die Kunst? — Man meint, durch Nachahmung der Natur. — Woran soll aber der Künstler ihr gelungenes und nachzuahmendes Werk erkennen und es unter den mißlungenen herausfinden; wenn er nicht vor der Erfahrung das Schöne anticipirt? Hat überdies auch jemals die Natur einen in allen Theilen vollkommen schönen Menschen hervorgebracht? — Da hat man gemeint, der Künstler müsse die an viele Menschen einzeln vertheilten schönen Theile zusammensuchen und aus ihnen ein schönes Ganzes zusammensetzen: eine verkehrte und besinnungslose Meinung. Denn es frägt sich abermals, woran soll er erkennen, daß gerade diese Formen die schönen sind und jene nicht? — Auch sehen wir, wie weit in der Schönheit die alten deutschen Maler durch Nachahmung der Natur gekommen sind. Man betrachte ihre nackten Figuren. — Rein a posteriori und aus bloßer Erfahrung ist gar keine Erkenntniß des Schönen möglich: sie ist immer, wenigstens zum Theil, a priori, wiewohl von ganz anderer Art, als die uns a priori bewußten Gestaltungen des Satzes vom Grunde.

Diese betreffen die allgemeine Form der Erscheinung als solcher, wie sie die Möglichkeit der Erkenntniß überhaupt begründet, das allgemeine, ausnahmslose Wie des Erscheinens, und aus dieser Erkenntniß geht Mathematik und reine Naturwissenschaft hervor: jene andere Erkenntnißart a priori hingegen, welche die Darstellung des Schönen möglich macht, betrifft, statt der Form, den Inhalt der Erscheinungen, statt des Wie, das Was des Erscheinens. Daß wir Alle die menschliche Schönheit erkennen, wenn wir sie sehen, im ächten Künstler aber dies mit solcher Klarheit geschieht, daß er sie zeigt, wie er sie nie gesehen hat, und die Natur in seiner Darstellung übertrifft; dies ist nur dadurch möglich, daß der Wille, dessen adäquate Objektivation, auf ihrer höchsten Stufe, hier beurtheilt und gefunden werden soll, ja wir selbst sind. Dadurch allein haben wir in der That eine Anticipation Dessen, was die Natur (die ja eben der Wille ist, der unser eigenes Wesen ausmacht) darzustellen sich bemüht; welche Anticipation im ächten Genius von dem Grade der Besonnenheit begleitet ist, daß er, indem er im einzelnen Dinge dessen Idee erkennt, gleichsam die Natur auf halbem Worte versteht und nun rein ausspricht, was sie nur stammelt, daß er die Schönheit der Form, welche ihr in tausend Versuchen mißlingt, dem harten Marmor aufdrückt, sie der Natur gegenüberstellt, ihr gleichsam zurufend: „Das war es, was du sagen wolltest!“ und „Ja, Das war es!“ hallt es aus dem Kenner wieder. — Nur so konnte der geniale Grieche den Urtypus der menschlichen Gestalt finden und ihn als Kanon der Schule der Skulptur aufstellen; und auch allein vermöge einer solchen Anticipation ist es uns Allen möglich, das Schöne da, wo es der Natur im Einzelnen wirklich gelungen ist, zu erkennen. Diese Anticipation ist das Ideal: es ist die Idee, sofern sie, wenigstens zur Hälfte, a priori erkannt ist und, indem sie als solche dem a posteriori durch die Natur Gegebenen ergänzend entgegenkommt, für die Kunst praktisch wird. Die Möglichkeit solcher Anticipation des Schönen a priori im Künstler, wie seiner Anerkennung a posteriori im Kenner, liegt darin, daß Künstler und Kenner das Ansich der Natur, der sich objektivirende Wille, selbst sind. Denn nur vom Gleichen, wie Empedokles sagte, wird das Gleiche erkannt: nur Natur kann sich selbst verstehen; nur Natur wird sich selbst ergründen: aber auch nur vom Geist wird der Geist vernommen [31].

Die verkehrte Meinung, daß die Griechen das aufgestellte Ideal menschlicher Schönheit ganz empirisch, durch Zusammenlesen einzelner schöner Theile, hier ein Knie, dort einen Arm entblößend und merkend, aufgefunden hätten, hat übrigens eine ihr ganz analoge im Betreff der Dichtkunst, nämlich die Annahme, daß z. B. Shakespeare die unzählig mannigfaltigen, so wahren, so gehaltenen, so aus der Tiefe herausgearbeiteten Charaktere in seinen Dramen, aus seiner eigenen Erfahrung im Weltleben sich gemerkt und dann wiedergegeben hätte. Die Unmöglichkeit und Absurdität solcher Annahme bedarf keiner Auseinandersetzung: es ist offenbar, daß der Genius, wie er die Werke der bildenden Kunst nur durch eine ahndende Anticipation des Schönen hervorbringt, so die Werke der Dichtkunst nur durch eine eben solche Anticipation des Charakteristischen; wenn gleich beide der Erfahrung bedürfen, als eines Schemas, woran allein jenes ihnen a priori dunkel Bewußte zur vollen Deutlichkeit hervorgerufen wird und die Möglichkeit besonnener Darstellung nunmehr eintritt.

Menschliche Schönheit wurde oben erklärt als die vollkommenste Objektivation des Willens auf der höchsten Stufe seiner Erkennbarkeit. Sie drückt sich aus durch die Form: und diese liegt im Raum allein und hat keine nothwendige Beziehung auf die Zeit, wie z. B. die Bewegung eine hat. Wir können insofern sagen: die adäquate Objektivation des Willens durch eine bloß räumliche Erscheinung ist Schönheit, im objektiven Sinn. Die Pflanze ist keine andere, als eine solche bloß räumliche Erscheinung des Willens; da keine Bewegung und folglich keine Beziehung auf die Zeit (abgesehen von ihrer Entwickelung) zum Ausdruck ihres Wesens gehört: ihre bloße Gestalt spricht ihr ganzes Wesen aus und legt es offen dar. Thier und Mensch [32] Der letzte Satz ist die Verdeutschung des il n’y a que l’esprit qui sente l’esprit des Helvetius, welches ich in der ersten Ausgabe nicht anzumerken brauchte. Aber seitdem ist durch den verdummenden Einfluß der Hegelschen Afterweisheit die Zeit so heruntergebracht und so roh geworden, daß Mancher wohl gar wähnen fönnte, auch hier werde auf den Gegensatz von „Geist und Natur“ angespielt: daher ich genöthigt bin, mich gegen das Unterschieben solcher Pöbelphilosopheme ausdrücklich zu verwahren. aber bedürfen zur vollständigen Offenbarung des in ihnen erscheinenden Willens noch einer Reihe von Handlungen, wodurch jene Erscheinung in ihnen eine unmittelbare Beziehung auf die Zeit erhält. Dies Alles ist schon im vorigen Buch erörtert worden: an unsere gegenwärtige Betrachtung knüpft es sich durch Folgendes. Wie die bloß räumliche Erscheinung des Willens diesen auf jeder bestimmten Stufe vollkommen oder unvollkommen objektiviren kann, was eben Schönheit oder Häßlichkeit ausmacht; so kann auch die zeitliche Objektivation des Willens, d. i. die Handlung und zwar die unmittelbare, also die Bewegung, dem Willen, der sich in ihr objektivirt, rein und vollkommen entsprechen, ohne fremde Beimischung, ohne Ueberflüssiges, ohne Ermangelndes, nur gerade den bestimmten jedesmaligen Willensakt ausdrückend; — oder auch dies Alles sich umgekehrt verhalten. Im ersten Fall geschieht die Bewegung mit Grazie; im andern ohne solche. Wie also Schönheit die entsprechende Darstellung des Willens überhaupt durch seine bloß räumliche Erscheinung ist; so ist Grazie die entsprechende Darstellung des Willens durch seine zeitliche Erscheinung, d. h. der vollkommen richtige und angemessene Ausdruck jedes Willensaktes, durch die ihn objektivirende Bewegung und Stellung. Da Bewegung und Stellung den Leib schon voraussetzen; so ist Winckelmanns Ausdruck sehr richtig und treffend, wenn er sagt: „Die Grazie ist das eigenthümliche Verhältniß der handelnden Person zur Handlung.“ (Werke, Bd. 1, S. 258.) Es ergiebt sich von selbst, daß Pflanzen zwar Schönheit, aber keine Grazie beigelegt werden kann, es sei denn im figürlichen Sinn; Thieren und Menschen aber beides, Schönheit und Grazie. Die Grazie besteht, dem Gesagten zufolge, darin, daß jede Bewegung und Stellung auf die leichteste, angemessenste und bequemste Art ausgeführt werde und sonach der rein entsprechende Ausdruck ihrer Absicht, oder des Willensaktes sei, ohne Ueberflüssiges, was als zweckwidriges, bedeutungsloses Handtieren oder verdrehte Stellung, ohne Ermangelndes, was als hölzerne Steifheit sich darstellt. Die Grazie setzt ein richtiges Ebenmaaß aller Glieder, einen regelrechten, harmonischen Körperbau, als ihre Bedingung, voraus; da nur mittelst dieser die vollkommene Leichtigkeit und augenscheinliche Zweckmäßigkeit in allen Stellungen und Bewegungen möglich ist: also ist die Grazie nie ohne einen gewissen Grad der Schönheit des Körpers. Beide vollkommen und im Verein sind die deutlichste Erscheinung des Willens auf der obersten Stufe seiner Objektivation.

Es gehört, wie oben erwähnt, zum Auszeichnenden der Menschheit, daß bei ihr der Charakter der Gattung und der des Individuums auseinandertreten, so daß, wie im vorigen Buch gesagt, jeder Mensch gewissermaaßen eine ganz eigenthümliche Idee darstellt. Die Künste daher, deren Zweck die Darstellung der Idee der Menschheit ist, haben neben der Schönheit, als dem Charakter der Gattung, noch den Charakter des Individuums, welcher vorzugsweise Charakter genannt wird, zur Aufgabe; diesen jedoch auch nur wieder, sofern er nicht als etwas Zufälliges, dem Individuo in seiner Einzelnheit ganz und gar Eigenthümliches anzusehen ist, sondern als eine gerade in diesem Individuo besonders hervortretende Seite der Idee der Menschheit, zu deren Offenbarung die Darstellung desselben daher zweckdienlich ist. Also muß der Charakter, obzwar als solcher individuell, dennoch idealisch, d. h. mit Hervorhebung seiner Bedeutsamkeit in Hinsicht auf die Idee der Menschheit überhaupt (zu deren Objektivirung er auf seine Weise beiträgt) aufgefaßt und dargestellt werden: außerdem ist die Darstellung Porträt, Wiederholung des Einzelnen als solchen, mit allen Zufälligkeiten. Und selbst auch das Porträt soll, wie Winckelmann sagt, das Ideal des Individuums seyn.

Jener idealisch aufzufassende Charakter, der die Hervorhebung einer eigenthümlichen Seite der Idee der Menschheit ist, stellt sich nun sichtbar dar, theils durch die bleibende Physiognomie und Korporisation, theils durch vorübergehenden Affekt und Leidenschaft, Modifikation des Erkennens und Wollens gegenseitig durch einander, welches alles sich in Miene und Bewegung ausdrückt. Da das Jundividuum immer der Menschheit angehört und andererseits die Menschheit sich immer im Individuo und sogar mit eigenthümlicher idealer Bedeutsamkeit desselben offenbart; so darf weder die Schönheit durch den Charakter, noch dieser durch jene aufgehoben werden: weil Aufhebung des Gattungscharakters durch den des Individuums Karikatur, und Aufhebung des Individuellen durch den Gattungscharakter Bedeutungslosigkeit geben würde. Daher wird die Darstellung, indem sie auf Schönheit ausgeht, welches hauptsächlich die Skulptur thut, dennoch diese (d. i. den Gattungscharakter) immer in etwas durch den individuellen Charakter modifiziren und die Idee der Menschheit immer auf eine bestimmte, individuelle Weise, eine besondere Seite derselben hervorhebend, ausdrücken; weil das menschliche Individuum als solches gewissermaaßen die Dignität einer eigenen Idee hat und der Idee der Menschheit es eben wesentlich ist, daß sie sich in Individuen von eigenthümlicher Bedeutsamkeit darstellt. Daher finden wir in den Werken der Alten die von ihnen deutlich aufgefaßte Schönheit nicht durch eine einzige, sondern durch viele, verschiedenen Charakter tragende Gestalten ausgedrückt, gleichsam immer von einer andern Seite gefaßt, und demzufolge anders dargestellt im Apoll, anders im Bakchus, anders im Herkules, anders im Antinous: ja, das Charakteristische kann das Schöne beschränken und endlich sogar bis zur Häßlichkeit hervortreten, im trunkenen Silen, im Faun u. s. w. Geht aber das Charakteristische bis zur wirklichen Aufhebung des Charakters der Gattung, also bis zum Unnatürlichen; so wird es Karikatur. — Noch viel weniger aber, als die Schönheit, darf die Grazie durch das Charakteristische beeinträchtigt werden: welche Stellung und Bewegung auch der Ausdruck des Charakters erfordert; so muß sie doch auf die der Person angemessenste, zweckmäßigste, leichteste Weise vollzogen werden. Dies wird nicht nur der Bildhauer und Maler, sondern auch jeder gute Schauspieler beobachten: sonst entsteht auch hier Karikatur, als Verzerrung, Verrenkung.

In der Skulptur bleiben Schönheit und Grazie die Hauptsache. Der eigentliche Charakter des Geistes, hervortretend in Affekt, Leidenschaft, Wechselspiel des Erkennens und Wollens, durch den Ausdruck des Gesichts und der Geberde allein darstellbar, ist vorzüglich Eigenthum der Malerei. Denn obwohl Augen und Farbe, welche außer dem Gebiet der Skulptur liegen, viel zur Schönheit beitragen; so sind sie doch für den Charakter noch weit wesentlicher. Ferner entfaltet sich die Schönheit vollständiger der Betrachtung aus mehreren Standpunkten: hingegen kann der Ausdruck, der Charakter, auch aus einem Standpunkt vollkommen aufgefaßt werden.

Weil Schönheit offenbar der Hauptzweck der Skulptur ist, hat Lessing die Thatsache, daß der Laokoon nicht schreiet, daraus zu erklären gesucht, daß das Schreien mit der Schönheit nicht zu vereinigen sei. Da dem Lessing dieser Gegenstand das Thema, oder wenigstens der Anknüpfungspunkt, eines eigenen Buches ward, auch vor und nach ihm so Vieles über denselben geschrieben ist; so möge es mir vergönnt seyn, hier episodisch meine Meinung darüber vorzutragen, obwohl eine so specielle Erörterung nicht eigentlich in den Zusammenhang unserer durchaus auf das Allgemeine gerichteten Betrachtung gehört.

46 Daß Laokoon, in der berühmten Gruppe, nicht schreiet, ist offenbar, und die allgemeine, immer wiederkehrende Befremdung darüber muß daher rühren, daß in seiner Lage wir alle schreien würden: und so fordert es auch die Natur; da bei dem heftigsten physischen Schmerz und plötzlich eingetretener größter körperlicher Angst, alle Reflexion, die etwan ein schweigendes Dulden herbeiführen könnte, gänzlich aus dem Bewußtseyn verdrängt wird, und die Natur sich durch Schreien Luft macht, wodurch sie zugleich den Schmerz und die Angst ausdrückt, den Retter herbeiruft und den Angreifer schreckt. Schon Winckelmann vermißte daher den Ausdruck des Schreiens: aber indem er die Rechtfertigung des Künstlers suchte, machte er eigentlich den Laokoon zu einem Stoiker, der es seiner Würde nicht gemäß hält, secundum naturam zu schreien, sondern zu seinem Schmerz sich noch den nutzlosen Zwang auflegt, die Aeußerungen desselben zu verbeißen: Winckelmann sieht daher in ihm „den geprüften Geist eines großen Mannes, welcher mit Martern ringt und den Ausdruck der Empfindung zu unterdrücken und in sich zu verschließen sucht: er bricht nicht in lautes Geschrei aus, wie beim Virgil, sondern es entsteigen ihm nur bange Seufzer“, u. s. w., (Werke, Bd. 7, S. 98. — Dasselbe ausführlicher Bd. 6, S. 104 fg.) Diese Meinung Winckelmanns kritisirte nun Lessing in seinem Laokoon und verbesserte sie auf die oben angegebene Weise: an die Stelle des psychologischen Grundes setzte er den rein ästhetischen, daß die Schönheit, das Princip der alten Kunst, den Ausdruck des Schreiens nicht zulasse. Ein anderes Argument, welches er hinzufügt, daß nämlich nicht ein ganz vorübergehender und keiner Dauer fähiger Zustand im unbeweglichen Kunstwerk dargestellt werden dürfe, hat hundert Beispiele von vortrefflichen Figuren gegen sich, die in ganz flüchtigen Bewegungen, tanzend, ringend, haschend u. s. w. festgehalten sind. Ja, Goethe in dem Aufsatz über den Laokoon, welcher die Propyläen eröffnet (S. 8), hält die Wahl eines solchen ganz vorübergehenden Moments geradezu für nothwendig. — In unsern Tagen entschied nun Hirt (Horen, 1797, zehntes St.), Alles auf die höchste Wahrheit des Ausdrucks zurückführend, die Sache dahin, daß Laokoon nicht schreiet, weil er, schon im Begriff am Stickfluß zu sterben, nicht mehr schreien kann. Zuletzt hat Fernow (Römische Studien, Bd. 1, S. 426 fg.) alle jene drei Meinungen erörtert und abgewogen, selbst jedoch keine neue hinzugethan, sondern jene drei vermittelt und vereinigt.

Ich kann nicht umhin mich zu verwundern, daß so nachdenkende und scharfsichtige Männer mühsam unzulängliche Gründe aus der Ferne herbeiziehen, psychologische, ja physiologische Argumente ergreifen, um eine Sache zu erklären, deren Grund ganz nahe liegt und dem Unbefangenen gleich offenbar ist, — und besonders daß Lessing, welcher der richtigen Erklärung so nahe kam, dennoch den eigentlichen Punkt keineswegs getroffen hat.

Vor aller psychologischen und physiologischen Untersuchung, ob Laokoon in seiner Lage schreien wird oder nicht, welches ich übrigens ganz und gar bejahen würde, ist in Hinsicht auf die Gruppe zu entscheiden, daß das Schreien in ihr nicht dargestellt werden durfte, allein aus dem Grunde, weil die Darstellung desselben gänzlich außer dem Gebiete der Skulptur liegt. Man konnte nicht aus Marmor einen schreienden Laokoon hervorbringen, sondern nur einen den Mund aufreißenden und zu schreien sich fruchtlos bemühenden, einen Laokoon, dem die Stimme im Halse stecken geblieben, vox faucibus haesit. Das Wesen, und folglich auch die Wirkung des Schreiens auf den Zuschauer, liegt ganz allein im Laut, nicht im Mundaufsperren. Dieses letztere, das Schreien nothwendig begleitende Phänomen muß erst durch den dadurch hervorgebrachten Laut motivirt und gerechtfertigt werden: dann ist es, als für die Handlung charakteristisch, zulässig, ja nothwendig, wenn es gleich der Schönheit Abbruch thut. Allein in der bildenden Kunst, der die Darstellung des Schreiens selbst ganz fremd und unmöglich ist, das gewaltsame, alle Züge und den übrigen Ausdruck störende Mittel zum Schreien, das Mundaufsperren darzustellen, wäre wirklich unverständig; weil man dann das im Uebrigen viele Aufopferungen fordernde Mittel vor die Augen brächte, während der Zweck desselben, das Schreien selbst, zusammt dessen Wirkung auf das Gemüth, ausbliebe. Ja, was noch mehr ist, man brächte dadurch den jedesmal lächerlichen Anblick einer ohne Wirkung bleibenden Anstrengung hervor, wirklich dem zu vergleichen, welchen sich ein Spaaßvogel verschaffte, indem er dem schlafenden Nachtwächter das Horn mit Wachs fest verstopfte, ihn dann mit Feuergeschrei weckte und sich an dessen fruchtlosen Anstrengungen zum Blasen ergötzte. — Wo hingegen die Darstellung des Schreiens im Gebiet der darstellenden Kunst liegt, ist es durchaus zulässig, weil es der Wahrheit dient, d. i. der vollständigen Darstellung der Idee. So in der Dichtkunst, welche zur anschaulichen Darstellung die Phantasie des Lesers in Anspruch nimmt: daher schreit bei Virgil der Laokoon wie ein Stier, der sich losgerissen, nachdem ihn die Art getroffen: daher läßt Homer (Il., XX, 48—53) den Mars und die Minerva ganz entsetzlich schreien, ihrer Götterwürde sowohl, als Götterschönheit unbeschadet. Ebenso in der Schauspielkunst: Laokoon auf der Bühne mußte schlechterdings schreien; auch läßt Sophokles den Philoktet schreien, und er wird auf der alten Bühne allerdings wirklich geschrien haben. Als eines ganz ähnlichen Falles, erinnere ich mich in London den berühmten Schauspieler Kemble, in einem aus dem Deutschen übersetzten Stück, Pizarro, den Amerikaner Rolla darstellen gesehen zu haben; einen Halbwilden, aber von sehr edlem Charakter: dennoch, als er verwundet wurde, schrie er laut und heftig auf, was von großer und vortrefflicher Wirkung war, weil es, als höchst charakteristisch, zur Wahrheit viel beitrug. — Hingegen ein gemalter oder steinerner stummer Schreier wäre noch viel lächerlicher, als gemalte Musik, die schon in Goethes Propyläen gerügt wird; da das Schreien dem übrigen Ausdruck und der Schönheit viel mehr Abbruch thut, als die Musik, welche meistens nur Hände und Arme beschäftigt und als eine die Person charakterisirende Handlung anzusehen ist, ja insofern ganz füglich gemalt werden kann, sobald sie nur keine gewaltsame Bewegung des Körpers, oder Verziehung des Mundes erfordert: so z. B. die heilige Cäcilia an der Orgel, Raphaels Violinspieler in der Gallerie Sciarra zu Rom u. a. m. — Weil nun also, wegen der Gränzen der Kunst, der Schmerz des Laokoon nicht durch Schreien ausgedrückt werden durfte, mußte der Künstler jeden andern Ausdruck desselben in Bewegung setzen: dies hat er in der höchsten Vollendung geleistet, wie es Winckelmann (Werke, Bd. 6, S. 104 fg.) so meisterhaft schildert, dessen vortreffliche Beschreibung daher ihren vollen Werth und Wahrheit behält, sobald man nur vom Unterlegen Stoischer Gesinnung abstrahirt [33].

47 Weil Schönheit nebst Grazie der Hauptgegenstand der Skulptur ist, liebt sie das Nackte, und leidet Bekleidung nur sofern diese die Formen nicht verbirgt. Sie bedient sich der Draperie nicht als einer Verhüllung, sondern als einer mittelbaren Darstellung der Form, welche Darstellungsweise den Verstand sehr beschäftigt, indem er zur Anschauung der Ursache, nämlich der Form des Körpers, nur durch die allein unmittelbar gegebene Wirkung, den Faltenwurf, gelangt. Sonach ist in der Skulptur die Draperie gewissermaaßen Das, was in der Malerei die Verkürzung ist. Beide sind Andeutungen, aber nicht symbolische, sondern solche, welche, wenn sie gelungen sind, den Verstand unmittelbar zwingen, das Angedeutete, ebenso als ob es wirklich gegeben wäre, anzuschauen.

Es sei mir erlaubt, hier beiläufig ein die redenden Künste betreffendes Gleichniß einzuschalten. Nämlich, wie die schöne Körperform bei der leichtesten, oder bei gar keiner Bekleidung am vortheilhaftesten sichtbar ist, und daher ein sehr schöner Mensch, wenn er zugleich Geschmack hätte und auch demselben folgen dürfte, am liebsten beinahe nackt, nur nach Weise der Antiken bekleidet, gehen würde; — ebenso nun wird jeder schöne und gedankenreiche Geist sich immer auf die natürlichste, unumwundenste, einfachste Weise³⁴ Auch diese Episode hat ihre Ergänzung im Kap. 36 des zweiten Bandes erhalten. ausdrücken, bestrebt, wenn es irgend möglich ist, seine Gedanken Andern mitzutheilen, um dadurch die Einsamkeit, die er in einer Welt wie diese empfinden muß, sich zu erleichtern: umgekehrt nun aber wird Geistesarmuth, Verworrenheit, Verschrobenheit sich in die gesuchtesten Ausdrücke und dunkelsten Redensarten kleiden, um so in schwierige und pomphafte Phrasen kleine, winzige, nüchterne, oder alltägliche Gedanken zu verhüllen, Demjenigen gleich, der, weil ihm die Majestät der Schönheit abgeht, diesen Mangel durch die Kleidung ersetzen will und unter barbarischem Putz, Flittern, Federn, Krausen, Puffen und Mantel, die Winzigkeit oder Häßlichkeit seiner Person zu verstecken sucht. So verlegen wie dieser, wenn er nackt gehen sollte, wäre mancher Autor, wenn man ihn zwänge, sein so pomphaftes, dunkles Buch in dessen kleinen, klaren Inhalt zu übersetzen.

48 Die Historienmalerei hat nun neben der Schönheit und Grazie noch den Charakter zum Hauptgegenstand, worunter überhaupt zu verstehen ist die Darstellung des Willens auf der höchsten Stufe seiner Objektivation, wo das Individuum, als Hervorhebung einer besondern Seite der Idee der Menschheit, eigenthümliche Bedeutsamkeit hat und diese nicht durch die bloße Gestalt allein, sondern durch Handlung jeder Art und die sie veranlassenden und begleitenden Modifikationen des Erkennens und Wollens, sichtbar in Miene und Geberde, zu erkennen giebt. Indem die Idee der Menschheit in diesem Umfange dargestellt werden soll, muß die Entfaltung ihrer Vielseitigkeit in bedeutungsvollen Individuen vor die Augen gebracht werden, und diese wieder können in ihrer Bedeutsamkeit nur durch mannigfaltige Scenen, Vorgänge und Handlungen sichtbar gemacht werden. Diese ihre unendliche Aufgabe löst nun die Historienmalerei dadurch, daß sie Lebensscenen jeder Art, von großer und geringer Bedeutsamkeit, vor die Augen bringt. Weder irgend ein Individuum, noch irgend eine Handlung kann ohne Bedeutung seyn: in allen und durch alle entfaltet sich mehr und mehr die Idee der Menschheit. Darum ist durchaus kein Vorgang des Menschenlebens von der Malerei auszuschließen. Man thut folglich den vortrefflichen Malern der Niederländischen Schule großes Unrecht, wenn man bloß ihre technische Fertigkeit schätzt, im Uebrigen aber verachtend auf sie herabsieht, weil sie meistens Gegenstände aus dem gemeinen Leben darstellten, man hingegen nur die Vorfälle aus der Weltgeschichte, oder Biblischen Historie für bedeutsam hält. Man sollte zuvörderst bedenken, daß die innere Bedeutsamkeit einer Handlung von der äußern ganz verschieden ist und beide oft getrennt von einander einhergehen. Die äußere Bedeutsamkeit ist die Wichtigkeit einer Handlung in Beziehung auf die Folgen derselben für und in der wirklichen Welt; also nach dem Satz vom Grunde. Die innere Bedeutsamkeit ist die Tiefe der Einsicht in die Idee der Menschheit, welche sie eröffnet, indem sie die seltener hervortretenden Seiten jener Idee an das Licht zieht, dadurch, daß sie deutlich und entschieden sich aussprechende Individualitäten, mittelst zweckmäßig gestellter Umstände, ihre Eigenthümlichkeiten entfalten läßt. Nur die innere Bedeutsamkeit gilt in der Kunst: die äußere gilt in der Geschichte. Beide sind völlig unabhängig von einander, können zusammen eintreten, aber auch jede allein erscheinen. Eine für die Geschichte höchst bedeutende Handlung kann an innerer Bedeutsamkeit eine sehr alltägliche und gemeine seyn: und umgekehrt kann eine Scene aus dem alltäglichen Leben von großer innerer Bedeutsamkeit seyn, wenn in ihr menschliche Individuen und menschliches Thun und Wollen, bis auf die verborgensten Falten, in einem hellen und deutlichen Lichte erscheinen. Auch kann, bei sehr verschiedener äußerer Bedeutsamkeit, die innere die gleiche und selbe seyn, so z. B. es für diese gleich gelten, ob Minister über der Landkarte um Länder und Völker streiten, oder Bauern in der Schenke über Spielkarten und Würfeln sich gegenseitig ihr Recht darthun wollen; wie es gleichviel ist, ob man mit goldenen, oder mit hölzernen Figuren Schach spielt. Außerdem sind die Scenen und Vorgänge, welche das Leben so vieler Millionen von Menschen ausmachen, ihr Thun und Treiben, ihre Noth und ihre Freude, schon deshalb wichtig genug, um Gegenstand der Kunst zu seyn, und müssen, durch ihre reiche Mannigfaltigkeit, Stoff genug geben zur Entfaltung der vielseitigen Idee der Menschheit. Sogar erregt die Flüchtigkeit des Augenblicks, welchen die Kunst in einem solchen Bilde (heut zu Tage genre-Bild genannt) fixirt hat, eine leise, eigenthümliche Rührung: denn die flüchtige Welt, welche sich unaufhörlich umgestaltet, in einzelnen Vorgängen, die doch das Ganze vertreten, festzuhalten im dauernden Bilde, ist eine Leistung der Malerkunst, durch welche sie die Zeit selbst zum Stillstande zu bringen scheint, indem sie das Einzelne zur Idee seiner Gattung erhebt. Endlich haben die geschichtlichen und nach Außen bedeutenden Vorwürfe der Malerei oft den Nachtheil, daß gerade das Bedeutsame derselben nicht anschaulich darstellbar ist, sondern hinzugedacht werden muß. In dieser Hinsicht muß überhaupt die nominale Bedeutung des Bildes von der realen unterschieden werden: jene ist die äußere, aber nur als Begriff hinzukommende Bedeutung; diese die Seite der Idee der Menschheit, welche durch das Bild für die Anschauung offenbar wird. Z. B. jene sei Moses von der Aegyptischen Prinzessin gefunden; ein für die Geschichte höchst wichtiger Moment: die reale Bedeutung hingegen, das der Anschauung wirklich Gegebene, ist ein Findelkind von einer vornehmen Frau aus seiner schwimmenden Wiege gerettet: ein Vorfall, der sich öfter ereignet haben mag. Das Kostüm allein kann hier jenen bestimmten historischen Fall dem Gelehrten kenntlich machen; aber das Kostüm ist nur für die nominale Bedeutung gültig, für die reale aber gleichgültig: denn diese letztere kennt nur den Menschen als solchen, nicht die willkürlichen Formen. Aus der Geschichte genommene Vorwürfe haben vor den aus der bloßen Möglichkeit genommenen und daher nicht individuell, sondern nur generell zu benennenden, nichts voraus: denn das eigentlich Bedeutsame in jenen ist doch nicht das Individuelle, nicht die einzelne Begebenheit als solche, sondern das Allgemeine in ihr, die Seite der Idee der Menschheit, die sich durch sie ausspricht. Andererseits sind aber auch bestimmte historische Gegenstände deshalb keineswegs zu verwerfen: nur geht die eigentlich künstlerische Ansicht derselben, sowohl im Maler als im Betrachter, nie auf das individuell Einzelne in ihnen, was eigentlich das Historische ausmacht, sondern auf das Allgemeine, das sich darin ausspricht, auf die Idee. Auch sind nur solche historische Gegenstände zu wählen, wo die Hauptsache wirklich darstellbar ist und nicht bloß hinzugedacht werden muß: sonst entfernt sich die nominale Bedeutung zu sehr von der realen: das bei dem Bilde bloß Gedachte wird das Wichtigste und thut dem Angeschauten Abbruch. Wenn schon auf der Bühne es nicht taugt, daß (wie im französischen Trauerspiele) die Hauptsache hinter der Scene vorgeht; so ist es im Bilde offenbar ein noch weit größerer Fehler. Entschieden nachtheilig wirken historische Vorwürfe nur dann, wann sie den Maler auf ein willkürlich und nicht nach Kunstzwecken, sondern nach anderen gewähltes Feld beschränken, vollends aber wann dieses Feld an malerischen und bedeutenden Gegenständen arm ist, wenn es z. B. die Geschichte eines kleinen, abgesonderten, eigensinnigen, hierarchisch d. h. durch Wahn beherrschten, von den gleichzeitigen großen Völkern des Orients und Occidents verachteten Winkelvolks ist, wie die Juden. — Da einmal zwischen uns und allen alten Völkern die Völkerwanderung so liegt, wie zwischen der jetzigen Erdoberfläche und jener, deren Organisationen sich uns nur versteinert zeigen, der einstige Wechsel des Meeresbettes; so ist es überhaupt als ein großes Unglück anzusehen, daß das Volk dessen gewesene Kultur der unserigen hauptsächlich zur Unterlage dienen sollte, nicht etwan die Inder, oder die Griechen, oder auch nur die Römer waren, sondern gerade diese Juden. Besonders aber war es für die genialen Maler Italiens, im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, ein schlimmer Stern, daß sie in dem engen Kreise, an den sie für die Wahl der Vorwürfe willkürlich gewiesen waren, zu Miseren aller Art greifen mußten: denn das Neue Testament ist, seinem historischen Theile nach, für die Malerei fast noch ungünstiger als das Alte, und die darauf folgende Geschichte der Märtyrer und Kirchenlehrer gar ein unglücklicher Gegenstand. Jedoch hat man von den Bildern, deren Gegenstand das Geschichtliche, oder Mythologische des Judenthums und Christenthums ist, gar sehr diejenigen zu unterscheiden, in welchen der eigentliche, d. h. der ethische Geist des Christenthums für die Anschauung offenbart wird, durch Darstellung von Menschen, welche dieses Geistes voll sind. Diese Darstellungen sind in der That die höchsten und bewunderungswürdigsten Leistungen der Malerkunst: auch sind sie nur den größten Meistern dieser Kunst, besonders dem Raphael und dem Correggio, diesem zumal in seinen früheren Bildern, gelungen. Gemälde dieser Art sind eigentlich gar nicht den historischen beizuzählen: denn sie stellen meistens keine Begebenheit, keine Handlung dar; sondern sind bloße Zusammenstellungen von Heiligen, dem Erlöser selbst, oft noch als Kind, mit seiner Mutter, Engeln u. s. w. In ihren Mienen, besonders den Augen, sehen wir den Ausdruck, den Wiederschein, der vollkommensten Erkenntniß, derjenigen nämlich, welche nicht auf einzelne Dinge gerichtet ist, sondern die Ideen, also das ganze Wesen der Welt und des Lebens, vollkommen aufgefaßt hat, welche Erkenntniß in ihnen auf den Willen zurückwirkend, nicht, wie jene andere, Motive für denselben liefert, sondern im Gegentheil ein Quietiv alles Wollens geworden ist, aus welchem die vollkommene Resignation, die der innerste Geist des Christenthums wie der Indischen Weisheit ist, das Aufgeben alles Wollens, die Zurückwendung, Aufhebung des Willens und mit ihm des ganzen Wesens dieser Welt, also die Erlösung, hervorgegangen ist. So sprachen jene ewig preiswürdigen Meister der Kunst durch ihre Werke die höchste Weisheit anschaulich aus. Und hier ist der Gipfel aller Kunst, welche, nachdem sie den Willen, in seiner adäquaten Objektität, den Ideen, durch alle Stufen verfolgt hat, von den niedrigsten, wo ihn Ursachen, dann wo ihn Reize und endlich wo ihn Motive so mannigfach bewegen und sein Wesen entfalten, nunmehr endigt mit der Darstellung seiner freien Selbstaufhebung durch das eine große Quietiv, welches ihm aufgeht aus der vollkommensten Erkenntniß seines eigenen Wesens [35].

49 Allen unsern bisherigen Betrachtungen über die Kunst liegt überall die Wahrheit zum Grunde, daß das Objekt der Kunst, dessen Darstellung der Zweck des Künstlers ist, dessen Erkenntniß folglich seinem Werk als Keim und Ursprung vorhergehen muß, — eine Idee, in Platons Sinne, ist und durchaus nichts Anderes; nicht das einzelne Ding, das Objekt der gemeinen Auffassung; auch nicht der Begriff, das Objekt des vernünftigen Denkens und der Wissenschaft. Obgleich Idee und Begriff etwas Gemeinsames haben, darin, daß beide als Einheiten eine Vielheit wirklicher Dinge vertreten; so wird doch die große Verschiedenheit beider, aus dem was im ersten Buch über den Begriff und im gegenwärtigen³⁶ Diese Stelle setzt zu ihrem Verständniß das folgende Buch ganz und gar voraus. über die Idee gesagt ist, deutlich und einleuchtend genug geworden seyn. Daß jedoch auch schon Platon diesen Unterschied rein aufgefaßt habe, will ich keineswegs behaupten: vielmehr sind manche seiner Beispiele von Ideen und seiner Erörterungen über dieselben bloß auf Begriffe anwendbar. Wir lassen inzwischen dieses auf sich beruhen und gehen unsern eigenen Weg, erfreut, so oft wir die Spur eines großen und edlen Geistes betreten, jedoch nicht seine Fußstapfen, sondern unser Ziel verfolgend. — Der Begriff ist abstrakt, diskursiv, innerhalb seiner Sphäre völlig unbestimmt, nur ihrer Gränze nach bestimmt, Jedem der nur Vernunft hat erreichbar und faßlich, durch Worte ohne weitere Vermittelung mittheilbar, durch seine Definition ganz zu erschöpfen. Die Idee dagegen, allenfalls als adäquater Repräsentant des Begriffs zu definiren, ist durchaus anschaulich und, obwohl eine unendliche Menge einzelner Dinge vertretend, dennoch durchgängig bestimmt: vom Individuo als solchem wird sie nie erkannt, sondern nur von dem, der sich über alles Wollen und alle Individualität zum reinen Subjekt des Erkennens erhoben hat: also ist sie nur dem Genius und sodann Dem, welcher durch, meistens von den Werken des Genius veranlaßte, Erhöhung seiner reinen Erkenntnißkraft, in einer genialen Stimmung ist, erreichbar: daher ist sie nicht schlechthin, sondern nur bedingt mittheilbar, indem die aufgefaßte und im Kunstwerk wiederholte Idee Jeden nur nach Maaßgabe seines eigenen intellektualen Werthes anspricht; weshalb gerade die vortrefflichsten Werke jeder Kunst, die edelsten Erzeugnisse des Genius, der stumpfen Majorität der Menschen ewig verschlossene Bücher bleiben müssen und ihr unzugänglich sind, durch eine weite Kluft von ihr getrennt, gleich wie der Umgang der Fürsten dem Pöbel unzugänglich ist. Zwar lassen auch die Plattesten die anerkannt großen Werke auf Autorität gelten, um nämlich ihre eigene Schwäche nicht zu verrathen: doch bleiben sie im Stillen stets bereit, ihr Verdammungsurtheil darüber auszusprechen, sobald man sie hoffen läßt, daß sie es können, ohne sich bloß zu stellen, wo dann ihr lang verhaltener Haß gegen alles Große und Schöne, das sie nie ansprach und eben dadurch demüthigte, und gegen die Urheber desselben, sich freudig Luft macht. Denn überhaupt um fremden Werth willig und frei anzuerkennen und gelten zu lassen, muß man eigenen haben. Hierauf gründet sich die Nothwendigkeit der Bescheidenheit bei allem Verdienst, wie auch der unverhältnißmäßig laute Ruhm dieser Tugend, welche allein, aus allen ihren Schwestern, von Jedem der es wagt einen irgendwie ausgezeichneten Mann zu preisen, jedesmal seinem Lobe angehängt wird, um zu versöhnen und den Zorn der Werthlosigkeit zu stillen. Was ist denn Bescheidenheit Anderes, als geheuchelte Demuth, mittelst welcher man, in einer von niederträchtigem Neide strotzenden Welt, für Vorzüge und Verdienste die Verzeihung Derer erbetteln will, die keine haben? Denn wer sich keine anmaaßt, weil er wirklich keine hat, ist nicht bescheiden, sondern nur ehrlich.

Die Idee ist die, vermöge der Zeit- und Raumform unserer intuitiven Apprehension, in die Vielheit zerfallene Einheit: hingegen der Begriff ist die, mittelst der Abstraktion unserer Vernunft, aus der Vielheit wieder hergestellte Einheit: sie kann bezeichnet werden als unitas post rem, jene als unitas ante rem. Endlich kann man den Unterschied zwischen Begriff und Idee noch gleichnißweise ausdrücken, indem man sagt: der Begriff gleicht einem todten Behältniß, in welchem, was man hineingelegt hat, wirklich neben einander liegt, aus welchem sich aber auch nicht mehr herausnehmen läßt (durch analytische Urtheile), als man hineingelegt hat (durch synthetische Reflexion): die Idee hingegen entwickelt in Dem, welcher sie gefaßt hat, Vorstellungen, die in Hinsicht auf den ihr gleichnamigen Begriff neu sind: sie gleicht einem lebendigen, sich entwickelnden, mit Zeugungskraft begabten Organismus, welcher hervorbringt, was nicht in ihm eingeschachtelt lag.

Allem Gesagten zufolge ist nun der Begriff, so nützlich er für das Leben, und so brauchbar, nothwendig und ergiebig er für die Wissenschaft ist, für die Kunst ewig unfruchtbar. Hingegen ist die aufgefaßte Idee die wahre und einzige Quelle jedes ächten Kunstwerkes. In ihrer kräftigen Ursprünglichkeit wird sie nur aus dem Leben selbst, aus der Natur, aus der Welt geschöpft, und auch nur von dem ächten Genius, oder von dem für den Augenblick bis zur Genialität Begeisterten. Nur aus solcher unmittelbaren Empfängniß entstehen ächte Werke, die unsterbliches Leben in sich tragen. Eben weil die Idee anschaulich ist und bleibt, ist sich der Künstler der Absicht und des Zieles seines Werkes nicht in abstracto bewußt; nicht ein Begriff, sondern eine Idee schwebt ihm vor: daher kann er von seinem Thun keine Rechenschaft geben: er arbeitet, wie die Leute sich ausdrücken, aus bloßem Gefühl und unbewußt, ja instinktmäßig. Hingegen Nachahmer, Manieristen, imitatores, servum pecus, gehen in der Kunst vom Begriff aus: sie merken sich was an ächten Werken gefällt und wirkt, machen sich es deutlich, fassen es im Begriff, also abstrakt, auf, und ahmen es nun, offen oder versteckt, mit kluger Absichtlichkeit nach. Sie saugen, gleich parasitischen Pflanzen, ihre Nahrung aus fremden Werken, und tragen, gleich den Polypen, die Farbe ihrer Nahrung. Ja, man könnte, im Vergleichen noch weiter gehend, behaupten, sie glichen Maschinen, die, was man hineinlegt, zwar sehr fein zerhacken und durch einander mengen, aber nie verdauen können, so daß sich die fremden Bestandtheile noch immer wiederfinden, aus der Mischung hervorsuchen und sondern ließen: der Genius allein gliche dagegen dem organischen, assimilirenden, umwandelnden und producirenden Leibe. Denn er wird von den Vorgängern und ihren Werken zwar erzogen und gebildet; aber befruchtet wird er nur vom Leben und der Welt selbst unmittelbar, durch den Eindruck des Anschaulichen: daher schadet auch die höchste Bildung doch nie seiner Originalität. Alle Nachahmer, alle Manieristen fassen das Wesen fremder musterhafter Leistungen im Begriffe auf; aber Begriffe können nie einem Werke inneres Leben ertheilen. Das Zeitalter, d. h. die jedesmalige stumpfe Menge, kennt selbst nur Begriffe und klebt daran, nimmt daher manierirte Werke mit schnellem und lautem Beifall auf: dieselben Werke sind aber nach wenig Jahren schon ungenießbar, weil der Zeitgeist, d. h. die herrschenden Begriffe, sich geändert haben, auf denen allein jene wurzeln konnten. Nur die ächten Werke, welche aus der Natur, dem Leben, unmittelbar geschöpft sind, bleiben, wie diese selbst, ewig jung und stets urkräftig. Denn sie gehören keinem Zeitalter, sondern der Menschheit an: und wie sie eben deshalb von ihrem eigenen Zeitalter, welchem sich anzuschmiegen sie verschmähten, lau aufgenommen, und, weil sie die jedesmalige Verirrung desselben mittelbar und negativ aufdeckten, spät und ungern anerkannt wurden; so können sie dafür auch nicht veralten, sondern sprechen auch in der spätesten Zeit immer noch frisch und immer wieder neu an: dann sind sie auch dem Uebersehen- und Verkanntwerden nicht ferner ausgesetzt, da sie gekrönt und sanktionirt dastehen durch den Beifall der wenigen urtheilsfähigen Köpfe, die einzeln und sparsam in den Jahrhunderten erscheinen [37] und ihre Stimmen ablegen, deren langsam wachsende Summe die Autorität begründet, welche ganz allein jener Richterstuhl ist, den man meint, wenn man an die Nachwelt appellirt. Jene successiv erscheinenden Einzelnen sind es ganz allein: denn die Masse und Menge der Nachwelt wird allezeit ebenso verkehrt und stumpf seyn und bleiben, wie die Masse und Menge der Mitwelt allezeit war und allezeit ist. — Man lese die Klagen großer Geister, aus jedem Jahrhundert, über ihre Zeitgenossen: stets lauten sie wie von heute; weil das Geschlecht immer das selbe ist. Zu jeder Zeit und in jeder Kunst vertritt Manier die Stelle des Geistes, der stets nur das Eigenthum Einzelner ist: die Manier aber ist das alte, abgelegte Kleid der zuletzt dagewesenen und erkannten Erscheinung des Geistes. Dem Allen gemäß wird, in der Regel, der Beifall der Nachwelt nicht anders, als auf Kosten des Beifalls der Mitwelt erworben; und umgekehrt [38].

50 Wenn nun der Zweck aller Kunst Mittheilung der aufgefaßten Idee ist, welche eben in solcher Vermittelung durch den Geist des Künstlers, in der sie von allem Fremdartigen gesäubert und isolirt erscheint, nunmehr auch Dem faßlich wird, der schwächere Empfänglichkeit und keine Produktivität hat; wenn ferner das Ausgehen vom Begriff in der Kunst verwerflich ist, so werden wir es nicht billigen können, wenn man ein Kunstwerk absichtlich und eingeständlich zum Ausdruck eines Begriffes bestimmt: dieses ist der Fall in der Allegorie. Eine Allegorie ist ein Kunstwerk, welches etwas Anderes bedeutet, als es darstellt. Aber das Anschauliche, folglich auch die Idee, spricht unmittelbar und ganz vollkommen sich selbst aus, und bedarf nicht der Vermittelung eines Andern, wodurch es angedeutet werde. Was also, auf [39] Apparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto.

40 Hiezu Kap. 34 des zweiten Bandes. diese Weise, durch ein ganz Anderes angedeutet und repräsentirt wird, weil es nicht selbst vor die Anschanung gebracht werden kann, ist allemal ein Begriff. Durch die Allegorie soll daher immer ein Begriff bezeichnet und folglich der Geist des Beschauers von der dargestellten anschaulichen Vorstellung weg, auf eine ganz andere, abstrakte, nicht anschauliche, geleitet werden, die völlig außer dem Kunstwerke liegt: hier soll also Bild oder Statue leisten, was die Schrift, nur viel vollkommener, leistet. Was nun wir für den Zweck der Kunst erklären, Darstellung der nur anschaulich aufzufassenden Idee, ist hier nicht der Zweck. Für das, was aber hier beabsichtigt wird, ist auch gar keine große Vollendung des Kunstwerks erforderlich; sondern es reicht hin, daß man sehe, was das Ding seyn soll, da, sobald dies gefunden ist, der Zweck erreicht ist und der Geist nun auf eine ganz anderartige Vorstellung, auf einen abstrakten Begriff geführt wird, welcher das vorgesetzte Ziel war. Allegorien in der bildenden Kunst sind folglich nichts Anderes, als Hieroglyphen: der Kunstwerth, den sie übrigens als anschauliche Darstellungen haben mögen, kommt ihnen nicht als Allegorien, sondern anderweitig zu. Daß die Nacht von Correggio, der Genius des Ruhmes von Hannibal Caracci, die Horen von Poussin, sehr schöne Bilder sind, ist ganz davon zu trennen, daß sie Allegorien sind. Als Allegorien leisten sie nicht mehr, als eine Inschrift, ja eher weniger. Wir werden hier wieder an die oben gemachte Unterscheidung zwischen der realen und der nominalen Bedeutung eines Bildes erinnert. Die nominale ist hier eben das Allegorische als solches, z. B. der Genius des Ruhmes; die reale das wirklich Dargestellte: hier ein schöner geflügelter Jüngling, von schönen Knaben umflogen: dies spricht eine Idee aus: diese reale Bedeutung wirkt aber nur solange man die nominale, allegorische vergißt: denkt man an diese, so verläßt man die Anschanung, und ein abstrakter Begriff beschäftigt den Geist: der Uebergang von der Idee zum Begriff ist aber immer ein Fall. Ja, jene nominale Bedeutung, jene allegorische Absicht, thut oft der realen Bedeutung, der anschaulichen Wahrheit, Eintrag: so z. B. die widernatürliche Beleuchtung in der Nacht von Correggio, die, so schön auch ausgeführt, doch bloß allegorisch motivirt und real unmöglich ist. Wenn also ein allegorisches Bild auch Kunstwerth hat, so ist dieser von dem, was es als Allegorie leistet, ganz gesondert und unabhängig: ein solches Kunstwerk dient zweien Zwecken zugleich, nämlich dem Ausdruck eines Begriffes und dem Ausdruck einer Idee: nur letzterer kann Kunstzweck seyn; der andere ist ein fremder Zweck, die spielende Ergötzlichkeit, ein Bild zugleich den Dienst einer Inschrift, als Hieroglyphe, leisten zu lassen, erfunden zu Gunsten Derer, welche das eigentliche Wesen der Kunst nie ansprechen kann. Es ist damit, wie wenn ein Kunstwerk zugleich ein nützliches Werkzeug ist, wo es auch zweien Zwecken dient: z. B. eine Statue, die zugleich Kandelaber oder Karyatide ist, oder ein Bas-Relief, der zugleich der Schild des Achills ist. Reine Freunde der Kunst werden weder das Eine noch das Andere billigen. Zwar kann ein allegorisches Bild auch gerade in dieser Eigenschaft lebhaften Eindruck auf das Gemüth hervorbringen: dasselbe würde dann aber, unter gleichen Umständen, auch eine Inschrift wirken. Z. B. wenn in dem Gemüth eines Menschen der Wunsch nach Ruhm dauernd und fest gewurzelt ist, indem er wohl gar den Ruhm als sein rechtmäßiges Eigenthum ansieht, das ihm nur solange vorenthalten wird, als er noch nicht die Dokumente seines Besitzes producirt hat: und dieser tritt nun vor den Genius des Ruhmes mit seinen Lorbeerkronen; so wird sein ganzes Gemüth dadurch angeregt und seine Kraft zur Thätigkeit aufgerufen: aber dasselbe würde auch geschehen, wenn er plötzlich das Wort „Ruhm“ groß und deutlich an der Wand erblickte. Oder wenn ein Mensch eine Wahrheit fund gemacht hat, die entweder als Aussage für das praktische Leben, oder als Einsicht für die Wissenschaft wichtig ist, derselbe aber keinen Glauben fand; so wird ein allegorisches Bild, die Zeit darstellend, wie sie den Schleier aufhebt und nun die nackte Wahrheit sehen läßt, gewaltig auf ihn wirken: aber dasselbe würde auch die Devise „Le tems découvre la vérité“ leisten. Denn was hier eigentlich wirkt, ist immer nur der abstrakte Gedanke, nicht das Angeschaute.

Ist nun, dem Gesagten gemäß, die Allegorie in der bildenden Kunst ein fehlerhaftes, einem der Kunst ganz fremden Zwecke dienendes Streben; so wird es vollends unerträglich, wenn es so weit abführt, daß die Darstellung gezwungener und gewaltsam herbeigezogener Deuteleien in das Alberne fällt. Dergleichen ist z. B. eine Schildkröte zur Andeutung weiblicher Eingezogenheit; das Herabblicken der Nemesis in den Busen ihres Gewandes, andeutend, daß sie auch ins Verborgene sieht; die Auslegung des Bellori, daß Hannibal Caracci die Wollust deswegen mit einem gelben Gewande bekleidet hat, weil er andeuten gewollt, daß ihre Freuden bald welken und gelb wie Stroh werden. — Wenn nun gar zwischen dem Dargestellten und dem dadurch angedeuteten Begriff durchaus keine auf Subsumtion unter jenen Begriff, oder auf Ideenassociation gegründete Verbindung ist; sondern Zeichen und Bezeichnetes ganz konventionell, durch positive, zufällig veranlaßte Satzung zusammenhängen: dann nenne ich diese Abart der Allegorie Symbol. So ist die Rose Symbol der Verschwiegenheit, der Lorbeer Symbol des Ruhmes, die Palme Symbol des Sieges, die Muschel Symbol der Pilgrimschaft, das Kreuz Symbol der christlichen Religion: dahin gehören auch alle Andeutungen durch bloße Farben unmittelbar, wie Gelb als Farbe der Falschheit, und Blau als Farbe der Treue. Dergleichen Symbole mögen im Leben oft von Nutzen seyn, aber der Kunst ist ihr Werth fremd: sie sind ganz wie Hieroglyphen, oder gar wie Chinesische Wortschrift anzusehen und stehen wirklich in einer Klasse mit den Wappen, mit dem Busch, der ein Wirthshaus andeutet, mit dem Schlüssel, an welchem man die Kammerherren, oder dem Leder, an welchem man die Bergleute erkennt. — Wenn endlich gewisse historische oder mythische Personen, oder personifizirte Begriffe, durch ein für allemal festgesetzte Symbole kenntlich gemacht werden; so wären wohl diese eigentlich Embleme zu nennen: dergleichen sind die Thiere der Evangelisten, die Eule der Minerva, der Apfel des Paris, das Anker der Hoffnung u. s. w. Inzwischen versteht man unter Emblemen meistens jene sinnbildlichen, einfachen und durch ein Motto erläuterten Darstellungen, die eine moralische Wahrheit veranschaulichen sollen, davon es große Sammlungen, von J. Camerarius, Alciatus und Anderen, giebt: sie machen den Uebergang zur poetischen Allegorie, davon weiter unten geredet wird. — Die Griechische Skulptur wendet sich an die Anschauung, darum ist sie ästhetisch; die Hindostanische wendet sich an den Begriff, daher ist sie bloß symbolisch.

Dieses auf unsere bisherigen Betrachtungen über das innere Wesen der Kunst gegründete und damit genau zusammenhängende Urtheil über die Allegorie ist der Ansicht Winckelmanns gerade entgegengesetzt, welcher, weit entfernt, wie wir, die Allegorie für etwas dem Zweck der Kunst ganz fremdes und ihn oft störendes zu erklären, ihr überall das Wort redet, ja sogar (Werke, Bd. 1, S. 55 fg.) den höchsten Zweck der Kunst in die „Darstellung allgemeiner Begriffe und nichtsinnlicher Dinge“ setzt. Es bleibe Jedem überlassen, der einen oder der andern Ansicht beizutreten. Nur wurde mir, bei diesen und ähnlichen, die eigentliche Metaphysik des Schönen betreffenden Ansichten Winckelmanns, die Wahrheit sehr deutlich, daß man die größte Empfänglichkeit und das richtigste Urtheil über das Kunstschöne haben kann, ohne jedoch im Stande zu seyn, vom Wesen des Schönen und der Kunst abstrakte und eigentlich philosophische Rechenschaft zu geben: eben wie man sehr edel und tugendhaft seyn und ein sehr zartes, mit der Genauigkeit einer Goldwaage bei den einzelnen Fällen entscheidendes Gewissen haben kann, ohne deshalb im Stande zu seyn, die ethische Bedeutsamkeit der Handlungen philosophisch zu ergründen und in abstracto darzustellen.

Ein ganz anderes Verhältniß hat aber die Allegorie zur Poesie, als zur bildenden Kunst, und wenn gleich hier verwerflich, ist sie dort sehr zulässig und zweckdienlich. Denn in der bildenden Kunst leitet sie vom gegebenen Anschaulichen, dem eigentlichen Gegenstand aller Kunst, zu abstrakten Gedanken; in der Poesie ist aber das Verhältniß umgekehrt: hier ist das in Worten unmittelbar Gegebene der Begriff, und der nächste Zweck ist allemal von diesem auf das Anschauliche zu leiten, dessen Darstellung die Phantasie des Hörers übernehmen muß. Wenn in der bildenden Kunst vom unmittelbar Gegebenen auf ein Anderes geleitet wird, so muß dies immer ein Begriff seyn, weil hier nur das Abstrakte nicht unmittelbar gegeben werden kann; aber ein Begriff darf nie der Ursprung, und seine Mittheilung nie der Zweck eines Kunstwerkes seyn. Hingegen in der Poesie ist der Begriff das Material, das unmittelbar Gegebene, welches man daher sehr wohl verlassen darf, um ein gänzlich verschiedenes Anschauliches hervorzurufen, in welchem das Ziel erreicht wird. Im Zusammenhang einer Dichtung kann mancher Begriff, oder abstrakte Gedanke, unentbehrlich seyn, der gleichwohl an sich und unmittelbar gar keiner Anschaulichkeit fähig ist: dieser wird dann oft durch irgend ein unter ihn zu subsumirendes Beispiel zur Anschaulichkeit gebracht. Solches geschieht schon in jedem tropischen Ausdruck, und geschieht in jeder Metapher, Gleichniß, Parabel und Allegorie, welche alle nur durch die Länge und Ausführlichkeit ihrer Darstellung sich unterscheiden. In den redenden Künsten sind dieserwegen Gleichnisse und Allegorien von trefflicher Wirkung. Wie schön sagt Cervantes vom Schlaf, um auszudrücken, daß er uns allen geistigen und körperlichen Leiden entziehe, „er sei ein Mantel, der den ganzen Menschen bedeckt“. Wie schön drückt Kleist den Gedanken, daß Philosophen und Forscher das Menschengeschlecht aufklären, allegorisch aus, in dem Verse:

„Die, deren nächtliche Lampe den ganzen Erdball erleuchtet.“

Wie stark und anschaulich bezeichnet Homer die unheilbringende Ate, indem er sagt: „sie hat zarte Füße, denn sie betritt nicht den harten Boden, sondern wandelt nur auf den Köpfen der Menschen“ (Il., XIX, 91). Wie sehr wirkte die Fabel des Menenius Agrippa vom Magen und den Gliedern auf das ausgewanderte Römische Volk. Wie schön drückt Platons schon erwähnte Allegorie von der Höhle, im Anfang des siebenten Buches der Republik, ein höchst abstraktes philosophisches Dogma aus. Ebenfalls ist als eine tiefsinnige Allegorie von philosophischer Tendenz die Fabel von der Persephone anzusehen, die dadurch, daß sie in der Unterwelt einen Granatapfel kostet, dieser anheimfällt: solches wird besonders einleuchtend durch die allem Lobe unerreichbare Behandlung dieser Fabel, welche Goethe dem Triumph der Empfindsamkeit als Episode eingeflochten hat. Drei ausführliche allegorische Werke sind mir bekannt: ein offenbares und eingeständliches ist der unvergleichliche Criticon des Balthasar Gracian, welcher in einem großen reichen Gewebe an einander geknüpfter, höchst sinnreicher Allegorien besteht, die hier zur heitern Einkleidung moralischer Wahrheiten dienen, welchen er eben dadurch die größte Anschaulichkeit ertheilt und uns durch den Reichthum seiner Erfindungen in Erstaunen setzt. Zwei versteckte aber sind der Don Quijote und Gulliver in Lilliput. Ersterer allegorisirt das Leben jedes Menschen, der nicht, wie die Anderen, bloß sein persönliches Wohl besorgen will, sondern einen objektiven, idealen Zweck verfolgt, welcher sich seines Denkens und Wollens bemächtigt hat; womit er sich dann in dieser Welt freilich sonderbar ausnimmt. Beim Gulliver darf man nur alles Physische geistig nehmen, um zu merken, was der satirical rogue, wie ihn Hamlet nennen würde, damit gemeint hat. — Indem nun also der poetischen Allegorie der Begriff immer das Gegebene ist, welches sie durch ein Bild anschaulich machen will, mag sie auch immerhin bisweilen durch ein gemaltes Bild ausgedrückt, oder unterstützt werden: dieses wird darum doch nicht als Werk der bildenden Kunst, sondern nur als bezeichnende Hieroglyphe betrachtet, und macht keinen Anspruch auf malerischen, sondern allein auf poetischen Werth. Solcher Art ist jene schöne allegorische Vignette Lavaters, die auf jeden edlen Verfechter der Wahrheit so herzstärkend wirken muß: eine Hand, die ein Licht haltend von einer Wespe gestochen wird, während oben an der Flamme sich Mücken verbrennen: darunter das Motto:

„Und ob’s auch der Mücke den Flügel versengt, Den Schädel und all sein Gehirnchen zersprengt; Licht bleibet doch Licht; Und wenn auch die grimmigste Wespe mich sticht, Ich laß’ es doch nicht.“

Hieher gehört ferner jener Grabstein mit dem ausgeblasenen, dampfenden Licht und der Umschrift:

„Wann’s aus ist, wird es offenbar, Ob’s Talglicht, oder Wachslicht war.“ —

Dieser Art endlich ist ein altdeutscher Stammbaum, auf welchem der letzte Sprößling der hoch hinaufreichenden Familie den Entschluß, sein Leben in gänzlicher Enthaltsamkeit und Keuschheit zu Ende zu führen und daher sein Geschlecht aussterben zu lassen, dadurch ausdrückte, daß er selbst an der Wurzel des vielzweigichten Baumes abgebildet, mit einer Scheere den Baum über sich abschneidet. Dahin gehören überhaupt die oben erwähnten, gewöhnlich Embleme genannten Sinnbilder, welche man auch bezeichnen könnte als kurze gemalte Fabeln mit ausgesprochener Moral. — Allegorien dieser Art sind immer den poetischen, nicht den malerischen beizuzählen und eben dadurch gerechtfertigt: auch bleibt hier die bildliche Ausführung immer Nebensache, und es wird von ihr nicht mehr gefordert, als daß sie die Sache nur kenntlich darstelle. Wie aber in der bildenden Kunst, so auch in der Poesie, geht die Allegorie in das Symbol über, wenn zwischen dem anschaulich Vorgeführten und dem damit bezeichneten Abstrakten kein anderer, als willkürlicher Zusammenhang ist. Weil eben alles Symbolische im Grunde auf Verabredung beruht, so hat unter anderen Nachtheilen das Symbol auch den, daß seine Bedeutung mit der Zeit vergessen wird und es dann ganz verstummt: wer würde wohl, wenn man es nicht wüßte, errathen, warum der Fisch Symbol des Christenthums ist? Nur ein Champollion: denn es ist durch und durch eine phonetische Hieroglyphe. Daher steht jetzt als poetische Allegorie die Offenbarung des Johannes ungefähr so da, wie die Reliefs mit magnus Deus sol Mithra, an denen man noch immer auslegt [41].

51 Wenn wir nun mit unseren bisherigen Betrachtungen über die Kunst im Allgemeinen von den bildenden Künsten uns zur Poesie wenden; so werden wir nicht zweifeln, daß auch sie die Absicht hat, die Ideen, die Stufen der Objektivation des Willens, zu offenbaren und sie mit der Deutlichkeit und Lebendigkeit, in welcher das dichterische Gemüth sie auffaßte, dem Hörer mitzutheilen. Ideen sind wesentlich anschaulich: wenn daher in der Poesie das unmittelbar durch Worte Mitgetheilte nur abstrakte Begriffe sind; so ist doch offenbar die Absicht, in den Repräsentanten dieser Begriffe den Hörer die Ideen des Lebens anschauen zu lassen, welches nur durch Beihülfe seiner eigenen Phantasie geschehen kann. Um aber diese dem Zweck entsprechend in Bewegung zu setzen, müssen die abstrakten Begriffe, welche das unmittelbare Material der Poesie wie der trockensten Prosa sind, so zusammengestellt werden, daß ihre Sphären sich dergestalt schneiden, daß keiner in seiner abstrakten Allgemeinheit beharren kann; sondern statt seiner ein anschaulicher Repräsentant vor die Phantasie tritt, den nun die Worte des Dichters immer weiter nach seiner Absicht modifiziren. Wie der Chemiker aus völlig klaren und durchsichtigen Flüssigkeiten, indem er sie vereinigt, feste Niederschläge erhält; so versteht der Dichter aus der abstrakten, durchsichtigen Allgemeinheit der Begriffe,⁴² Hiezu Kap. 36 des zweiten Bandes. durch die Art wie er sie verbindet, das Konkrete, Individuelle, die anschauliche Vorstellung, gleichsam zu fällen. Denn nur anschaulich wird die Idee erkannt: Erkenntniß der Idee ist aber der Zweck aller Kunst. Die Meisterschaft in der Poesie, wie in der Chemie, macht fähig, allemal gerade den Niederschlag zu erhalten, welchen man eben beabsichtigt. Diesem Zweck dienen die vielen Epitheta in der Poesie, durch welche die Allgemeinheit jedes Begriffes eingeschränkt wird, mehr und mehr, bis zur Anschaulichkeit. Homer setzt fast zu jedem Hauptwort ein Beiwort, dessen Begriff die Sphäre des erstern Begriffes schneidet und sogleich beträchtlich vermindert, wodurch er der Anschauung schon so viel näher kommt: z. B.

Εν δ’ επεσ’ Ωκεανῳ λαμπρον φαος ἠελιοιο, Ἑλκον νυκτα μελαιναν επι ζειδωρον αρουραν.

(Occidit vero in Oceanum splendidum lumen solis, Trahens noctem nigram super almam terram.)

Und „Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht,“ — schlägt aus wenigen Begriffen die ganze Wonne des südlichen Klimas vor die Phantasie nieder.

Ein ganz besonderes Hülfsmittel der Poesie sind Rhythmus und Reim. Von ihrer unglaublich mächtigen Wirkung weiß ich keine andere Erklärung zu geben, als daß unsere an die Zeit wesentlich gebundenen Vorstellungskräfte hiedurch eine Eigenthümlichkeit erhalten haben, vermöge welcher wir jedem regelmäßig wiederkehrenden Geräusch innerlich folgen und gleichsam mit einstimmen. Dadurch werden nun Rhythmus und Reim theils ein Bindemittel unserer Aufmerksamkeit, indem wir williger dem Vortrag folgen, theils entsteht durch sie in uns ein blindes, allem Urtheil vorhergängiges Einstimmen in das Vorgetragene, wodurch dieses eine gewisse emphatische, von allen Gründen unabhängige Ueberzeugungskraft erhält.

Vermöge der Allgemeinheit des Stoffes, dessen sich die Poesie, um die Ideen mitzutheilen, bedient, also der Begriffe, ist der Umfang ihres Gebietes sehr groß. Die ganze Natur, die Ideen aller Stufen sind durch sie darstellbar, indem sie, nach Maaßgabe der mitzutheilenden Idee, bald beschreibend, bald erzählend, bald unmittelbar dramatisch darstellend verfährt. Wenn aber, in der Darstellung der niedrigeren Stufen der Objektität des Willens, die bildende Kunst sie meistens übertrifft, weil die erkenntnißlose und auch die bloß thierische Natur in einem einzigen wohlgefaßten Moment fast ihr ganzes Wesen offenbart; so ist dagegen der Mensch, soweit er sich nicht durch seine bloße Gestalt und Ausdruck der Miene, sondern durch eine Kette von Handlungen und sie begleitender Gedanken und Affekte ausspricht, der Hauptgegenstand der Poesie, der es hierin keine andere Kunst gleich thut, weil ihr dabei die Fortschreitung zu Statten kommt, welche den bildenden Künsten abgeht.

Offenbarung derjenigen Idee, welche die höchste Stufe der Objektität des Willens ist, Darstellung des Menschen in der zusammenhängenden Reihe seiner Bestrebungen und Handlungen ist also der große Vorwurf der Poesie. — Zwar lehrt auch Erfahrung, lehrt auch Geschichte den Menschen kennen; jedoch öfter die Menschen als den Menschen: d. h. sie geben mehr empirische Notizen vom Benehmen der Menschen gegen einander, woraus Regeln für das eigene Verhalten hervorgehen, als daß sie in das innere Wesen des Menschen tiefe Blicke thun ließen. Indessen bleibt auch dieses letztere keineswegs von ihnen ausgeschlossen: jedoch, so oft es das Wesen der Menschheit selbst ist, das in der Geschichte, oder in der eigenen Erfahrung sich uns aufschließt; so haben wir diese, der Historiker jene schon mit künstlerischen Augen, schon poetisch, d. h. der Idee, nicht der Erscheinung, dem innern Wesen, nicht den Relationen nach aufgefaßt. Unumgänglich ist die eigene Erfahrung Bedingung zum Verständniß der Dichtkunst, wie der Geschichte: denn sie ist gleichsam das Wörterbuch der Sprache, welche beide reden. Geschichte aber verhält sich zur Poesie wie Porträtmalerei zur Historienmalerei: jene giebt das im Einzelnen, diese das im Allgemeinen Wahre: jene hat die Wahrheit der Erscheinung, und kann sie aus derselben beurkunden, diese hat die Wahrheit der Idee, die in keiner einzelnen Erscheinung zu finden, dennoch aus allen spricht. Der Dichter stellt mit Wahl und Absicht bedeutende Charaktere in bedeutenden Situationen dar: der Historiker nimmt beide wie sie kommen. Ja, er hat die Begebenheiten und die Personen nicht nach ihrer innern, ächten, die Idee ausdrückenden Bedeutsamkeit anzusehen und auszuwählen; sondern nach der äußern, scheinbaren, relativen, in Beziehung auf die Verknüpfung, auf die Folgen, wichtigen Bedeutsamkeit. Er darf nichts an und für sich, seinem wesentlichen Charakter und Ausdrucke nach, sondern muß alles nach der Relation, in der Verkettung, im Einfluß auf das Folgende, ja besonders auf sein eigenes Zeitalter betrachten. Darum wird er eine wenig bedeutende, ja an sich gemeine Handlung eines Königs nicht übergehen: denn sie hat Folgen und Einfluß. Hingegen sind an sich höchst bedeutungsvolle Handlungen der Einzelnen, sehr ausgezeichnete Individuen, wenn sie keine Folgen, keinen Einfluß haben, von ihm nicht zu erwähnen. Denn seine Betrachtung geht dem Satz vom Grunde nach und ergreift die Erscheinung, deren Form dieser ist. Der Dichter aber faßt die Idee auf, das Wesen der Menschheit, außer aller Relation, außer aller Zeit, die adäquate Objektität des Dinges an sich auf ihrer höchsten Stufe. Wenn gleich nun auch, selbst bei jener dem Historiker nothwendigen Betrachtungsart, das innere Wesen, die Bedeutsamkeit der Erscheinungen, der Kern aller jener Schaalen, nie ganz verloren gehen kann und wenigstens von Dem, der ihn sucht, sich noch finden und erkennen läßt; so wird dennoch Dasjenige, was an sich, nicht in der Relation, bedeutend ist, die eigentliche Entfaltung der Idee, bei weitem richtiger und deutlicher in der Dichtung sich finden, als in der Geschichte, jener daher, so paradox es klingt, viel mehr, eigentliche, ächte, innere Wahrheit beizulegen seyn, als dieser. Denn der Historiker soll der individuellen Begebenheit genau nach dem Leben folgen, wie sie an den vielfach verschlungenen Ketten der Gründe und Folgen sich in der Zeit entwickelt; aber unmöglich kann er hiezu alle Data besitzen, Alles gesehen, oder Alles erkundet haben: er wird jeden Augenblick vom Original seines Bildes verlassen, oder ein falsches schiebt sich ihm unter, und dies so häufig, daß ich glaube annehmen zu dürfen, in aller Geschichte sei des Falschen mehr, als des Wahren. Der Dichter hingegen hat die Idee der Menschheit von irgend einer bestimmten, eben darzustellenden Seite aufgefaßt, das Wesen seines eigenen Selbst ist es, was sich in ihr ihm objektivirt: seine Erkenntniß ist, wie oben bei Gelegenheit der Skulptur auseinandergesetzt, halb a priori: sein Musterbild steht vor seinem Geiste, fest, deutlich, hell beleuchtet, kann ihn nicht verlassen: daher zeigt er uns im Spiegel seines Geistes die Idee rein und deutlich, und seine Schilderung ist, bis auf das Einzelne herab, wahr wie das Leben selbst [43]. Die großen alten Historiker sind daher im Einzelnen, wo die Data sie verlassen, z. B. in den Reden ihrer Helden, Dichter; ja, ihre ganze Behandlungsart des Stoffes nähert sich dem Epischen: dies aber eben giebt ihren Darstellungen Einheit, und läßt sie die innere Wahrheit behalten, selbst da, wo die äußere ihnen nicht zugänglich, oder gar verfälscht war: und verglichen wir vorhin die Geschichte mit der Porträtmalerei, im Gegensatz der Poesie, welche der Historienmalerei entspräche; so finden wir Winckelmanns Ausspruch, daß das Porträt das Ideal des Individuums seyn soll, auch von den alten Historikern befolgt, da sie das Einzelne doch so darstellen, daß die sich darin aussprechende Seite der Idee der Menschheit hervortritt: die neuen dagegen, Wenige ausgenommen, geben meistens nur „ein Kehrichtfaß und eine Rumpelkammer und höchstens eine Haupt- und Staatsaktion“. — Wer also die [44] Es versteht sich, daß ich überall ausschließlich von dem so seltenen, großen, ächten Dichter rede und Niemanden weniger meyne, als jenes schaale Volk der mediokren Poeten, Reimschmiede und Mährchenerfinner, welches besonders heut zu Tage in Deutschland so sehr wuchert, dem man aber von allen Seiten unaufhörlich in die Ohren rufen sollte:

Mediocribus esse poëtis Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.

Es ist selbst ernster Berücksichtigung werth, welche Menge eigener und fremder Zeit und Papiers von diesem Schwarm der mediokren Poeten verdorben wird und wie schädlich ihr Einfluß ist, indem das Publikum theils immer nach dem Neuen greift, theils auch sogar zum Verkehrten und Platten, als welches ihm homogener ist, von Natur mehr Neigung hat; daher jene Werke der Mediokren es von den ächten Meisterwerken und seiner Bildung durch dieselben abziehen und zurückhalten, folglich dem günstigen Einfluß der Genien gerade entgegenarbeitend, den Geschmack immer mehr verderben und so die Fortschritte des Zeitalters hemmen. Daher sollten Kritik und Satire, ohne alle Nachsicht und Mitleid, die mediokren Poeten geißeln, bis sie, zu ihrem eigenen Besten, dahin gebracht würden, ihre Muße lieber anzuwenden Gutes zu lesen, als Schlechtes zu schreiben. — Denn wenn selbst den sanften Musengott die Stümperei der Unberufenen in solchen Grimm versetzte, daß er den Marsyas schinden konnte; so sehe ich nicht, worauf die mediokre Poesie ihre Ansprüche an Toleranz gründen will.

Menschheit, ihrem innern, in allen Erscheinungen und Entwickelungen identischen Wesen, ihrer Idee nach, erkennen will, dem werden die Werke der großen, unsterblichen Dichter ein viel treueres und deutlicheres Bild vorhalten, als die Historiker je vermögen: denn selbst die besten unter diesen sind als Dichter lange nicht die ersten und haben auch nicht freie Hände. Man kann das Verhältniß beider, in dieser Rücksicht, auch durch folgendes Gleichniß erläutern. Der bloße, reine, nach den Datis allein arbeitende Historiker gleicht Einem, der ohne alle Kenntniß der Mathematik, aus zufällig vorgefundenen Figuren, die Verhältnisse derselben durch Messen erforscht, dessen empirisch gefundene Angabe daher mit allen Fehlern der gezeichneten Figur behaftet ist: der Dichter hingegen gleicht dem Mathematiker, welcher jene Verhältnisse a priori konstruirt, in reiner Anschauung, und sie aussagt, nicht wie die gezeichnete Figur sie wirklich hat, sondern wie sie in der Idee sind, welche die Zeichnung versinnlichen soll. — Darum sagt Schiller:

„Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben, Das allein veraltet nie.“

Ich muß sogar, in Hinsicht auf die Erkenntniß des Wesens der Menschheit, den Biographien, vornehmlich den Autobiographien, einen größern Werth zugestehen, als der eigentlichen Geschichte, wenigstens wie sie gewöhnlich behandelt wird. Theils nämlich sind bei jenen die Data richtiger und vollständiger zusammenzubringen, als bei dieser; theils agiren in der eigentlichen Geschichte nicht sowohl Menschen, als Völker und Heere, und die Einzelnen, welche noch auftreten, erscheinen in so großer Entfernung, mit so vieler Umgebung und so großem Gefolge, dazu verhüllt in steife Staatskleider oder schwere, unbiegsame Harnische, daß es wahrlich schwer hält, durch alles Dieses hindurch die menschliche Bewegung zu erkennen. Hingegen zeigt das treu geschilderte Leben des Einzelnen, in einer engen Sphäre, die Handlungsweise der Menschen in allen ihren Nüancen und Gestalten, die Trefflichkeit, Tugend, ja die Heiligkeit Einzelner, die Verkehrtheit, Erbärmlichkeit, Tücke der Meisten, die Ruchlosigkeit Mancher. Dabei ist es ja, in der hier allein betrachteten Rücksicht, nämlich in Betreff der innern Bedeutung des Erscheinenden, ganz gleichgültig, ob die Gegenstände, um die sich die Handlung dreht, relativ betrachtet, Kleinigkeiten oder Wichtigkeiten, Bauerhöfe oder Königreiche sind: denn alle diese Dinge, an sich ohne Bedeutung, erhalten solche nur dadurch und insofern, als durch sie der Wille bewegt wird: bloß durch seine Relation zum Willen hat das Motiv Bedeutsamkeit; hingegen die Relation, die es als Ding zu anderen solchen Dingen hat, kommt gar nicht in Betracht. Wie ein Kreis von einem Zoll Durchmesser und einer von 40 Millionen Meilen Durchmesser die selben geometrischen Eigenschaften vollständig haben, so sind die Vorgänge und die Geschichte eines Dorfes und die eines Reiches im Wesentlichen die selben; und man kann am Einen, wie am Andern, die Menschheit studiren und kennen lernen. Auch hat man Unrecht zu meynen, die Autobiographien seien voller Trug und Verstellung. Vielmehr ist das Lügen (obwohl überall möglich) dort vielleicht schwerer, als irgendwo. Verstellung ist am leichtesten in der bloßen Unterredung; ja sie ist, so paradox es klingt, schon in einem Briefe im Grunde schwerer, weil da der Mensch, sich selber überlassen, in sich sieht und nicht nach Außen, das Fremde und Ferne sich schwer nahe bringt und den Maaßstab des Eindrucks auf den Andern nicht vor Augen hat; dieser Andere dagegen, gelassen, in einer dem Schreiber fremden Stimmung, den Brief übersieht, zu wiederholten Malen und verschiedenen Zeiten liest, und so die verborgene Absicht leicht herausfindet. Einen Autor lernt man auch als Menschen am leichtesten aus seinem Buche kennen, weil alle jene Bedingungen hier noch stärker und anhaltender wirken; und in einer Selbstbiographie sich zu verstellen, ist so schwer, daß es vielleicht keine einzige giebt, die nicht im Ganzen wahrer wäre, als jede andere geschriebene Geschichte. Der Mensch, der sein Leben aufzeichnet, überblickt es im Ganzen und Großen, das Einzelne wird klein, das Nahe entfernt sich, das Ferne kommt wieder nah, die Rücksichten schrumpfen ein: er sitzt sich selbst zur Beichte und hat sich freiwillig hingesetzt: der Geist der Lüge faßt ihn hier nicht so leicht: denn es liegt in jedem Menschen auch eine Neigung zur Wahrheit, die bei jeder Lüge erst überwältigt werden muß und die eben hier eine ungemein starke Stellung angenommen hat. Das Verhältniß zwischen Biographie und Völkergeschichte läßt sich durch folgendes Gleichniß anschaulich machen. Die Geschichte zeigt uns die Menschheit, wie uns eine Aussicht von einem hohen Berge die Natur zeigt: wir sehen Vieles auf ein Mal, weite Strecken, große Massen; aber deutlich wird nichts, noch seinem ganzen eigentlichen Wesen nach erkennbar. Dagegen zeigt uns das dargestellte Leben des Einzelnen den Menschen so, wie wir die Natur erkennen, wenn wir zwischen ihren Bäumen, Pflanzen, Felsen und Gewässern umhergehen. Wie aber durch die Landschaftsmalerei, in welcher der Künstler uns durch seine Augen in die Natur blicken läßt, uns die Erkenntniß ihrer Ideen und der zu dieser erforderte Zustand des willenlosen, reinen Erkennens sehr erleichtert wird; so hat für die Darstellung der Ideen, welche wir in Geschichte und Biographie suchen können, die Dichtkunst sehr Vieles vor beiden voraus: denn auch hier hält uns der Genius den verdeutlichenden Spiegel vor, in welchem alles Wesentliche und Bedeutsame zusammengestellt und ins hellste Licht gesetzt uns entgegentritt, das Zufällige und Fremdartige aber ausgeschieden ist [45].

Die Darstellung der Idee der Menschheit, welche dem Dichter obliegt, kann er nun entweder so ausführen, daß der Dargestellte zugleich auch der Darstellende ist: dieses geschieht in der lyrischen Poesie, im eigentlichen Liede, wo der Dichtende nur seinen eigenen Zustand lebhaft anschaut und beschreibt, wobei daher, durch den Gegenstand, dieser Gattung eine gewisse Subjektivität wesentlich ist; — oder aber der Darzustellende ist vom Darstellenden ganz verschieden, wie in allen anderen Gattungen, wo mehr oder weniger der Darstellende hinter dem Dargestellten sich verbirgt und zuletzt ganz verschwindet. In der Romanze drückt der Darstellende seinen eigenen Zustand noch durch Ton und Haltung des Ganzen in etwas aus: viel objektiver als das Lied hat sie daher noch etwas Subjektives, dieses verschwindet schon mehr im Idyll, noch viel mehr im Roman, fast ganz im eigentlichen Epos, und bis auf die letzte Spur endlich im Drama, welches die objektiveste und in mehr als einer Hinsicht vollkommenste, auch schwierigste Gattung der Poesie ist. Die lyrische Gattung ist ebendeshalb die leichteste, und wenn die Kunst sonst nur dem so seltenen ächten Genius angehört, so kann selbst der im Ganzen nicht sehr eminente Mensch, wenn in der That, durch [46] Hiezu Kap. 38 des zweiten Bandes. starke Anregung von Außen, irgend eine Begeisterung seine Geisteskräfte erhöht, ein schönes Lied zu Stande bringen: denn es bedarf dazu nur einer lebhaften Anschauung seines eigenen Zustandes im aufgeregten Moment. Dies beweisen viele einzelne Lieder übrigens unbekannt gebliebener Individuen, besonders die Deutschen Volkslieder, von denen wir im „Wunderhorn“ eine treffliche Sammlung haben, und eben so unzählige Liebes- und andere Lieder des Volkes in allen Sprachen. Denn die Stimmung des Augenblickes zu ergreifen und im Liede zu verkörpern ist die ganze Leistung dieser poetischen Gattung. Dennoch bildet in der lyrischen Poesie ächter Dichter sich das Innere der ganzen Menschheit ab, und Alles, was Millionen gewesener, seiender, künftiger Menschen, in den selben, weil stets wiederkehrenden, Lagen, empfunden haben und empfinden werden, findet darin seinen entsprechenden Ausdruck. Weil jene Lagen, durch die beständige Wiederkehr, eben wie die Menschheit selbst, als bleibende dastehen und stets die selben Empfindungen hervorrufen, bleiben die lyrischen Produkte ächter Dichter Jahrtausende hindurch richtig, wirksam und frisch. Ist doch überhaupt der Dichter der allgemeine Mensch: Alles, was irgend eines Menschen Herz bewegt hat, und was die menschliche Natur, in irgend einer Lage, aus sich hervortreibt, was irgendwo in einer Menschenbrust wohnt und brütet, — ist sein Thema und sein Stoff; wie daneben auch die ganze übrige Natur. Daher kann der Dichter so gut die Wollust, wie die Mystik besingen, Anakreon, oder Angelus Silesius seyn, Tragödien, oder Komödien schreiben, die erhabene, oder die gemeine Gesinnung darstellen, — nach Laune und Beruf. Demnach darf Niemand dem Dichter vorschreiben, daß er edel und erhaben, moralisch, fromm, christlich, oder Dies oder Das seyn soll, noch weniger ihm vorwerfen, daß er Dies und nicht Jenes sei. Er ist der Spiegel der Menschheit, und bringt ihr was sie fühlt und treibt zum Bewußtseyn.

Betrachten wir nun das Wesen des eigentlichen Liedes näher und nehmen dabei treffliche und zugleich reine Muster zu Beispielen, nicht solche, die sich schon einer andern Gattung, etwan der Romanze, der Elegie, der Hymne, dem Epigramm u. s. w. irgendwie nähern; so werden wir finden, daß das eigenthümliche Wesen des Liedes im engsten Sinne folgendes ist. — Es ist das Subjekt des Willens, d. h. das eigene Wollen, was das Bewußtseyn des Singenden füllt, oft als ein entbundenes, befriedigtes Wollen (Freude), wohl noch öfter aber als ein gehemmtes (Trauer), immer als Affekt, Leidenschaft, bewegter Gemüthszustand. Neben diesem jedoch und zugleich damit wird durch den Anblick der umgebenden Natur der Singende sich seiner bewußt als Subjekts des reinen, willenlosen Erkennens, dessen unerschütterliche, seelige Ruhe nunmehr in Kontrast tritt mit dem Drange des immer beschränkten, immer noch dürftigen Wollens: die Empfindung dieses Kontrastes, dieses Wechselspieles ist eigentlich was sich im Ganzen des Liedes ausspricht und was überhaupt den lyrischen Zustand ausmacht. In diesem tritt gleichsam das reine Erkennen zu uns heran, um uns vom Wollen und seinem Drange zu erlösen: wir folgen; doch nur auf Augenblicke: immer von Neuem entreißt das Wollen, die Erinnerung an unsere persönliche Zwecke, uns der ruhigen Beschauung; aber auch immer wieder entlockt uns dem Wollen die nächste schöne Umgebung, in welcher sich die reine willenslose Erkenntniß uns darbietet. Darum geht im Liede und der lyrischen Stimmung das Wollen (das persönliche Interesse der Zwecke) und das reine Anschauen der sich darbietenden Umgebung wundersam gemischt durch einander: es werden Beziehungen zwischen beiden gesucht und imaginirt; die subjektive Stimmung, die Affektion des Willens, theilt der angeschauten Umgebung und diese wiederum jener ihre Farbe im Reflex mit: von diesem ganzen so gemischten und getheilten Gemüthszustande ist das ächte Lied der Abdruck. — Um sich diese abstrakte Zergliederung eines von aller Abstraktion sehr fernen Zustandes an Beispielen faßlich zu machen, kann man jedes der unsterblichen Lieder Goethes zur Hand nehmen: als besonders deutlich zu diesem Zweck will ich nur einige empfehlen: „Schäfers Klagelied“, „Willkommen und Abschied“, „An den Mond“, „Auf dem See“, „Herbstgefühl“, auch sind ferner die eigentlichen Lieder im „Wunderhorn“ vortreffliche Beispiele: ganz besonders jenes, welches anhebt: „O Bremen, ich muß dich nun lassen.“ — Als eine komische, richtig treffende Parodie des lyrischen Charakters ist mir ein Lied von Voß merkwürdig, in welchem er die Empfindung eines betrunkenen, vom Thurm herabfallenden Bleideckers schildert, der im Vorbeifallen die seinem Zustande sehr fremde, also der willensfreien Erkenntniß angehörige Bemerkung macht, daß die Thurmuhr eben halb zwölf weist. — Wer die dargelegte Ansicht des lyrischen Zustandes mit mir theilt, wird auch zugeben, daß derselbe eigentlich die anschauliche und poetische Erkenntniß jenes in meiner Abhandlung über den Satz vom Grunde aufgestellten, auch in dieser Schrift schon erwähnten Satzes sei, daß die Identität des Subjekts des Erkennens mit dem des Wollens, das Wunder κατ’ ἐξοχην genannt werden kann; so daß die poetische Wirkung des Liedes zuletzt eigentlich auf der Wahrheit jenes Satzes beruht. Im Verlaufe des Lebens treten jene beiden Subjekte, oder, popular zu reden, Kopf und Herz, immer mehr aus einander: immer mehr sondert man seine subjektive Empfindung von seiner objektiven Erkenntniß. Im Kinde sind Beide noch ganz verschmolzen: es weiß sich von seiner Umgebung kaum zu unterscheiden, es verschwimmt mit ihr. Im Jüngling wirkt alle Wahrnehmung zunächst Empfindung und Stimmung, ja vermischt sich mit dieser; wie dies Byron sehr schön ausdrückt:

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling [47].

Eben daher haftet der Jüngling so sehr an der anschaulichen Außenseite der Dinge; eben daher taugt er nur zur lyrischen Poesie, und erst der Mann zur dramatischen. Den Greis kann man sich höchstens noch als Epiker denken, wie Ossian, Homer: denn Erzählen gehört zum Charakter des Greises.

In den mehr objektiven Dichtungsarten, besonders dem Roman, Epos und Drama, wird der Zweck, die Offenbarung der Idee der Menschheit, besonders durch zwei Mittel erreicht: durch richtige und tiefgefaßte Darstellung bedeutender Charaktere und durch Erfindung bedeutsamer Situationen, an denen sie sich entfalten. Denn wie dem Chemiker nicht nur obliegt, die einfachen Stoffe und ihre Hauptverbindungen rein und ächt darzustellen; sondern auch, sie dem Einfluß solcher Reagenzien auszusetzen, an welchen ihre Eigenthümlichkeiten deutlich und auffallend sichtbar [48] Nicht in mir selbst leb’ ich allein; ich werde Ein Theil von dem, was mich umgiebt, und mir Sind hohe Berge ein Gefühl. werden; ebenso liegt dem Dichter ob, nicht nur bedeutsame Charaktere wahr und treu, wie die Natur selbst, uns vorzuführen; sondern er muß, damit sie uns kenntlich werden, sie in solche Situationen bringen, in welchen ihre Eigenthümlichkeiten sich gänzlich entfalten und sie sich deutlich, in scharfen Umrissen darstellen, welche daher bedeutsame Situationen heißen. Im wirk-ichen Leben und in der Geschichte führt der Zufall nur selten Situationen von dieser Eigenschaft herbei, und sie stehen dort einzeln, verloren und verdeckt durch die Menge des Unbedeutsamen. Die durchgängige Bedeutsamkeit der Situationen soll den Roman, das Epos, das Drama vom wirklichen Leben unterscheiden, ebenso sehr, als die Zusammenstellung und Wahl bedeutsamer Charaktere: bei beiden ist aber die strengste Wahrheit unerläßliche Bedingung ihrer Wirkung, und Mangel an Einheit in den Charakteren, Widerspruch derselben gegen sich selbst, oder gegen das Wesen der Menschheit überhaupt, wie auch Unmög-ichkeit, oder ihr nahe kommende Unwahrscheinlichkeit in den Begebenheiten, sei es auch nur in Nebenumständen, beleidigen in der Poesie ebenso sehr, wie verzeichnete Figuren, oder falsche Perspektive, oder fehlerhafte Beleuchtung in der Malerei: denn wir verlangen, dort wie hier, den treuen Spiegel des Lebens, der Menschheit, der Welt, nur verdeutlicht durch die Darstellung und bedeutsam gemacht durch die Zusammenstellung. Da der Zweck aller Künste nur einer ist, Darstellung der Ideen, und ihr wesent-icher Unterschied nur darin liegt, welche Stufe der Objektivation des Willens die darzustellende Idee ist, wonach sich wieder das Material der Darstellung bestimmt; so lassen sich auch die von einander entferntesten Künste durch Vergleichung an einander erläutern. So z. B. um die Ideen, welche sich im Wasser aussprechen, vollständig aufzufassen, ist es nicht hinreichend, es im ruhigen Teich und im ebenmäßig fließenden Strome zu sehen; sondern jene Ideen entfalten sich ganz erst dann, wann das Wasser unter allen Umständen und Hindernissen erscheint, die auf dasselbe wirkend, es zur vollen Aeußerung aller seiner Eigenschaften veranlassen. Darum finden wir es schön, wenn es herabstürzt, braust, schäumt, wieder in die Höhe springt, oder wenn es fallend zerstäubt, oder endlich, künstlich gezwungen, als Strahl emporstrebt: so unter verschiedenen Umständen sich verschieden bezeigend, behauptet es aber immer getreulich seinen Charakter: es ist ihm eben so natürlich aufwärts zu spritzen, als spiegelnd zu ruhen; es ist zum Einen wie zum Anderen gleich bereit, sobald die Umstände eintreten. Was nun der Wasserkünstler an der flüssigen Materie leistet, das leistet der Architekt an der starren, und eben dieses der epische oder dramatische Dichter an der Idee der Menschheit. Entfaltung und Verdeutlichung der im Objekt jeder Kunst sich aussprechenden Idee, des auf jeder Stufe sich objektivirenden Willens, ist der gemeinsame Zweck aller Künste. Das Leben des Menschen, wie es in der Wirklichkeit sich meistens zeigt, gleicht dem Wasser, wie es sich meistens zeigt, in Teich und Fluß: aber im Epos, Roman und Trauerspiel werden ausgewählte Charaktere in solche Umstände versetzt, an welchen sich alle ihre Eigenthümlichkeiten entfalten, die Tiefen des menschlichen Gemüths sich aufschließen und in außerordentlichen und bedeutungsvollen Handlungen sichtbar werden. So objektivirt die Dichtkunst die Idee des Menschen, welcher es eigenthümlich ist, sich in höchst individuellen Charakteren darzustellen.

Als der Gipfel der Dichtkunst, sowohl in Hinsicht auf die Größe der Wirkung, als auf die Schwierigkeit der Leistung, ist das Trauerspiel anzusehen und ist dafür anerkannt. Es ist für das Ganze unserer gesammten Betrachtung sehr bedeutsam und wohl zu beachten, daß der Zweck dieser höchsten poetischen Leistung die Darstellung der schrecklichen Seite des Lebens ist, daß der namenlose Schmerz, der Jammer der Menschheit, der Triumph der Bosheit, die höhnende Herrschaft des Zufalls und der rettungslose Fall der Gerechten und Unschuldigen uns hier vorgeführt werden: denn hierin liegt ein bedeutsamer Wink über die Beschaffenheit der Welt und des Daseyns. Es ist der Widerstreit des Willens mit sich selbst, welcher hier, auf der höchsten Stufe seiner Objektität, am vollständigsten entfaltet, furchtbar hervortritt. Am Leiden der Menschheit wird er sichtbar, welches nun herbeigeführt wird, theils durch Zufall und Irrthum, die als Beherrscher der Welt, und durch ihre bis zum Schein der Absichtlichkeit gehende Tücke als Schicksal personifizirt, auftreten; theils geht er aus der Menschheit selbst hervor, durch die sich kreuzenden Willensbestrebungen der Individuen, durch die Bosheit und Verkehrtheit der Meisten. Ein und derselbe Wille ist es, der in ihnen allen lebt und erscheint, dessen Erscheinungen aber sich selbst bekämpfen und sich selbst zerfleischen. In diesem Individuo tritt er gewaltig, in jenem schwächer hervor, hier mehr, dort minder zur Besinnung gebracht und gemildert durch das Licht der Erkenntniß, bis endlich, im Einzelnen, diese Erkenntniß, geläutert und gesteigert durch das Leiden selbst, den Punkt erreicht, wo die Erscheinung, der Schleier der Maja, sie nicht mehr täuscht, die Form der Erscheinung, das principium individuationis, von ihr durchschaut wird, der auf diesem beruhende Egoismus eben damit erstirbt, wodurch nunmehr die vorhin so gewaltigen Motive ihre Macht verlieren, und statt ihrer die vollkommene Erkenntniß des Wesens der Welt, als Quietiv des Willens wirkend, die Resignation herbeiführt, das Aufgeben, nicht bloß des Lebens, sondern des ganzen Willens zum Leben selbst. So sehen wir im Trauerspiel zuletzt die Edelsten, nach langem Kampf und Leiden, den Zwecken, die sie bis dahin so heftig verfolgten, und allen den Genüssen des Lebens auf immer entsagen, oder es selbst willig und freudig aufgeben: so den standhaften Prinzen des Calderon; so das Gretchen im „Faust“; so den Hamlet, dem sein Horatio willig folgen möchte, welchen aber jener bleiben und noch eine Weile in dieser rauhen Welt mit Schmerzen athmen heißt, um Hamlets Schicksal aufzuklären und dessen Andenken zu reinigen; — so auch die Jungfrau von Orleans, die Braut von Messina: sie alle sterben durch Leiden geläutert, d. h. nachdem der Wille zu leben zuvor in ihnen erstorben ist; im „Mohammed“ von Voltaire spricht sich Dieses sogar wörtlich aus in den Schlußworten, welche die sterbende Palmira dem Mohammed zuruft: „Die Welt ist für Tyrannen: Lebe Du!“ — Hingegen beruht die Forderung der sogenannten poetischen Gerechtigkeit auf gänzlichem Verkennen des Wesens des Trauerspiels, ja selbst des Wesens der Welt. Mit Dreistigkeit tritt sie in ihrer ganzen Plattheit auf in den Kritiken, welche Dr. Samuel Johnson zu den einzelnen Stücken Shakespeares geliefert hat, indem er recht naiv über die durchgängige Vernachlässigung derselben klagt; welche allerdings vorhanden ist: denn was haben die Ophelien, die Desdemonen, die Kordelien verschuldet? — Aber nur die platte, optimistische, protestantisch-rationalistische, oder eigentlich jüdische Weltansicht wird die Forderung der poetischen Gerechtigkeit machen und an deren Befriedigung ihre eigene finden. Der wahre Sinn des Trauerspiels ist die tiefere Einsicht, daß was der Held abbüßt nicht seine Partikularsünden sind, sondern die Erbsünde, d. h. die Schuld des Daseyns selbst:

Pues el delito mayor Del hombre es haber nacido.

(Da die größte Schuld des Menschen Ist, daß er geboren ward.)

Wie Calderon es geradezu ausspricht.

Die Behandlungsart des Trauerspiels näher betreffend, will ich mir nur eine Bemerkung erlauben. Darstellung eines großen Unglücks ist dem Trauerspiel allein wesentlich. Die vielen verschiedenen Wege aber, auf welchen es vom Dichter herbeigeführt wird, lassen sich unter drei Artbegriffe bringen. Es kann nämlich geschehen durch außerordentliche, an die äußersten Gränzen der Möglichkeit streifende Bosheit eines Charakters, welcher der Urheber des Unglücks wird; Beispiele dieser Art sind: Richard III., Jago im „Othello“, Shylok im „Kaufmann von Venedig“, Franz Moor, Phädra des Euripides, Kreon in der „Antigone“, u. dgl. m. Es kann ferner geschehen durch blindes Schicksal, d. i. Zufall und Irrthum: von dieser Art ist ein wahres Muster der König Oedipus des Sophokles, auch die Trachinerinnen, und überhaupt gehören die meisten Tragödien der Alten hieher: unter den Neuern sind Beispiele: „Romeo und Juliet“, „Tankred“ von Voltaire, „Die Braut von Messina“. Das Unglück kann aber endlich auch herbeigeführt werden durch die bloße Stellung der Personen gegen einander, durch die Verhältnisse; so daß es weder eines ungeheuren Irrthums, oder eines unerhörten Zufalls, noch auch eines die Gränzen der Menschheit im Bösen erreichenden Charakters bedarf; sondern Charaktere wie sie in moralischer Hinsicht gewöhnlich sind, unter Umständen, wie sie häufig eintreten, sind so gegen einander gestellt, daß ihre Lage sie zwingt, sich gegenseitig, wissend und sehend, das größte Unheil zu bereiten, ohne daß dabei das Unrecht auf irgend einer Seite ganz allein sei. Diese letztere Art scheint mir den beiden anderen weit vorzuziehen; denn sie zeigt uns das größte Unglück nicht als eine Ausnahme, nicht als etwas durch seltene Umstände, oder monströse Charaktere Herbeigeführtes, sondern als etwas aus dem Thun und den Charakteren der Menschen leicht und von selbst, fast als wesentlich Hervorgehendes, und führt es eben dadurch furchtbar nahe an uns heran. Und wenn wir in den beiden andern Arten das ungeheure Schicksal und die entsetzliche Bosheit als schreckliche, aber nur aus großer Ferne von uns drohende Mächte erblicken, denen wir selbst wohl entgehen dürften, ohne zur Entsagung zu flüchten; so zeigt uns die letzte Gattung jene Glück und Leben zerstörenden Mächte von der Art, daß auch zu uns ihnen der Weg jeden Augenblick offen steht, und das größte Leiden herbeigeführt durch Verflechtungen, deren Wesentliches auch unser Schicksal annehmen könnte, und durch Handlungen, die auch wir vielleicht zu begehen fähig wären und also nicht über Unrecht klagen dürften: dann fühlen wir schaudernd uns schon mitten in der Hölle. Die Ausführung in dieser letztern Art hat aber auch die größte Schwierigkeit; da man darin mit dem geringsten Aufwand von Mitteln und Bewegungsursachen, bloß durch ihre Stellung und Vertheilung die größte Wirkung hervorzubringen hat: daher ist selbst in vielen der besten Trauerspiele diese Schwierigkeit umgangen. Als ein vollkommenes Muster dieser Art ist jedoch ein Stück anzuführen, welches von mehreren andern desselben großen Meisters in anderer Hinsicht weit übertroffen wird: es ist „Clavigo“. „Hamlet“ gehört gewissermaßen hieher, wenn man nämlich bloß auf sein Verhältniß zum Laërtes und zur Ophelia sieht; auch hat „Wallenstein“ diesen Vorzug; „Faust“ ist ganz dieser Art, wenn man bloß die Begebenheit mit dem Gretchen und ihrem Bruder, als die Haupthandlung, betrachtet; ebenfalls der „Cid“ des Corneille, nur daß diesem der tragische Ausgang fehlt, wie ihn hingegen das analoge Verhältniß des Max zur Thekla hat⁴⁹.

52 Nachdem wir nun im Bisherigen alle schönen Künste, in derjenigen Allgemeinheit, die unserm Standpunkt angemessen ist, betrachtet haben, anfangend von der schönen Baukunst, deren Zweck als solcher die Verdeutlichung der Objektivation des Willens auf der niedrigsten Stufe seiner Sichtbarkeit ist, wo er sich als [50] Hiezu Kap. 37 des zweiten Bandes. dumpfes, erkenntnißloses, gesetzmäßiges Streben der Masse zeigt und doch schon Selbstentzweiung und Kampf offenbart, nämlich zwischen Schwere und Starrheit; — und unsere Betrachtung beschließend mit dem Trauerspiel, welches auf der höchsten Stufe der Objektivation des Willens, eben jenen seinen Zwiespalt mit sich selbst, in furchtbarer Größe und Deutlichkeit uns vor die Augen bringt; — so finden wir, daß dennoch eine schöne Kunst von unserer Betrachtung ausgeschlossen geblieben ist und bleiben mußte, da im systematischen Zusammenhang unserer Darstellung gar keine Stelle für sie passend war: es ist die Musik. Sie steht ganz abgesondert von allen andern. Wir erkennen in ihr nicht die Nachbildung, Wiederholung irgend einer Idee der Wesen in der Welt: dennoch ist sie eine so große und überaus herrliche Kunst, wirkt so mächtig auf das Innerste des Menschen, wird dort so ganz und so tief von ihm verstanden, als eine ganz allgemeine Sprache, deren Deutlichkeit sogar die der anschaulichen Welt selbst übertrifft; — daß wir gewiß mehr in ihr zu suchen haben, als ein exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi, wofür sie Leibniz ansprach⁵¹ und dennoch ganz Recht hatte, sofern er nur ihre unmittelbare und äußere Bedeutung, ihre Schale betrachtete. Wäre sie jedoch nichts weiter, so müßte die Befriedigung, welche sie gewährt, der ähnlich seyn, die wir beim richtigen Aufgehn eines Rechnungsexempels empfinden, und könnte nicht jene innige Freude seyn, mit der wir das tiefste Innere unseres Wesens zur Sprache gebracht sehen. Auf unserm Standpunkte daher, wo die ästhetische Wirkung unser Augenmerk ist, müssen wir ihr eine viel ernstere und tiefere, sich auf das innerste Wesen der Welt und unseres Selbst beziehende Bedeutung zuerkennen, in Hinsicht auf welche die Zahlenverhältnisse, in die sie sich auflösen läßt, sich nicht als das Bezeichnete, sondern selbst erst als das Zeichen verhalten. Daß sie zur Welt, in irgend einem Sinne, sich wie Darstellung zum Dargestellten, wie Nachbild zum Vorbilde verhalten muß, können wir aus der Analogie mit den übrigen Künsten schließen, denen allen dieser Charakter eigen ist, und mit deren Wirkung auf uns die ihrige im Ganzen gleichartig, nur stärker, schneller, nothwendiger, unfehlbarer ist.

52 Leibnitii epistolae, collectio Kortholti: ep. 154.

Auch muß jene ihre nachbildliche Beziehung zur Welt eine sehr innige, unendlich wahre und richtig treffende seyn, weil sie von Jedem augenblicklich verstanden wird und eine gewisse Unfehlbarkeit dadurch zu erkennen giebt, daß ihre Form sich auf ganz bestimmte, in Zahlen auszudrückende Regeln zurückführen läßt, von denen sie gar nicht abweichen kann, ohne gänzlich aufzuhören Musik zu seyn. — Dennoch liegt der Vergleichungspunkt zwischen der Musik und der Welt, die Hinsicht, in welcher jene zu dieser im Verhältniß der Nachahmung oder Wiederholung steht, sehr tief verborgen. Man hat die Musik zu allen Zeiten geübt, ohne hierüber sich Rechenschaft geben zu können: zufrieden, sie unmittelbar zu verstehen, thut man Verzicht auf ein abstraktes Begreifen dieses unmittelbaren Verstehens selbst.

Indem ich meinen Geist dem Eindruck der Tonkunst, in ihren mannigfaltigen Formen, gänzlich hingab, und dann wieder zur Reflexion und zu dem in gegenwärtiger Schrift dargelegten Gange meiner Gedanken zurückkehrte, ward mir ein Aufschluß über ihr inneres Wesen und über die Art ihres, der Analogie nach nothwendig vorauszusetzenden, nachbildlichen Verhältnisses zur Welt, welcher mir selbst zwar völlig genügend und für mein Forschen befriedigend ist, auch wohl Demjenigen, der mir bisher gefolgt wäre und meiner Ansicht der Welt beigestimmt hätte, ebenso einleuchtend seyn wird; welchen Aufschluß jedoch zu beweisen, ich als wesentlich unmöglich erkenne; da er ein Verhältniß der Musik, als einer Vorstellung, zu Dem, was wesentlich nie Vorstellung seyn kann, annimmt und festsetzt, und die Musik als Nachbild eines Vorbildes, welches selbst nie unmittelbar vorgestellt werden kann, angesehen haben will. Ich kann deshalb nichts weiter thun, als hier am Schlusse dieses der Betrachtung der Künste hauptsächlich gewidmeten dritten Buches, jenen mir genügenden Aufschluß über die wunderbare Kunst der Töne vortragen, und muß die Beistimmung oder Verneinung meiner Ansicht der Wirkung anheimstellen, welche auf jeden Leser theils die Musik, theils der ganze und eine von mir in dieser Schrift mitgetheilte Gedanke hat. Ueberdies halte ich es, um der hier zu gebenden Darstellung der Bedeutung der Musik mit ächter Ueberzeugung seinen Beifall geben zu können, für nothwendig, daß man oft mit anhaltender Reflexion auf dieselbe der Musik zuhöre, und hiezu wieder ist erforderlich, daß man mit dem ganzen von mir dargestellten Gedanken schon sehr vertraut sei.

Die adäquate Objektivation des Willens sind die (Platonischen) Ideen; die Erkenntniß dieser durch Darstellung einzelner Dinge (denn solche sind die Kunstwerke selbst doch immer) anzuregen (welches nur unter einer diesem entsprechenden Veränderung im erkennenden Subjekt möglich ist), ist der Zweck aller andern Künste. Sie alle objektiviren also den Willen nur mittelbar, nämlich mittelst der Ideen: und da unsere Welt nichts Anderes ist, als die Erscheinung der Ideen in der Vielheit, mittelst Eingang in das principium individuationis (die Form der dem Individuo als solchem möglichen Erkenntniß); so ist die Musik, da sie die Ideen übergeht, auch von der erscheinenden Welt ganz unabhängig, ignorirt sie schlechthin, könnte gewissermaaßen, auch wenn die Welt gar nicht wäre, doch bestehen: was von den anderen Künsten sich nicht sagen läßt. Die Musik ist nämlich eine so unmittelbare Objektivation und Abbild des ganzen Willens, wie die Welt selbst es ist, ja wie die Ideen es sind, deren vervielfältigte Erscheinung die Welt der einzelnen Dinge ausmacht. Die Musik ist also keineswegs, gleich den andern Künsten, das Abbild der Ideen; sondern Abbild des Willens selbst, dessen Objektität auch die Ideen sind: deshalb eben ist die Wirkung der Musik so sehr viel mächtiger und eindringlicher, als die der andern Künste: denn diese reden nur vom Schatten, sie aber vom Wesen. Da es inzwischen der selbe Wille ist, der sich sowohl in den Ideen, als in der Musik, nur in jedem von beiden auf ganz verschiedene Weise, objektivirt; so muß, zwar durchaus keine unmittelbare Aehnlichkeit, aber doch ein Parallelismus, eine Analogie seyn zwischen der Musik und zwischen den Ideen, deren Erscheinung in der Vielheit und Unvollkommenheit die sichtbare Welt ist. Die Nachweisung dieser Analogie wird als Erläuterung das Verständniß dieser durch die Dunkelheit des Gegenstandes schwierigen Erklärung erleichtern.

Ich erkenne in den tiefsten Tönen der Harmonie, im Grundbaß, die niedrigsten Stufen der Objektivation des Willens wieder, die unorganische Natur, die Masse des Planeten. Alle die hohen Töne, leicht beweglich und schneller verklingend, sind bekanntlich anzusehen als entstanden durch die Nebenschwingungen des tiefen Grundtones, bei dessen Anklang sie immer zugleich leise miterklingen, und es ist Gesetz der Harmonie, daß auf eine Baßnote nur diejenigen hohen Töne treffen dürfen, die wirklich schon von selbst mit ihr zugleich ertönen (ihre sons harmoniques) durch die Nebenschwingungen. Dieses ist nun dem analog, daß die gesammten Körper und Organisationen der Natur angesehen werden müssen als entstanden durch die stufenweise Entwickelung aus der Masse des Planeten: diese ist, wie ihr Träger, so ihre Quelle: und das selbe Verhältniß haben die höhern Töne zum Grundbaß. — Die Tiefe hat eine Gränze, über welche hinaus kein Ton mehr hörbar ist: dies entspricht dem, daß keine Materie ohne Form und Qualität wahrnehmbar ist, d. h. ohne Aeußerung einer nicht weiter erklärbaren Kraft, in der eben sich eine Idee ausspricht, und allgemeiner, daß keine Materie ganz willenlos seyn kann: also wie vom Ton als solchem ein gewisser Grad der Höhe unzertrennlich ist, so von der Materie ein gewisser Grad der Willensäußerung. — Der Grundbaß ist uns also in der Harmonie, was in der Welt die unorganische Natur, die roheste Masse, auf der Alles ruht und aus der sich Alles erhebt und entwickelt. — Nun ferner in den gesammten die Harmonie hervorbringenden Ripienstimmen, zwischen dem Basse und der leitenden, die Melodie singenden Stimme, erkenne ich die gesammte Stufenfolge der Ideen wieder, in denen der Wille sich objektivirt. Die dem Baß näher stehenden sind die niedrigeren jener Stufen, die noch unorganischen, aber schon mehrfach sich äußernden Körper: die höher liegenden repräsentiren mir die Pflanzen- und die Thierwelt. — Die bestimmten Intervalle der Tonleiter sind parallel den bestimmten Stufen der Objektivation des Willens, den bestimmten Species in der Natur. Das Abweichen von der arithmetischen Richtigkeit der Intervalle, durch irgend eine Temperatur, oder herbeigeführt durch die gewählte Tonart, ist analog dem Abweichen des Individuums vom Typus der Species: ja die unreinen Mißtöne, die kein bestimmtes Intervall geben, lassen sich den monströsen Mißgeburten zwischen zwei Thierspecies, oder zwischen Mensch und Thier, vergleichen. — Allen diesen Baß- und Ripienstimmen, welche die Harmonie ausmachen, fehlt nun aber jener Zusammenhang in der Fortschreitung, den allein die obere, die Melodie singende Stimme hat, welche auch allein sich schnell und leicht in Modulationen und Läufen bewegt, während jene alle nur eine langsamere Bewegung, ohne einen in jeder für sich bestehenden Zusammenhang, haben. Am schwerfälligsten bewegt sich der tiefe Baß, der Repräsentant der rohesten Masse: sein Steigen und Fallen geschieht nur in großen Stufen, in Terzen, Quarten, Quinten, nie um einen Ton; er wäre denn ein, durch doppelten Kontrapunkt, versetzter Baß. Diese langsame Bewegung ist ihm auch physisch wesentlich: ein schneller Lauf oder Triller in der Tiefe läßt sich nicht einmal imaginiren. Schneller, jedoch noch ohne melodischen Zusammenhang und sinnvolle Fortschreitung, bewegen sich die höhern Ripienstimmen, welche der Thierwelt parallel laufen. Der unzusammenhängende Gang und die gesetzmäßige Bestimmung aller Ripienstimmen ist dem analog, daß in der ganzen unvernünftigen Welt, vom Krystall bis zum vollkommensten Thier, kein Wesen ein eigentlich zusammenhängendes Bewußtseyn hat, welches sein Leben zu einem sinnvollen Ganzen machte, auch keines eine Succession geistiger Entwickelungen erfährt, keines durch Bildung sich vervollkommnet, sondern Alles gleichmäßig zu jeder Zeit dasteht, wie es seiner Art nach ist, durch festes Gesetz bestimmt. — Endlich in der Melodie, in der hohen, singenden, das Ganze leitenden und mit ungebundener Willkür in ununterbrochenem, bedeutungsvollem Zusammenhange eines Gedankens vom Anfang bis zum Ende fortschreitenden, ein Ganzes darstellenden Hauptstimme, erkenne ich die höchste Stufe der Objektivation des Willens wieder, das besonnene Leben und Streben des Menschen. Wie er allein, weil er vernunftbegabt ist, stets vor- und rückwärts sieht, auf den Weg seiner Wirklichkeit und der unzähligen Möglichkeiten, und so einen besonnenen und dadurch als Ganzes zusammenhängenden Lebenslauf vollbringt: — dem also entsprechend, hat die Melodie allein bedeutungsvollen, absichtsvollen Zusammenhang vom Anfang bis zum Ende. Sie erzählt folglich die Geschichte des von der Besonnenheit beleuchteten Willens, dessen Abdruck in der Wirklichkeit die Reihe seiner Thaten ist; aber sie sagt mehr, sie erzählt seine geheimste Geschichte, malt jede Regung, jedes Streben, jede Bewegung des Willens, alles Das, was die Vernunft unter den weiten und negativen Begriff Gefühl zusammenfaßt und nicht weiter in ihre Abstraktionen auf nehmen kann. Daher auch hat es immer geheißen, die Musik sei die Sprache des Gefühls und der Leidenschaft, so wie Worte die Sprache der Vernunft: schon Platon erklärt sie als ἡ των μελων κινησις μεμιμημενη, εν τοις παθημασιν ὁταν ψυχη γινηται (melodiarum motus, animi affectus imitans), De leg. VII, und auch Aristoteles sagt: δια τι οἱ ρυθμοι και τα μελη, φωνη ουσα, ηθεσιν εοικε; (cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces sunt, moribus similes sese exhibent?), Probl. c. 19.

Wie nun das Wesen des Menschen darin besteht, daß sein Wille strebt, befriedigt wird und von Neuem strebt, und so immerfort, ja, sein Glück und Wohlseyn nur Dieses ist, daß jener Uebergang vom Wunsch zur Befriedigung und von dieser zum neuen Wunsch rasch vorwärts geht, da das Ausbleiben der Befriedigung Leiden, das des neuen Wunsches leeres Sehnen, languor, Langeweile ist; so ist, Dem entsprechend, das Wesen der Melodie ein stetes Abweichen, Abirren vom Grundton, auf tausend Wegen, nicht nur zu den harmonischen Stufen, zur Terz und Dominante, sondern zu jedem Ton, zur dissonanten Septime und zu den übermäßigen Stufen, aber immer folgt ein endliches Zurückkehren zum Grundton: auf allen jenen Wegen drückt die Melodie das vielgestaltete Streben des Willens aus, aber immer auch, durch das endliche Wiederfinden einer harmonischen Stufe, und noch mehr des Grundtones, die Befriedigung. Die Erfindung der Melodie, die Aufdeckung aller tiefsten Geheimnisse des menschlichen Wollens und Empfindens in ihr, ist das Werk des Genius, dessen Wirken hier augenscheinlicher, als irgendwo, fern von aller Reflexion und bewußter Absichtlichkeit liegt und eine Inspiration heißen könnte. Der Begriff ist hier, wie überall in der Kunst, unfruchtbar: der Komponist offenbart das innerste Wesen der Welt und spricht die tiefste Weisheit aus, in einer Sprache, die seine Vernunft nicht versteht; wie eine magnetische Somnambule Aufschlüsse giebt über Dinge, von denen sie wachend keinen Begriff hat. Daher ist in einem Komponisten, mehr als in irgend einem andern Künstler, der Mensch vom Künstler ganz getrennt und unterschieden. Sogar bei der Erklärung dieser wunderbaren Kunst zeigt der Begriff seine Dürftigkeit und seine Schranken: ich will indessen unsere Analogie durchzuführen suchen. — Wie nun schneller Uebergang vom Wunsch zur Befriedigung und von dieser zum neuen Wunsch, Glück und Wohlseyn ist, so sind rasche Melodien, ohne große Abirrungen, fröhlich; langsame, auf schmerzliche Dissonanzen gerathende und erst durch viele Takte sich wieder zum Grundton zurückfindende sind, als analog der verzögerten, erschwerten Befriedigung, traurig. Die Verzögerung der neuen Willensregung, der languor, würde keinen andern Ausdruck haben können, als den angehaltenen Grundton, dessen Wirkung bald unerträglich wäre: diesem nähern sich schon sehr monotone, nichtssagende Melodien. Die kurzen, faßlichen Sätze rascher Tanzmusik scheinen nur vom leicht zu erreichenden, gemeinen Glück zu reden; dagegen das Allegro maestoso, in großen Sätzen, langen Gängen, weiten Abirrungen, ein größeres, edleres Streben, nach einem fernen Ziel, und dessen endliche Erreichung bezeichnet. Das Adagio spricht vom Leiden eines großen und edlen Strebens, welches alles kleinliche Glück verschmäht. Aber wie wundervoll ist die Wirkung von Moll und Dur! Wie erstaunlich, daß der Wechsel eines halben Tones, der Eintritt der kleinen Terz, statt der großen, uns sogleich und unausbleiblich ein banges, peinliches Gefühl aufdringt, von welchem uns das Dur wieder ebenso augenblicklich erlöst. Das Adagio erlangt im Moll den Ausdruck des höchsten Schmerzes, wird zur erschütterndsten Wehklage. Tanzmusik in Moll scheint das Verfehlen des kleinlichen Glückes, das man lieber verschmähen sollte, zu bezeichnen, scheint vom Erreichen eines niedrigen Zweckes unter Mühsäligkeiten und Plackereien zu reden. — Die Unerschöpflichkeit möglicher Melodien entspricht der Unerschöpflichkeit der Natur an Verschiedenheit der Individuen, Physiognomien und Lebensläufen. Der Uebergang aus einer Tonart in eine ganz andere, da er den Zusammenhang mit dem Vorhergegangenen ganz aufhebt, gleicht dem Tode, sofern in ihm das Individuum endet; aber der Wille, der in diesem erschien, nach wie vor lebt, in andern Individuen erscheinend, deren Bewußtseyn jedoch mit dem des erstern keinen Zusammenhang hat.

Man darf jedoch bei der Nachweisung aller dieser vorgeführten Analogien nie vergessen, daß die Musik zu ihnen kein direktes, sondern nur ein mittelbares Verhältniß hat; da sie nie die Erscheinung, sondern allein das innere Wesen, das Ansich aller Erscheinung, den Willen selbst, ausspricht. Sie drückt daher nicht diese oder jene einzelne und bestimmte Freude, diese oder jene Betrübniß, oder Schmerz, oder Entsetzen, oder Jubel, oder Lustigkeit, oder Gemüthsruhe aus; sondern die Freude, die Betrübniß, den Schmerz, das Entsetzen, den Jubel, die Lustigkeit, die Gemüthsruhe selbst, gewissermaaßen in abstracto, das Wesentliche derselben, ohne alles Beiwerk, also auch ohne die Motive dazu. Dennoch verstehen wir sie, in dieser abgezogenen Quintessenz, vollkommen. Hieraus entspringt es, daß unsere Phantasie so leicht durch sie erregt wird und nun versucht, jene ganz unmittelbar zu uns redende, unsichtbare und doch so lebhaft bewegte Geisterwelt zu gestalten und sie mit Fleisch und Bein zu bekleiden, also dieselbe in einem analogen Beispiel zu verkörpern. Dies ist der Ursprung des Gesanges mit Worten und endlich der Oper, — welche eben deshalb diese untergeordnete Stellung nie verlassen sollten, um sich zur Hauptsache und die Musik zum bloßen Mittel ihres Ausdrucks zu machen, als welches ein großer Mißgriff und eine arge Verkehrtheit ist. Denn überall drückt die Musik nur die Quintessenz des Lebens und seiner Vorgänge aus, nie diese selbst, deren Unterschiede daher auf jene nicht allemal einfließen. Gerade diese ihr ausschließlich eigene Allgemeinheit, bei genauester Bestimmtheit, giebt ihr den hohen Werth, welchen sie als Panakeion aller unserer Leiden hat. Wenn also die Musik zu sehr sich den Worten anzuschließen und nach den Begebenheiten zu modeln sucht, so ist sie bemüht, eine Sprache zu reden, welche nicht die ihrige ist. Von diesem Fehler hat Keiner sich so rein gehalten, wie Rossini: daher spricht seine Musik so deutlich und rein ihre eigene Sprache, daß sie der Worte gar nicht bedarf und daher auch mit bloßen Instrumenten ausgeführt ihre volle Wirkung thut.

Diesem allen zufolge können wir die erscheinende Welt, oder die Natur, und die Musik als zwei verschiedene Ausdrücke der selben Sache ansehen, welche selbst daher das allein Vermittelnde der Analogie Beider ist, dessen Erkenntniß erfordert wird, um jene Analogie einzusehen. Die Musik ist demnach, wenn als Ausdruck der Welt angesehen, eine im höchsten Grad allgemeine Sprache, die sich sogar zur Allgemeinheit der Begriffe ungefähr verhält wie diese zu den einzelnen Dingen. Ihre Allgemeinheit ist aber keineswegs jene leere Allgemeinheit der Abstraktion, sondern ganz anderer Art, und ist verbunden mit durchgängiger deutlicher Bestimmtheit. Sie gleicht hierin den geometrischen Figuren und den Zahlen, welche als die allgemeinen Formen aller möglichen Objekte der Erfahrung und auf alle a priori anwendbar, doch nicht abstrakt, sondern anschaulich und durchgängig bestimmt sind. Alle möglichen Bestrebungen, Erregungen und Aeußerungen des Willens, alle jene Vorgänge im Innern des Menschen, welche die Vernunft in den weiten negativen Begriff Gefühl wirft, sind durch die unendlich vielen möglichen Melodien auszudrücken, aber immer in der Allgemeinheit bloßer Form, ohne den Stoff, immer nur nach dem Ansich, nicht nach der Erscheinung, gleichsam die innerste Seele derselben, ohne Körper. Aus diesem innigen Verhältniß, welches die Musik zum wahren Wesen aller Dinge hat, ist auch Dies zu erklären, daß wenn zu irgend einer Scene, Handlung, Vorgang, Umgebung, eine passende Musik ertönt, diese uns den geheimsten Sinn derselben aufzuschließen scheint und als der richtigste und deutlichste Kommentar dazu auftritt; imgleichen, daß es Dem, der sich dem Eindruck einer Symphonie ganz hingiebt, ist, als sähe er alle möglichen Vorgänge des Lebens und der Welt an sich vorüberziehn: dennoch kann er, wenn er sich besinnt, keine Aehnlichkeit angeben zwischen jenem Tonspiel und den Dingen, die ihm vorschweben. Denn die Musik ist, wie gesagt, darin von allen andern Künsten verschieden, daß sie nicht Abbild der Erscheinung, oder richtiger, der adäquaten Objektität des Willens, sondern unmittelbar Abbild des Willens selbst ist und also zu allem Physischen der Welt das Metaphysische, zu aller Erscheinung das Ding an sich darstellt. Man könnte demnach die Welt ebenso wohl verkörperte Musik, als verkörperten Willen nennen: daraus also ist es erklärlich, warum Musik jedes Gemälde, ja jede Scene des wirklichen Lebens und der Welt, sogleich in erhöhter Bedeutsamkeit hervortreten läßt; freilich um so mehr, je analoger ihre Melodie dem innern Geiste der gegebenen Erscheinung ist. Hierauf beruht es, daß man ein Gedicht als Gesang, oder eine anschauliche Darstellung als Pantomime, oder beides als Oper der Musik unterlegen kann. Solche einzelne Bilder des Menschenlebens, der allgemeinen Sprache der Musik untergelegt, sind nie mit durchgängiger Nothwendigkeit ihr verbunden, oder entsprechend; sondern sie stehn zu ihr nur im Verhältniß eines beliebigen Beispiels zu einem allgemeinen Begriff: sie stellen in der Bestimmtheit der Wirklichkeit Dasjenige dar, was die Musik in der Allgemeinheit bloßer Form aussagt. Denn die Melodien sind gewissermaaßen, gleich den allgemeinen Begriffen, ein Abstraktum der Wirklichkeit. Diese nämlich, also die Welt der einzelnen Dinge, liefert das Anschauliche, das Besondere und Individuelle, den einzelnen Fall, sowohl zur Allgemeinheit der Begriffe, als zur Allgemeinheit der Melodien, welche beide Allgemeinheiten einander aber in gewisser Hinsicht entgegengesetzt sind; indem die Begriffe nur die allererst aus der Anschauung abstrahirten Formen, gleichsam die abgezogene äußere Schaale der Dinge enthalten, also ganz eigentlich Abstrakta sind; die Musik hingegen den innersten aller Gestaltung vorhergängigen Kern, oder das Herz der Dinge giebt. Dies Verhältniß ließe sich recht gut in der Sprache der Scholastiker ausdrücken, indem man sagte: die Begriffe sind die universalia post rem, die Musik aber giebt die universalia ante rem, und die Wirklichkeit die universalia in re. Dem allgemeinen Sinn der einer Dichtung beigegebenen Melodie könnten noch andere, ebenso beliebig gewählte Beispiele des in ihr ausgedrückten Allgemeinen in gleichem Grade entsprechen: daher paßt die selbe Komposition zu vielen Strophen, daher auch das Vaudeville. Daß aber überhaupt eine Beziehung zwischen einer Komposition und einer anschaulichen Darstellung möglich ist, beruht, wie gesagt, darauf, daß beide nur ganz verschiedene Ausdrücke des selben innern Wesens der Welt sind. Wann nun im einzelnen Fall eine solche Beziehung wirklich vorhanden ist, also der Komponist die Willensregungen, welche den Kern einer Begebenheit ausmachen, in der allgemeinen Sprache der Musik auszusprechen gewußt hat: dann ist die Melodie des Liedes, die Musik der Oper ausdrucksvoll. Die vom Komponisten aufgefundene Analogie zwischen jenen beiden muß aber aus der unmittelbaren Erkenntniß des Wesens der Welt, seiner Vernunft unbewußt, hervorgegangen und darf nicht, mit bewußter Absichtlichkeit, durch Begriffe vermittelte Nachahmung seyn: sonst spricht die Musik nicht das innere Wesen, den Willen selbst aus; sondern ahmt nur seine Erscheinung ungenügend nach; wie dies alle eigentlich nachbildende Musik thut, z. B. „Die Jahreszeiten“ von Haydn, auch seine Schöpfung in vielen Stellen, wo Erscheinungen der anschaulichen Welt unmittelbar nachgeahmt sind; so auch in allen Bataillenstücken: welches gänzlich zu verwerfen ist.

Das unaussprechlich Innige aller Musik, vermöge dessen sie als ein so ganz vertrautes und doch ewig fernes Paradies an uns vorüberzieht, so ganz verständlich und doch so unerklärlich ist, beruht darauf, daß sie alle Regungen unseres innersten Wesens wiedergiebt, aber ganz ohne die Wirklichkeit und fern von ihrer Quaal. Imgleichen ist der ihr wesentliche Ernst, welcher das Lächerliche aus ihrem unmittelbar eigenen Gebiet ganz ausschließt, daraus zu erklären, daß ihr Objekt nicht die Vorstellung ist, in Hinsicht auf welche Täuschung und Lächerlichkeit allein möglich sind; sondern ihr Objekt unmittelbar der Wille ist und dieser wesentlich das Allerernsteste, als wovon Alles abhängt. — Wie inhaltsreich und bedeutungsvoll ihre Sprache sei, bezeugen sogar die Repetitionszeichen, nebst dem Da capo, als welche bei Werken in der Wortsprache unerträglich wären, bei jener hingegen sehr zweckmäßig und wohlthuend sind: denn um es ganz zu fassen, muß man es zwei Mal hören.

Wenn ich nun in dieser ganzen Darstellung der Musik bemüht gewesen bin, deutlich zu machen, daß sie in einer höchst allgemeinen Sprache das innere Wesen, das Ansich der Welt, welches wir, nach seiner deutlichsten Aeußerung, unter dem Begriff Willen denken, ausspricht, in einem einartigen Stoff, nämlich bloßen Tönen, und mit der größten Bestimmtheit und Wahrheit; wenn ferner, meiner Ansicht und Bestrebung nach, die Philosophie nichts Anderes ist, als eine vollständige und richtige Wiederholung und Aussprechung des Wesens der Welt, in sehr allgemeinen Begriffen, da nur in solchen eine überall ausreichende und anwendbare Uebersicht jenes ganzen Wesens möglich ist; so wird wer mir gefolgt und in meine Denkungsart eingegangen ist, es nicht so sehr paradox finden, wenn ich sage, daß gesetzt es gelänge eine vollkommen richtige, vollständige und in das Einzelne gehende Erklärung der Musik, also eine ausführliche Wiederholung dessen was sie ausdrückt in Begriffen zu geben, diese sofort auch eine genügende Wiederholung und Erklärung der Welt in Begriffen, oder einer solchen ganz gleichlautend, also die wahre Philosophie seyn würde, und daß wir folglich den oben angeführten Ausspruch Leibnizens, der auf einem niedrigeren Standpunkt ganz richtig ist, im Sinn unserer höheren Ansicht der Musik folgendermaaßen parodiren können: Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi. Denn scire, wissen, heißt überall in abstrakte Begriffe abgesetzt haben. Da nun aber ferner, vermöge der vielfältig bestätigten Wahrheit des Leibnizischen Ausspruchs, die Musik, abgesehen von ihrer ästhetischen oder innern Bedeutung, und bloß äußerlich und rein empirisch betrachtet, nichts Anderes ist, als das Mittel, größere Zahlen und zusammengesetztere Zahlenverhältnisse, die wir sonst nur mittelbar, durch Auffassung in Begriffen, erkennen können, unmittelbar und in concreto aufzufassen; so können wir nun durch Vereinigung jener beiden so verschiedenen und doch richtigen Ansichten der Musik, uns einen Begriff von der Möglichkeit einer Zahlenphilosophie machen, dergleichen die des Pythagoras und auch die der Chinesen im Y-king war, und sodann nach diesem Sinn jenen Spruch der Pythagoreer deuten, welchen Sextus Empirikus (adv. Math., L. VII) anführt: τῳ αριθμῳ δε τα παντ’ επεοικεν (numero cuncta assimilantur). Und wenn wir endlich diese Ansicht an unsere obige Deutung der Harmonie und Melodie bringen, so werden wir eine bloße Moralphilosophie ohne Erklärung der Natur, wie sie Sokrates einführen wollte, einer Melodie ohne Harmonie, welche Rousseau ausschließlich wollte, ganz analog finden, und im Gegensatz hievon wird eine bloße Physik und Metaphysik ohne Ethik einer bloßen Harmonie ohne Melodie entsprechen. — An diese beiläufigen Betrachtungen sei es mir vergönnt, noch einige die Analogie der Musik mit der erscheinenden Welt betreffende Bemerkungen zu knüpfen. Wir fanden im vorigen Buche, daß die höchste Stufe der Objektivation des Willens, der Mensch, nicht allein und abgerissen erscheinen konnte, sondern die unter ihm stehenden Stufen und diese immer wieder die tieferen voraussetzten: ebenso nun ist die Musik, welche eben wie die Welt, den Willen unmittelbar objektivirt, erst vollkommen in der vollständigen Harmonie. Die hohe leitende Stimme der Melodie bedarf, um ihren ganzen Eindruck zu machen, der Begleitung aller anderen Stimmen, bis zum tiefsten Baß, welcher als der Ursprung aller anzusehen ist: die Melodie greift selbst als integrirender Theil in die Harmonie ein, wie auch diese in jene: und wie nur so, im vollstimmigen Ganzen, die Musik ausspricht, was sie auszusprechen bezweckt, so findet der eine und außerzeitliche Wille seine vollkommene Objektivation nur in der vollständigen Vereinigung aller der Stufen, welche in unzähligen Graden gesteigerter Deutlichkeit sein Wesen offenbaren. — Sehr merkwürdig ist noch folgende Analogie. Wir haben im vorigen Buche gesehn, daß, ungeachtet des Sichanpassens aller Willenserscheinungen zu einander, in Hinsicht auf die Arten, welches die teleologische Betrachtung veranlaßt, dennoch ein nicht aufzuhebender Widerstreit zwischen jenen Erscheinungen als Individuen bleibt, auf allen Stufen derselben sichtbar ist und die Welt zu einem beständigen Kampfplatz aller jener Erscheinungen des einen und selben Willens macht, dessen innerer Widerspruch mit sich selbst dadurch sichtbar wird. Auch diesem sogar ist etwas Entsprechendes in der Musik. Nämlich ein vollkommen reines harmonisches System der Töne ist nicht nur physisch, sondern sogar schon arithmetisch unmöglich. Die Zahlen selbst, durch welche die Töne sich ausdrücken lassen, haben unauflösbare Irrationalitäten: keine Skala läßt sich auch nur ausrechnen, innerhalb welcher jede Quint sich zum Grundton verhielte wie 2 zu 3, jede große Terz wie 4 zu 5, jede kleine Terz wie 5 zu 6 u. s. w. Denn, sind die Töne zum Grundton richtig, so sind sie es nicht mehr zu einander; indem ja z. B. die Quint die kleine Terz der Terz seyn müßte u. s. w.: denn die Töne der Skala sind Schauspielern zu vergleichen, welche bald diese, bald jene Rolle zu spielen haben. Daher also läßt eine vollkommen richtige Musik sich nicht einmal denken, geschweige ausführen; und dieserhalb weicht jede mögliche Musik von der vollkommenen Reinheit ab: sie kann bloß die ihr wesentlichen Dissonanzen, durch Vertheilung derselben an alle Töne, d. i. durch Temperatur, verstecken. Man sehe hierüber Chladni’s „Akustik“, §. 30, und dessen „Kurze Uebersicht der Schall- und Klanglehre“, S. 12⁵³.

Ich hätte noch manches hinzuzufügen über die Art, wie Musik percipirt wird, nämlich einzig und allein in und durch die Zeit, mit gänzlicher Ausschließung des Raumes, auch ohne Einfluß der Erkenntniß der Kausalität, also des Verstandes: denn [54] Hiezu Kap. 39 des zweiten Bandes. die Töne machen schon als Wirkung und ohne daß wir auf ihre Ursache, wie bei der Anschauung, zurückgiengen, den ästhetischen Eindruck. — Ich will indessen diese Betrachtungen nicht noch mehr verlängern, da ich vielleicht schon so in diesem dritten Buche Manchem zu ausführlich gewesen bin, oder mich zu sehr auf das Einzelne eingelassen habe. Mein Zweck machte es jedoch nöthig, und man wird es um so weniger mißbilligen, wenn man die selten genugsam erkannte Wichtigkeit und den hohen Werth der Kunst sich vergegenwärtigt, erwägend, daß wenn, nach unserer Ansicht, die gesammte sichtbare Welt nur die Objektivation, der Spiegel des Willens ist, zu seiner Selbsterkenntniß, ja, wie wir bald sehen werden, zur Möglichkeit seiner Erlösung, ihn begleitend; und zugleich, daß die Welt als Vorstellung, wenn man sie abgesondert betrachtet, indem man vom Wollen losgerissen, nur sie allein das Bewußtseyn einnehmen läßt, die erfreulichste und die allein unschuldige Seite des Lebens ist; — wir die Kunst als die höhere Steigerung, die vollkommenere Entwickelung von allen Diesem anzusehen haben, da sie wesentlich eben das Selbe, nur koncentrirter, vollendeter, mit Absicht und Besonnenheit, leistet, was die sichtbare Welt selbst, und sie daher, im vollen Sinne des Wortes, die Blüthe des Lebens genannt werden mag. Ist die ganze Welt als Vorstellung nur die Sichtbarkeit des Willens, so ist die Kunst die Verdeutlichung dieser Sichtbarkeit, die Camera obscura, welche die Gegenstände reiner zeigt und besser übersehen und zusammenfassen läßt, das Schauspiel im Schauspiel, die Bühne auf der Bühne im „Hamlet“.

Der Genuß alles Schönen, der Trost, den die Kunst gewährt, der Enthusiasmus des Künstlers, welcher ihn die Mühen des Lebens vergessen läßt, dieser eine Vorzug des Genius vor den Andern, der ihn für das mit der Klarheit des Bewußtseyns in gleichem Maaße gesteigerte Leiden und für die öde Einsamkeit unter einem heterogenen Geschlechte allein entschädigt, — dieses Alles beruht darauf, daß, wie sich uns weiterhin zeigen wird, das Ansich des Lebens, der Wille, das Daseyn selbst, ein stetes Leiden und theils jämmerlich, theils schrecklich ist; dasselbe hingegen als Vorstellung allein, rein angeschaut, oder durch die Kunst wiederholt, frei von Quaal, ein bedeutsames Schauspiel gewährt. Diese rein erkennbare Seite der Welt und die Wieder holung derselben in irgend einer Kunst ist das Element des Künstlers. Ihn fesselt die Betrachtung des Schauspiels der Objektivation des Willens: bei demselben bleibt er stehen, wird nicht müde es zu betrachten und darstellend zu wiederholen, und trägt derweilen selbst die Kosten der Aufführung jenes Schauspiels, d. h. ist ja selbst der Wille, der sich also objektivirt und in stetem Leiden bleibt. Jene reine, wahre und tiefe Erkenntniß des Wesens der Welt wird ihm nun Zweck an sich: er bleibt bei ihr stehen. Daher wird sie ihm nicht, wie wir es im folgenden Buche bei dem zur Resignation gelangten Heiligen sehen werden, Quietiv des Willens, erlöst ihn nicht auf immer, sondern nur auf Augenblicke vom Leben, und ist ihm so noch nicht der Weg aus demselben, sondern nur einstweilen ein Trost in demselben; bis seine dadurch gesteigerte Kraft, endlich des Spieles müde, den Ernst ergreift. Als Sinnbild dieses Ueberganges kann man die heilige Cäcilie von Rafael betrachten. Zum Ernst also wollen nun auch wir uns im folgenden Buche wenden.

Musean translation

Mouseia's complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the three prefaces, the four books with paragraphs 1 to 71, and the appendix on Kant, made directly from the corrected German text of the third edition (Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1859), with the printed page consulted wherever a reading was in doubt. Footnote numbers are this edition's own, assigned in reading order, so note calls and the notes they point to can differ; a few notes the scan cut short end where the printed page ends.

Second Consideration of the World as Representation: The Representation Independent of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art.

30 Having considered, in the second book, from its other side the world that was presented in the first book as mere representation, object for a subject, and having found that this other side is will, which alone proved to be that which that world still is besides representation, we called, in accordance with this knowledge, the world as representation, both as a whole and in its parts, the objectivity of the will, which therefore means: the will become object, that is, representation. We now recall further that such objectification of the will had many but determinate grades, on which, with gradually rising distinctness and perfection, the essence of the will entered into representation, that is, presented itself as object. In these grades we already there recognized Plato’s Ideas, insofar, namely, as those grades are precisely the determinate species, or the original, unchanging forms and properties of all natural bodies, inorganic as well as organic, and also the universal forces that reveal themselves according to laws of nature. These Ideas, then, taken all together, present themselves in countless individuals and particulars, to which, as their prototype, they relate as to their copies. The plurality of such individuals is representable only through time and space, their arising and passing away only through causality; in all of these forms we recognize only the different shapes of the principle of sufficient reason, which is the ultimate principle of all finitude, of all individuation, and the universal form of representation as it falls into the knowledge of the individual as such. The Idea, on the other hand, does not enter into that principle: hence neither plurality nor change belongs to it. While the individuals in which it presents itself are countless and incessantly come to be and pass away, it remains unchanged as the one and the same, and the principle of sufficient reason has no meaning for it. But since this principle is the form under which all knowledge of the subject stands, insofar as the subject knows as an individual, the Ideas will also lie wholly outside the sphere of knowledge of the subject as such. If, therefore, the Ideas are to become objects of knowledge, this can happen only with the abolition of individuality in the knowing subject. The closer and more detailed explanations on this point are now what will first occupy us.

31 First, however, the following very essential remark. I hope that I succeeded in the preceding book in producing the conviction that what in the Kantian philosophy is called the thing in itself, and which appears there as so important but obscure and paradoxical a doctrine, and which, especially through the way in which Kant introduced it, namely by the inference from the grounded to the ground, was found to be a stumbling block, indeed the weak side of his philosophy: that this, I say, when one arrives at it by the quite different path we have taken, is nothing other than the will, in the sphere of that concept as expanded and determined in the manner indicated. I hope further that, after what has been set forth, no scruple will be felt in recognizing, in the determinate grades of objectification of that will which constitutes the in-itself of the world, that which Plato called the eternal Ideas, or the unchanging forms (ειδη), which, acknowledged as the principal but at the same time most obscure and paradoxical dogma of his doctrine, have been, through a series of centuries, an object of reflection, of dispute, of mockery, and of veneration for so many minds of such diverse dispositions.

If now the will is for us the thing in itself, and the Idea the immediate objectivity of that will on a determinate grade, then we find Kant’s thing in itself and Plato’s Idea, which alone is for him οντως ον, these two great obscure paradoxes of the two greatest philosophers of the West, to be, not indeed identical, but yet very closely related and distinguished by only a single determination. Both great paradoxes are, indeed, precisely because, with all their inner accord and kinship, they sound so extremely different through the extraordinarily different individualities of their authors, the best commentary each on the other, since they resemble two quite different paths that lead to one goal.—

This can be made clear in a few words. What Kant says is, in essence, the following: “Time, space, and causality are not determinations of the thing in itself, but belong only to its appearance, since they are nothing but forms of our knowledge. Since, however, all plurality and all arising and passing away are possible only through time, space, and causality, it follows that these too cling only to the appearance, by no means to the thing in itself. But because our knowledge is conditioned by those forms, all experience is only knowledge of the appearance, not of the thing in itself; hence its laws also cannot be made valid for the thing in itself. What has been said extends even to our own self, and we know it only as appearance, not as to what it may be in itself.” This is, in the important respect under consideration, the sense and content of Kant’s doctrine.—Plato, however, says: “The things of this world, which our senses perceive, have no true being at all: they are always becoming, but never are: they have only a relative being, are all together only in and through their relation to one another: one may therefore just as well call their whole existence a non-being. Consequently they are also not objects of real knowledge (επιστημη); for only of that which is in and for itself and always in the same way can there be such knowledge: they, on the other hand, are only the object of an opinion occasioned by sensation (δοξα μετ’ αισθησεως αλογου). So long as we are limited to the perception of them, we resemble men who sit in a dark cave so firmly bound that they cannot even turn their heads, and who see nothing but, by the light of a fire burning behind them, on the wall opposite them, the shadow-images of real things that are carried past between them and the fire, and even of one another, indeed each of himself, only the shadows on that wall. Their wisdom, however, would be to predict the sequence of those shadows, learned from experience. What, on the other hand, alone can be called truly existent (οντως ον), because it always is but never becomes nor passes away, is the real archetypes of those shadow-images: these are the eternal Ideas, the primal forms of all things. No plurality belongs to them; for each is by its essence only one, since it is the archetype itself, of which the copies, or shadows, are all the individual, transient things of the same kind that bear its name. No arising and passing away belongs to them either: for they are truly existent, but never becoming nor perishing like their vanishing copies. (In these two negative determinations, however, there is necessarily contained the presupposition that time, space, and causality have for them neither meaning nor validity, and that they do not exist in these.) Of them alone, therefore, is there real knowledge, since the object of such knowledge can be only that which always and in every respect (thus in itself) is; not that which is, but again also is not, according as one looks at it.”—This is Plato’s doctrine. It is evident, and needs no further demonstration, that the inner sense of both doctrines is wholly the same, that both declare the visible world to be an appearance which is in itself nothing, and which has meaning and borrowed reality only through what expresses itself in it (for the one the thing in itself, for the other the Idea); and to this latter, the truly existent, according to both doctrines, all the forms of that appearance, even the most universal and essential, are entirely alien. Kant, in order to deny these forms, himself immediately grasped them in abstract expressions and at once denied time, space, and causality, as mere forms of appearance, of the thing in itself; Plato, on the other hand, did not reach the supreme expression, and denied those forms of his Ideas only indirectly, in that he denied of the Ideas that which is possible only through those forms, namely plurality of the like, arising and passing away. For good measure, however, I want to make that remarkable and important agreement perceptible by an example. Let an animal stand before us, in full vital activity. Plato will say: “This animal has no true existence, but only an apparent one, a constant becoming, a relative existence, which can just as well be called a non-being as a being. Truly existent is only the Idea that is imaged in that animal, or the animal in itself (αυτο το θηριον), which is dependent on nothing, but is in and for itself (καθ’ εαυτο, αει ὡς αυτως), not become, not ending, but always in the same way (αει ον, και μηδεποτε ουτε γιγνομενον, ουτε απολλυμενον). Insofar as we recognize in this animal its Idea, it is wholly one and the same, and without significance, whether we have this animal before us now, or its ancestor living a thousand years ago; further, whether it is here or in a distant country; whether it presents itself in this or that manner, posture, action; whether, finally, it is this or any other individual of its kind: all this is nothing and concerns only the appearance: the Idea of the animal alone has true being and is the object of real knowledge.”—So Plato. Kant would say something like this: “This animal is an appearance in time, space, and causality, which are all the conditions a priori of the possibility of experience that lie in our faculty of knowledge, and not determinations of the thing in itself. Hence this animal, as we perceive it at this determinate time, in this given place, as an individual that has come to be in the connection of experience, that is, along the chain of causes and effects, and that is just as necessarily perishable, is no thing in itself, but an appearance valid only in relation to our knowledge. In order to know it as to what it may be in itself, and consequently independently of all determinations lying in time, space, and causality, a different mode of knowledge would be required than the only one possible to us, through senses and understanding.”

To bring Kant’s expression still closer to the Platonic, one might also say: time, space, and causality are that arrangement of our intellect by virtue of which the one being of each kind, which really alone exists, presents itself to us as a plurality of beings of the same kind, ever anew arising and passing away, in endless succession. The apprehension of things by means of and in accordance with this arrangement is the immanent one; that apprehension, on the other hand, which becomes aware of how matters stand with it is the transcendental. This latter we receive in abstracto through the Critique of Pure Reason; but exceptionally it can also arise intuitively. This last is my addition, which I am endeavoring to elucidate precisely by the present third book.

Had one ever really understood and grasped Kant’s doctrine, had one since Kant really understood Plato, had one faithfully and earnestly pondered the inner sense and content of the doctrines of both great masters, instead of flinging about the technical terms of the one and parodying the style of the other, one could not have failed to find long since how greatly the two great sages agree, and that the pure meaning, the goal, of both doctrines is wholly the same. Not only would one then not have constantly compared Plato with Leibniz, on whom his spirit by no means rested, or even with a well-known gentleman still living [1], as if one wanted to mock the shade of the great thinker of antiquity; but in general one would then have got much further than one is, or rather one would not have retrogressed so shamefully far as one has in these last forty years: one would not today let oneself be led by the nose by this windbag, tomorrow by another, and would not have opened the nineteenth century, which announced itself so significantly, in Germany with philosophical farces performed over Kant’s grave (as the ancients sometimes did at the funeral rites of their own), to the just mockery of other nations, since nothing becomes the serious and even stiff Germans less. But so small is the real public of genuine philosophers that even the pupils who understand are brought to them only sparingly by the centuries.—Εισι δη ναρθηκοφοροι μεν πολλοι, βακχοι [2] F. H. Jacobi. δε γε παυροι. (Thyrsigeri quidem multi, Bacchi vero pauci.) Ἡ ατιμια φιλοσοφιᾳ δια ταυτα προσπεπτωκεν, ὅτι ου κατ’ αξιαν αυτης ἁπτονται· ου γαρ νοθους εδει ἁπτεσθαι, αλλα γνησιους. (Eam ob rem philosophia in infamiam incidit, quod non pro dignitate ipsam attingunt: neque enim a spuriis, sed a legitimis erat attrectanda.) Plat.

One went after the words, the words: “representations a priori, forms of intuiting and thinking that are conscious independently of experience, primal concepts of the pure understanding,” and so forth—and now asked whether Plato’s Ideas, which are supposed to be likewise primal concepts and, further, also recollections from an intuition of the truly existent things that preceded life, were perhaps the same as Kant’s forms of intuiting and thinking, which lie a priori in our consciousness: these two wholly heterogeneous doctrines, the Kantian of the forms, which restrict the knowledge of the individual to the appearance, and the Platonic of the Ideas, whose knowledge expressly denies those very forms—these doctrines, so far diametrically opposed, since in their expressions they resemble each other a little, one compared attentively, deliberated and disputed about their sameness, found at last that they were nevertheless not the same, and concluded that Plato’s doctrine of Ideas and Kant’s critique of reason had no agreement whatever [3]. But enough of this.

32 In consequence of our considerations so far, for all the inner agreement between Kant and Plato, and the identity of the goal that hovered before both, or of the view of the world that stirred them to philosophize and guided them, Idea and thing in itself are nevertheless not for us simply one and the same: rather, the Idea is for us only the immediate and therefore adequate objectivity of the thing in itself, which itself, however, is the [4] See, e.g., “Immanuel Kant, a Memorial, by Fr. Bouterweck,” p. 49,—and Buhle’s “History of Philosophy,” vol. 6, pp. 802–815 and 823.

will, the will insofar as it is not yet objectified, not yet become representation. For the thing in itself is, according to Kant himself, to be free of all the forms that attach to knowing as such; and it is only (as is shown in the Appendix) an error of Kant’s that he did not count among these forms, before all the others, being-an-object-for-a-subject, since precisely this is the first and most universal form of all appearance, that is, of representation; hence he ought expressly to have denied being an object to his thing in itself, which would have saved him from that great inconsistency, discovered early. The Platonic Idea, on the other hand, is necessarily object, something known, a representation, and precisely thereby, but also only thereby, different from the thing in itself. It has merely laid aside the subordinate forms of appearance, which we comprehend all together under the principle of sufficient reason, or rather has not yet entered into them; but the first and most universal form it has retained, that of representation in general, of being an object for a subject. The forms subordinate to this (whose universal expression is the principle of sufficient reason) are what multiply the Idea into individual and transient individuals, whose number is, in relation to the Idea, wholly indifferent. The principle of sufficient reason is thus again the form into which the Idea enters, in that it falls into the knowledge of the subject as individual. The individual thing that appears in conformity with the principle of sufficient reason is thus only a mediate objectification of the thing in itself (which is the will), between which and it the Idea still stands, as the sole immediate objectivity of the will, in that it has assumed no other form belonging to knowing as such than that of representation in general, that is, of being an object for a subject. Hence it alone, too, is the most adequate possible objectivity of the will or thing in itself, is itself the whole thing in itself, only under the form of representation: and herein lies the ground of the great agreement between Plato and Kant, although, in the strictest sense, that of which the two speak is not the same. The individual things, however, are no wholly adequate objectivity of the will, but this is here already clouded by those forms whose common expression is the principle of sufficient reason, but which are the condition of knowledge as it is possible for the individual as such.—We would in fact, if it is permitted to infer from an impossible presupposition, no longer know individual things, nor events, nor change, nor plurality, but would apprehend only Ideas, only the scale of grades of objectification of that one will, the true thing in itself, in pure, unclouded knowledge, and consequently our world would be a nunc stans; if we were not, as subject of knowing, at the same time individuals, that is, if our intuition were not mediated by a body, from whose affections it proceeds, and which is itself only concrete willing, objectivity of the will, thus an object among objects, and as such, as it enters into knowing consciousness, can do so only in the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and consequently already presupposes, and thereby introduces, time and all the other forms that this principle expresses. Time is merely the distributed and fragmented view which an individual being has of the Ideas, which are outside time, and hence eternal: therefore Plato says that time is the moving image of eternity: αιωνος εικων κινητη ὁ χρονος [5].

33 Since, then, as individuals we have no other knowledge than that which is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, but this form excludes the knowledge of the Ideas, it is certain that, if it is possible for us to raise ourselves from the knowledge of individual things to that of the Ideas, this can happen only through a change taking place in the subject, a change that corresponds and is analogous to that great change in the whole kind of the object, and by virtue of which the subject, insofar as it knows an Idea, is no longer an individual.

We recall from the preceding book that knowing in general itself belongs to the objectification of the will on its higher grades, and that sensibility, nerves, and brain are only, like other parts of the organic being, expression [6] On this see ch. 29 of the second volume. of the will at this grade of its objectivity, and that the representation arising through them is therefore likewise destined for its service, as a means (μηχανη) for the attainment of its now more complicated (πολυτελεστερα) ends, for the maintenance of a being with manifold needs. Originally, then, and by its essence, knowledge is wholly subservient to the will; and as the immediate object, which by the application of the law of causality becomes its point of departure, is only objectified will, so too all knowledge that follows the principle of sufficient reason remains in a nearer or more distant relation to the will. For the individual finds its body as an object among objects, to all of which it has manifold relations and connections according to the principle of sufficient reason, so that the consideration of them always leads back, by a nearer or a farther road, to its body, and thus to its will. Since it is the principle of sufficient reason that places the objects in this relation to the body and thereby to the will, the knowledge that serves the will must also strive solely to become acquainted with precisely those relations of the objects that are posited by the principle of sufficient reason, and so will pursue their manifold relations in space, time, and causality. For only through these is the object interesting to the individual, that is, has a relation to the will. Hence the knowledge that serves the will also really knows of the objects nothing more than their relations, knows the objects only insofar as they exist at this time, in this place, under these circumstances, from these causes, with these effects, in a word, as individual things; and if one canceled all these relations, the objects too would have vanished for it, precisely because it otherwise knew nothing of them.—We must also not conceal that what the sciences consider in things is likewise essentially nothing other than all this, namely their relations, the relations of time and of space, the causes of natural changes, the comparison of forms, the motives of events, thus nothing but relations. What distinguishes them from common knowledge is merely their form, the systematic, the facilitation of knowledge by the comprehension of everything individual into the universal through the subordination of concepts, and the completeness thereby attained. All relation itself has only a relative existence: for example, all being in time is also again a non-being; for time is precisely that through which opposite determinations can belong to the same thing: hence every appearance in time also again is not; for what separates its beginning from its end is only time, something essentially evanescent, without permanence, and relative, here called duration. Time, however, is the most universal form of all objects of the knowledge that stands in the service of the will, and the archetype of its other forms.

As a rule, knowledge remains always subject to the service of the will, as indeed it has come forth for this service, and has, so to speak, sprouted from the will as the head from the trunk. In animals this servitude of knowledge to the will can never be abolished. In men such abolition occurs only as an exception, as we shall presently consider more closely. This difference between man and animal is expressed outwardly by the difference in the relation of the head to the trunk. In the lower animals the two are still wholly grown together; in all of them the head is directed to the earth, where the objects of the will lie; even in the higher ones head and trunk are still much more one than in man, whose head appears to be set freely on the body, only borne by it, not serving it. This human advantage is presented in the highest degree by the Apollo Belvedere: the far-gazing head of the god of the Muses stands so freely on the shoulders that it appears wholly wrested from the body, no longer subject to care for it.

34 The transition, possible as I have said, but to be regarded only as an exception, from the common knowledge of individual things to the knowledge of the Idea occurs suddenly, in that knowledge tears itself loose from the service of the will, and precisely thereby the subject ceases to be a merely individual one and is now pure, will-less subject of knowledge, which no longer pursues relations in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, but rests in steadfast contemplation of the object offered, apart from its connection with any others, and is absorbed in it.

For this to become clear, it necessarily needs a detailed exposition, and one must for the time being rise above the strangeness of it, until, once the whole thought to be communicated in this work has been taken together, that strangeness vanishes of itself.

If, raised up by the power of the mind, one lets go the usual way of considering things, ceases to pursue only their relations to one another, whose last goal is always the relation to one’s own will, along the guiding thread of the shapes of the principle of sufficient reason, and thus no longer considers the Where, the When, the Why, and the What-for of things, but solely and alone the What; and if one also does not let abstract thinking, the concepts of reason, take possession of consciousness, but, instead of all this, gives the whole power of one’s mind to intuition, sinks wholly into it, and lets the whole consciousness be filled by the quiet contemplation of the natural object that happens to be present, be it a landscape, a tree, a rock, a building, or whatever it may be; in that one, according to an apt German idiom, loses oneself wholly in this object, that is, forgets precisely one’s individuality, one’s will, and remains only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object; so that it is as if the object alone were there, without anyone who perceives it, and one can no longer separate the perceiver from the perception, but both have become one, since the whole consciousness is wholly filled and occupied by a single intuitive picture; if, then, in this way the object has stepped out of all relation to anything outside it, and the subject out of all relation to the will: then what is thus known is no longer the individual thing as such, but it is the Idea, the eternal form, the immediate objectivity of the will on this grade: and precisely thereby the one who is caught up in this intuition is at the same time no longer an individual, for the individual has precisely lost itself in such intuition; rather, such a one is pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge. This, so striking in itself now (and I know very well that it confirms the saying that comes from Thomas Paine, du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas), will become gradually clearer and less strange through what follows. It was this too that hovered before Spinoza when he wrote down: mens aeterna est, quatenus res sub aeternitatis specie concipit (Eth. V, pr. 31, schol.)⁷. In such contemplation, then, at one stroke the individual thing becomes the Idea of its species, and the intuiting individual becomes pure subject of knowing. The individual as such knows only individual things; the pure subject of knowing only Ideas. For the individual is the subject of knowing in its relation to a determinate individual appearance of the will, and is subservient to it. This individual will-appearance is as such subject to the principle of sufficient reason in all its shapes: all knowledge that refers to it therefore also follows the principle of sufficient reason, and for the purposes of the will no other knowledge is fit than this, which always has only relations to the object. The knowing individual as such, and the individual thing known by it, are always somewhere, sometime, and links in the chain of causes and effects. The pure subject of knowledge and its correlate, the Idea, have stepped out of all those forms of the principle of sufficient reason: time, place, the individual who knows, and the individual who is known, have no meaning for them. Only when, in the manner described, a knowing individual raises itself to pure subject of knowing, and precisely thereby the object considered to Idea, does the world as representation emerge wholly and purely, and does the perfect objectification of the will take place, since the Idea alone is its adequate objectivity. This includes object and subject in like manner, since these [8] I also recommend, for the elucidation of the mode of knowledge here in question, that one read what he says in the same work, L. II, prop. 40, schol. 2, likewise L. V, prop. 25 to 38, on the cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva, and especially prop. 29, schol.; prop. 36, schol., and prop. 38, demonstr. et schol. are its only form: in it, however, the two hold each other wholly in balance: and as the object here too is nothing but the representation of the subject, so the subject too, in being wholly absorbed in the intuited object, has itself become this object, in that the whole consciousness is nothing more than its most distinct image. This consciousness precisely, when one thinks all the Ideas, or grades of the objectivity of the will, passing in order through it, really constitutes the whole world as representation. The individual things of all times and spaces are nothing but the Ideas multiplied by the principle of sufficient reason (the form of the knowledge of individuals as such) and thereby clouded in their pure objectivity. As, when the Idea emerges, subject and object can no longer be distinguished in it, because only when they completely fulfill and penetrate each other does the Idea, the adequate objectivity of the will, the real world as representation, arise; so too the knowing and the known individual, in this, are, as things in themselves, not distinguished. For if we abstract wholly from that real world as representation, nothing remains but the world as will. The will is the in-itself of the Idea, which objectifies it perfectly; it is also the in-itself of the individual thing and of the individual who knows it, who objectify it imperfectly. As will, outside representation and all its forms, it is one and the same in the contemplated object and in the individual who, soaring up in this contemplation, becomes conscious of itself as pure subject: those two are therefore not distinguished in themselves: for in themselves they are the will, which here knows itself, and only as the manner in which this knowledge comes to it, that is, only in the appearance, is there, by virtue of its form, the principle of sufficient reason, plurality and difference. As little as I am, without the object, without the representation, knowing subject, but mere blind will; so little, without me as subject of knowing, is the known thing object, but mere will, blind urge. This will is in itself, that is, outside representation, one and the same with mine: only in the world as representation, whose form is always at least subject and object, do we part as known and knowing individual. As soon as knowing, the world as representation, is abolished, nothing at all remains but mere will, blind urge. That it receive objectivity, become representation, posits at one stroke both subject and object: but that this objectivity be pure, perfect, adequate objectivity of the will, posits the object as Idea, free from the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and the subject as pure subject of knowledge, free from individuality and from servitude to the will.

Whoever, in the manner stated, has so far immersed and lost themselves in the intuition of nature that they exist only as purely knowing subject becomes thereby immediately aware that, as such, they are the condition, thus the bearer, of the world and of all objective existence, since this now presents itself as dependent on their own. They thus draw nature into themselves, so that they feel it only as an accident of their essence. In this sense Byron says:

Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? [9]

How, though, should one who feels this hold oneself to be absolutely transitory, in contrast to imperishable nature? Rather, such a one will be seized by the consciousness of what the Upanishad of the Veda declares: Hae omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est. (Oupnekhat, I, 122.)¹⁰

35 To attain a deeper insight into the essence of the world, it is indispensable that one learn to distinguish the will as thing in itself from its adequate objectivity; then the different grades on which this emerges more distinctly and more perfectly, that is, the Ideas themselves, from the mere appearance of the Ideas in the shapes of the principle of sufficient reason, the confined mode of knowledge of individuals. Then one will [11] Are not mountains, waves, skies a part of me and of my soul, as I of them?

12 On this see ch. 30 of the second volume. assent to Plato when he attributes real being only to the Ideas, but concedes to the things in space and time, this world that is real for the individual, only an apparent, dreamlike existence. Then one will see how one and the same Idea reveals itself in so many appearances and offers its essence to the knowing individuals only piecemeal, one side after another. One will then also distinguish the Idea itself from the manner in which its appearance falls into the observation of the individual, recognizing the former as essential, the latter as inessential. We wish to consider this by way of example, first in the smallest and then in the greatest.—When the clouds drift, the figures they form are not essential to them, are indifferent to them; but that, as elastic vapor, they are compressed by the impact of the wind, driven away, expanded, torn apart: this is their nature, this is the essence of the forces that objectify themselves in them, this is the Idea; only for the individual observer are there the figures of the moment.—To the brook that rolls downward over stones, the eddies, waves, and foam-formations that it lets be seen are indifferent and inessential; that it follows gravity, behaves as an inelastic, perfectly displaceable, formless, transparent fluid: this is its essence, this is, if known intuitively, the Idea; only for us, so long as we know as individuals, are those formations there.—The ice on the windowpane shoots according to the laws of crystallization, which reveal the essence of the force of nature emerging here, present the Idea; but the trees and flowers that it forms in the process are inessential and exist only for us.—What appears in cloud, brook, and crystal is the faintest echo of that will which emerges more perfectly in the plant, still more perfectly in the animal, most perfectly in man. But only the essential in all those grades of its objectification constitutes the Idea; the unfolding of these, on the other hand, in that it is drawn apart, in the shapes of the principle of sufficient reason, into manifold and many-sided appearances, is inessential to the Idea, lies merely in the mode of knowledge of the individual, and has reality only for this. The same now necessarily holds also of the unfolding of that Idea which is the most perfect objectivity of the will: consequently the history of the human race, the throng of events, the change of the times, the many-shaped forms of human life in different countries and centuries, all this is only the accidental form of the appearance of the Idea, belongs not to the Idea itself, in which alone the adequate objectivity of the will lies, but only to the appearance, which falls into the knowledge of the individual, and is as alien, inessential, and indifferent to the Idea itself as the figures they present are to the clouds, the form of its eddies and foam-formations to the brook, its trees and flowers to the ice.

Whoever has grasped this well, and knows how to distinguish the will from the Idea, and this from its appearance, for them the events of the world will have meaning only insofar as they are the letters from which the Idea of man can be read, but not in and for themselves. They will not believe with the people that time brings forth something really new and significant, that through it or in it something absolutely real comes into existence, or even that time itself as a whole has beginning and end, plan and development, and, say, as its final goal the highest perfection (according to their concepts) of the last generation, living thirty years. They will therefore as little appoint, with Homer, a whole Olympus full of gods to direct those events of time as take, with Ossian, the figures of the clouds for individual beings, since, as said, both have equal significance in relation to the Idea that appears in them. In the manifold shapes of human life and the unceasing change of events, they will regard as the abiding and essential only the Idea, in which the will to life has its most perfect objectivity, and which shows its different sides in the qualities, passions, errors, and merits of the human race, in selfishness, hatred, love, fear, boldness, levity, dullness, cunning, wit, genius, and so on, all of which, converging and coagulating into thousandfold shapes (individuals), continually perform the great and the small history of the world, whereby it is in itself all the same whether what sets them in motion is nuts or crowns. They will finally find that it is in the world as in the dramas of Gozzi, in all of which the same persons always appear, with the same intention and the same fate: the motives and events, to be sure, are different in each piece; but the spirit of the events is the same: the persons of one piece also know nothing of the occurrences in the other, in which they themselves acted: hence, after all the experiences of the earlier pieces, Pantalone has not become more nimble or generous, Tartaglia more conscientious, Brighella more courageous, or Columbine more modest.—

Suppose that we were once permitted a clear view into the realm of possibility and over all the chains of causes and effects, that the Earth Spirit stepped forth and showed us in a picture the most excellent individuals, enlighteners of the world and heroes, whom chance destroyed before the time of their activity—then the great events that would have changed the history of the world and brought on periods of the highest culture and enlightenment, but which the blindest chance, the most insignificant accident, checked at their origin; finally the splendid powers of great individuals, which would have fertilized whole ages of the world, but which they, led astray by error or passion, or forced by necessity, wasted uselessly on unworthy and unfruitful objects, or even squandered in play:—if we saw all this, we should shudder and lament over the lost treasures of whole ages of the world. But the Earth Spirit would smile and say: “The source from which the individuals and their powers flow is inexhaustible and infinite like time and space: for those, just like these forms of all appearance, are also only appearance, visibility of the will. That infinite source no finite measure can exhaust; hence to every event or work stifled in the germ the undiminished infinity still stands open for its return. In this world of appearance neither true loss nor true gain is possible. The will alone is: it, the thing in itself, it, the source of all those appearances. Its self-knowledge, and the affirmation or denial that decides itself thereupon, is the only event in itself.”—¹³

14 This last sentence cannot be understood without acquaintance with the following book.

36 History follows the thread of events: it is pragmatic insofar as it derives them according to the law of motivation, which law determines the appearing will where it is illumined by knowledge. On the lower grades of its objectivity, where it still works without knowledge, natural science considers the laws of the changes of its appearances as etiology, and what abides in them as morphology, which lightens its almost infinite theme by the aid of concepts, comprehending the universal in order to derive the particular from it. Finally, the mere forms in which, for the knowledge of the subject as individual, the Ideas appear drawn apart into plurality, that is, time and space, are considered by mathematics. All of these, whose common name is science, thus follow the principle of sufficient reason in its different shapes, and their theme remains the appearance, its laws, its connection, and the relations arising therefrom.—But what kind of knowledge considers that which exists outside and independent of all relation, the only really essential thing in the world, the true content of its appearances, that which is subject to no change and is therefore known with equal truth for all time, in a word, the Ideas, which are the immediate and adequate objectivity of the thing in itself, of the will?—It is art, the work of genius. It repeats the eternal Ideas apprehended through pure contemplation, the essential and abiding in all the appearances of the world, and according to the material in which it repeats them it is plastic art, poetry, or music. Its sole origin is the knowledge of the Ideas; its sole goal the communication of this knowledge.—While science, following the restless and unstable stream of grounds and consequents in their fourfold form, is at every goal reached always pointed onward again and can never find a final goal or complete satisfaction, any more than by running one reaches the point where the clouds touch the horizon, art, on the other hand, is everywhere at its goal. For it tears the object of its contemplation out of the stream of the world’s course and has it isolated before it: and this single thing, which in that stream was a vanishingly small part, becomes for it a representative of the whole, an equivalent of the infinitely many in space and time: it therefore stops at this single thing: it holds the wheel of time still: the relations vanish for it: only the essential, the Idea, is its object.—We can therefore designate it directly as the mode of considering things independently of the principle of sufficient reason, in contrast to the consideration that follows precisely this principle, which is the path of experience and science. This latter kind of consideration is to be compared to an infinite, horizontally running line; the former, however, to the perpendicular cutting it at any point whatever. The consideration that follows the principle of sufficient reason is the rational mode of consideration, which alone holds and helps in practical life as in science: that which looks away from the content of that principle is the mode of consideration of genius, which alone holds and helps in art. The former is Aristotle’s mode of consideration; the second is on the whole Plato’s. The former resembles the mighty storm that rushes on without beginning or goal, bending, moving, and sweeping everything along with it; the second, the quiet sunbeam that cuts through the path of this storm, wholly unmoved by it. The former resembles the countless, violently moved drops of the waterfall, which, ever changing, rest not a moment; the second, the rainbow resting quietly upon this raging tumult.—Only through the pure contemplation described above, which is wholly absorbed in the object, are Ideas apprehended, and the essence of genius consists precisely in the preponderant capacity for such contemplation: since this demands a complete forgetting of one’s own person and its relations, genius is nothing other than the most perfect objectivity, that is, objective direction of the mind, opposed to the subjective direction, which goes to one’s own person, that is, to the will. Genius is accordingly the capacity to conduct oneself as purely perceiving, to lose oneself in intuition, and to withdraw knowledge, which originally exists only for the service of the will, from this service, that is, to lose from sight altogether one’s interest, one’s willing, one’s ends, thus to divest oneself fully for a time of one’s personality, in order to remain as purely knowing subject, clear eye of the world: and this not for moments, but so lastingly and with so much deliberateness as is needed to repeat what has been apprehended by considered art, and “to fix in enduring thoughts what hovers in wavering appearance.”—It is as if, in order for the man of genius to emerge in an individual, a measure of the power of knowledge must have fallen to that individual which far exceeds what is required for the service of an individual will; and this freed surplus of knowledge now becomes the subject pure of will, the bright mirror of the essence of the world.—From this is explained the liveliness, amounting to restlessness, in individuals of genius, since the present can seldom satisfy them, because it does not fill their consciousness: this gives them that restless striving, that unceasing search for new objects worthy of contemplation, and also that almost never satisfied longing for beings like themselves, equal to them, to whom they could communicate themselves; whereas the ordinary child of earth, wholly filled and satisfied by the ordinary present, is absorbed in it, and, finding his equals everywhere, has that special comfortableness in everyday life which is denied to the man of genius.—Imagination has been recognized as an essential component of genius, indeed it has sometimes even been held identical with it: the former rightly, the latter wrongly. Since the objects of the man of genius as such are the eternal Ideas, the abiding essential forms of the world and of all its appearances, but the knowledge of the Idea is necessarily intuitive, not abstract, the knowledge of the man of genius would be limited to the Ideas of the objects actually present to his person, and dependent on the concatenation of circumstances that brought those to him, if imagination did not extend his horizon far beyond the reality of his personal experience and put him in a position to construct, from the little that has come into his actual apperception, all the rest, and so to let almost all possible pictures of life pass before him. Moreover, the real objects are almost always only very defective exemplars of the Idea that presents itself in them: hence the man of genius needs imagination in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what it endeavored to form, and did not bring about because of the struggle of its forms among one another mentioned in the previous book. We shall return to this below, in considering sculpture. Imagination, then, extends the circle of vision of the man of genius beyond the objects that offer themselves in reality to his person, both in quality and in quantity. On this account unusual strength of imagination is the companion, indeed the condition, of genius. But conversely imagination does not testify to genius; rather even people entirely without genius can have much imagination. For as one can consider a real object in two opposite ways: purely objectively, as genius does, grasping its Idea; or commonly, merely in its relations, according to the principle of sufficient reason, to other objects and to one’s own will; so one can also look at a phantasm in both ways: considered in the first manner, it is a means to the knowledge of the Idea, whose communication is the work of art; in the second case the phantasm is employed to build castles in the air, which suit selfishness and one’s own whim, and momentarily deceive and delight; whereby of the phantasms thus linked really only their relations are known. He who plays this game is a fantasist: he will easily mix the pictures with which he amuses himself in solitude into reality, and thereby become unfit for it: he will perhaps write down the juggleries of his imagination, where they yield the ordinary novels of every kind, which entertain his like and the great public, in that the readers dream themselves into the place of the hero and then find the presentation very “comfortable.”

The common man, this factory product of nature, such as she turns out daily by the thousand, is, as said, at least wholly incapable of a lasting contemplation that is disinterested in every sense, which is real contemplativeness: he can direct his attention to things only insofar as they have some relation to his will, even if only a very indirect one. Since in this respect, which always requires only the knowledge of relations, the abstract concept of the thing is sufficient and mostly even better suited, the common man does not dwell long on mere intuition, and therefore does not fix his gaze long upon an object; but, in everything that presents itself to him, seeks only, and quickly, the concept under which it is to be brought, as the idle man seeks a chair, and then it interests him no further. Hence he is so quickly done with everything, with works of art, beautiful objects of nature, and the sight of life in all its scenes, which is really significant everywhere. He, however, does not dwell: he seeks only his own path in life, at most also everything that might some day become his path, that is, topographical notes in the widest sense: on the contemplation of life itself as such he wastes no time. The man of genius, on the other hand, whose power of knowledge, by its preponderance, withdraws from the service of his will for a part of his time, dwells on the contemplation of life itself, strives to grasp the Idea of each thing, not its relations to other things: over this he frequently neglects the contemplation of his own path in life, and therefore for the most part follows it awkwardly enough. While to the common man his faculty of knowledge is the lantern that lights his path, to the man of genius it is the sun that makes the world manifest. This so different way of looking into life soon becomes visible even in the outward appearance of the two. The look of the man in whom genius lives and works easily distinguishes him, in that, at once lively and steady, it bears the character of contemplativeness, of contemplation; as we can see in the portraits of the few heads of genius that nature has brought forth now and then among the countless millions: whereas in the look of the others, when it is not, as is mostly the case, dull or sober, the true opposite of contemplation, prying, easily becomes visible. Accordingly the “expression of genius” in a head consists in this, that a decided preponderance of knowing over willing is visible in it, and consequently also a knowing without any relation to a willing, that is, a pure knowing, expresses itself in it. In heads as they commonly are, on the other hand, the expression of willing predominates, and one sees that knowing always comes into activity only at the impulse of willing, and is therefore directed merely to motives.

Since the knowledge of genius, or knowledge of the Idea, is that which does not follow the principle of sufficient reason, whereas that which does follow it imparts prudence and reasonableness in life and brings the sciences into being, individuals of genius will be afflicted with the defects that neglect of the latter mode of knowledge brings with it. Here, however, the restriction is to be noted that what I shall cite in this regard touches them only insofar as, and while, they are actually engaged in the mode of knowledge of genius, which is by no means the case at every moment of their life, since the great, though spontaneous, tension that is required for the will-free apprehension of the Ideas necessarily relaxes again and has great intervals, in which they stand, both in respect of merits and of defects, fairly equal to ordinary men. On this account the working of genius has always been regarded as an inspiration, indeed, as the name itself indicates, as the working of a superhuman being, different from the individual himself, which only periodically takes possession of him. The aversion of individuals of genius to directing their attention to the content of the principle of sufficient reason will show itself first in respect of the ground of being, as aversion to mathematics, whose consideration goes to the most universal forms of appearance, space and time, which are themselves only shapes of the principle of sufficient reason, and is therefore wholly the opposite of that consideration which seeks only the content of the appearance, the Idea expressing itself in it, looking away from all relations. Besides this, the logical treatment of mathematics too will be repugnant to the man of genius, since this treatment, shutting out real insight, does not satisfy, but, offering a mere chain of inferences according to the principle of the ground of knowledge, makes the greatest claim, of all the powers of the mind, on memory, namely in order always to have present all the earlier propositions on which one relies. Experience has also confirmed that great men of genius in art have no ability for mathematics: never was a man at the same time very distinguished in both. Alfieri relates that he never could grasp even the fourth proposition of Euclid. Goethe has been abundantly reproached with his lack of mathematical knowledge by the unintelligent opponents of his theory of colors: to be sure, here, where the question was not of calculating and measuring from hypothetical data, but of immediate knowledge of cause and effect by the understanding, that reproach was so wholly askew and out of place that those opponents displayed their total lack of judgment thereby as much as by their other Midas-pronouncements. That even today, almost half a century after the appearance of Goethe’s theory of colors, even in Germany, the Newtonian nonsense remains undisturbed in possession of the professorial chairs and people go on talking quite seriously of the seven homogeneous lights and their different refrangibility,—will one day be counted among the great intellectual traits of character of mankind in general and of Germandom in particular.—The same ground given above explains the equally well-known fact that, conversely, distinguished mathematicians have little receptivity for works of the fine arts, which expresses itself especially naively in the well-known anecdote of that French mathematician who, after reading through the Iphigenia of Racine, asked with a shrug: Qu’est-ce que cela prouve?—Since, further, keen apprehension of relations according to the law of causality and motivation is really what constitutes prudence, but the knowledge of genius is not directed to relations, a prudent man, insofar as and while he is so, will not be a man of genius, and a man of genius, insofar as and while he is so, will not be prudent.—Finally, intuitive knowledge, in whose domain the Idea wholly lies, stands generally in direct opposition to the rational or abstract knowledge, which is guided by the principle of sufficient reason of knowing. It is also well known that great genius is seldom found paired with predominant reasonableness; rather, conversely, individuals of genius are often subject to violent affects and unreasonable passions. The ground of this is nevertheless not weakness of reason, but partly unusual energy of the whole appearance of will that the individual of genius is, which expresses itself by the vehemence of all acts of will, and partly preponderance of intuitive knowledge through senses and understanding over the abstract, hence a decided direction to the intuitive, whose most energetic impression in them so outshines the colorless concepts that no longer these but that guides action, which for that very reason becomes unreasonable: accordingly the impression of the present is very powerful on them, and sweeps them away to the unreflective, to affect, to passion. Hence also, and in general because their knowledge has partly withdrawn from the service of the will, in conversation they will think not so much of the person to whom, as rather of the subject about which, they speak, which hovers vividly before them: hence they will judge or narrate too objectively for their own interest, will not keep silent about what would more prudently be left unsaid, and so on. Hence, finally, they are inclined to monologues and can in general show several weaknesses that really approach madness. That genius and madness have a side where they border upon one another, indeed pass over into one another, has often been remarked, and poetic inspiration itself has even been called a kind of madness: amabilis insania Horace calls it (Od. III, 4), and “sweet madness” Wieland, at the opening of the “Oberon.” Even Aristotle is said, according to Seneca’s citation (de tranq. animi, 15, 16), to have said: Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit. Plato expresses it, in the myth of the dark cave cited above (de Rep. 7), by saying: Those who outside the cave have beheld the true sunlight and the really existent things (the Ideas) can afterward, in the cave, because their eyes are unaccustomed to the darkness, no longer see, no longer properly recognize the shadow-images down there, and are therefore, in their blunders, mocked by the others who never got out of this cave and away from these shadow-images. He also says in the Phaedrus (p. 317) directly that without a certain madness there can be no genuine poet, indeed (p. 327) that everyone who recognizes in the transient things the eternal Ideas appears mad. Cicero also cites: Negat enim, sine furore, Democritus, quemquam poëtam magnum esse posse; quod idem dicit Plato (de divin. I, 37). And finally Pope says:

Great wits to madness sure are near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide¹⁵.

Especially instructive in this respect is Goethe’s “Torquato Tasso,” in which he sets before our eyes not only the suffering, the essential martyrdom of genius as such, but also its steady transition to madness. Finally, the fact of the immediate contact between genius and madness is confirmed by the biographies of men of great genius, for example Rousseau’s, Byron’s, Alfieri’s, and by anecdotes from the lives of others; and in part I must, on the other hand, mention that in frequent visits to madhouses I have found individual subjects of unmistakably great gifts, whose genius showed distinctly through the madness, which here, however, had gained complete mastery. This cannot be ascribed to chance, because on the one hand the number of the mad is comparatively very small, while on the other hand an individual of genius is a phenomenon rare beyond all ordinary estimation and appearing in nature only as the greatest exception; of which one can convince oneself solely by enumerating the really great men of genius that all of civilized Europe has produced in all ancient and modern times, among whom, however, only those are to be counted who delivered works that have retained through all times an enduring value for mankind—by enumerating, I say, these individuals and comparing their number with the 250 million who, renewing themselves every thirty years, constantly live in Europe. Indeed, I will not leave unmentioned that I have known some people of not significant, but yet decided, mental superiority, who at the same time betrayed a slight tinge of derangement. Accordingly it might seem that every heightening of the intellect beyond the ordinary measure, as an abnormality, already disposes to madness. Meanwhile I wish to present as briefly as possible my opinion on the purely intellectual ground of that kinship between genius and madness, since this discussion will indeed contribute to the [16] The great mind is akin to madness, And a thin wall alone separates the two. elucidation of the real essence of genius, that is, of that quality of mind which alone can create genuine works of art. This, however, makes necessary a brief discussion of madness itself [17].

A clear and complete insight into the essence of madness, a correct and distinct concept of that which really distinguishes the madman from the sane, has, to my knowledge, still not been found.—Neither reason nor understanding can be denied to the mad: for they talk and comprehend, they often reason very correctly; they also, as a rule, perceive the present quite correctly and see the connection between cause and effect. Visions, like fever-fantasies, are no usual symptom of madness: delirium falsifies intuition, madness thoughts. For the most part, namely, the mad are not at all mistaken in the knowledge of what is immediately present; but their raving always refers to the absent and the past, and only through that to its connection with the present. Hence their illness seems to me to strike especially the memory; not indeed in such a way that it wholly failed them, for many know many things by heart and sometimes recognize persons they have long not seen; but rather so that the thread of memory is torn, its continuous connection annulled, and no evenly connected recollection of the past is possible. Single scenes of the past stand there correctly, like the single present; but in their recollection there are gaps, which they then fill with fictions that either, always the same, become fixed ideas: then it is fixed delusion, melancholy; or are each time different, momentary notions: then it is called folly, fatuitas. For this reason it is so hard to question a madman, on his entry into the madhouse, about his earlier course of life. More and more, then, true and false mingle in his memory. Although the immediate present is correctly known, it is falsified by the feigned connection with an [18] On this see ch. 31 of the second volume. imagined past: they therefore take themselves and others for identical with persons who lie merely in their feigned past, do not recognize some acquaintances at all, and so, with a correct representation of the present single thing, have nothing but false relations of it to the absent. If madness reaches a high degree, complete memorylessness arises, for which reason the madman is then wholly incapable of regard for anything absent or past, but is determined wholly alone by the momentary whim, in connection with the fictions that fill the past in his head: unless one constantly keeps one’s superior force before his eyes, one is then not for a moment safe with him from ill-treatment or murder.—The knowledge of the madman has this in common with that of the animal, that both are limited to the present: but what distinguishes them is this: the animal has really no representation at all of the past as such, although the past acts on the animal through the medium of habit, so that, for example, the dog recognizes its former master even after years, that is, receives from the sight of him the accustomed impression; but of the time that has elapsed since then it has no recollection: the madman, on the other hand, carries about in his reason also always a past in abstracto, but a false one, which exists only for him, and this either always or only just now: the influence of this false past now also hinders the use of the correctly known present, which the animal does make. That violent mental suffering and unexpected terrible events frequently occasion madness, I explain to myself as follows. Every such suffering is always, as a real event, limited to the present, thus only passing and so far not yet excessively heavy: it becomes inordinately great only insofar as it is lasting pain: but as such it is again only a thought and therefore lies in the memory; if now such a grief, such a painful knowledge or remembrance, is so agonizing that it proves absolutely unbearable, and the individual would succumb to it—then nature, thus anguished, seizes upon madness as the last means of rescuing life: the spirit, so greatly tormented, tears, as it were, the thread of its memory, fills the gaps with fictions, and thus flees from the mental pain exceeding its strength to madness—as one amputates a limb seized by gangrene and replaces it with a wooden one.—As an example consider the raving Ajax, King Lear, and Ophelia: for the creations of the genuine man of genius, to which alone one can appeal here as universally known, are to be set equal to real persons in truth: moreover frequent real experience also shows quite the same thing here. A faint analogue of that kind of transition from pain to madness is this, that we all often seek, as if mechanically, to scare away a tormenting recollection that suddenly occurs to us by some loud utterance or movement, to divert ourselves from it, to distract ourselves by force.— If, as we have said, we see the madman rightly know the single present thing, and even some single things of the past, yet misapprehend the connection and the relations, and so err and talk deliriously, then this is precisely the point at which he touches the individual of genius. For the man of genius too abandons the knowledge of relations, which is the knowledge that accords with the principle of sufficient reason, in order to see and seek in things only their Ideas, to grasp their real nature, which expresses itself to intuition, and in respect of which a thing represents its whole species and therefore, as Goethe says, counts as one case for thousands—and in doing so he too loses sight of the connection of things. The single object of his contemplation, or the present moment, which he apprehends with excessive vividness, appears in so bright a light that the remaining links of the chain to which they belong recede, as it were, into darkness; and this produces phenomena that bear a resemblance to those of madness, one long since recognized. What exists in the individual thing only imperfectly, weakened by modifications, the way of seeing proper to genius raises to the Idea of it, to the perfect. He therefore sees extremes everywhere, and by this very fact his conduct runs to extremes: he cannot strike the right measure, he lacks sobriety, and the result is what I have described. He knows the Ideas perfectly, but not the individuals. Hence, as has been observed, a poet may know Man deeply and thoroughly, yet men very poorly; he is easily deceived and is a plaything in the hands of the cunning [19].

37 Although, then, according to our exposition, genius consists in the capacity to know independently of the principle of sufficient reason, and therefore to know, in place of single things, which have their existence only in relation, their Ideas, and, standing over against these, to be oneself the correlate of the Idea, that is, no longer individual but pure subject of knowing; yet this capacity must dwell, in a lesser and varying degree, in all men as well. Otherwise they would be as little able to enjoy works of art as to produce them, and would have absolutely no receptivity to the beautiful and the sublime; indeed these words could have no meaning for them. Unless there happen to be some who are altogether incapable of aesthetic pleasure, we must therefore assume in all men that faculty of knowing in things their Ideas, and so of momentarily divesting themselves of their personality. The man of genius has the advantage over them only in a far higher degree and a more lasting duration of that mode of knowledge, which lets him retain throughout it the presence of mind required to repeat what he has thus known in a deliberate work; and this repetition is the work of art. Through it he communicates the apprehended Idea to others. The Idea therefore remains unchanged and the same; and so aesthetic pleasure is essentially one and the same, whether it is called forth by a work of art or directly by the intuition of nature and of life. The work of art is merely a means of facilitating the knowledge in which that pleasure consists. That the Idea comes to meet us more easily from the work of art than directly from nature and reality arises from this: that the artist, who [20] On this, Chapter 32 of the second volume. knew only the Idea and no longer reality, has also repeated in his work only the Idea, purely, has separated it out of reality, omitting all disturbing accidents. The artist lets us look into the world through his eyes. That he has these eyes, that he knows the essential in things, which lies outside all relations, is precisely the gift of genius, the inborn; but that he is able to lend us this gift too, to put his eyes on us: this is the acquired, the technical side of art. For this reason, then, now that in what precedes I have set forth the inner nature of the aesthetic mode of knowledge in its most general outlines, the closer philosophical consideration of the beautiful and the sublime that now follows will treat both at once, in nature and in art, without separating these any further. What goes on in a man when the beautiful moves him, and when the sublime moves him, we shall consider first. Whether he draws this emotion directly from nature, from life, or comes to share in it only through the mediation of art, establishes no essential difference, but only an outward one.

38 We have found in the aesthetic way of regarding things two inseparable components: the knowledge of the object, not as a single thing but as a Platonic Idea, that is, as the abiding form of this whole species of things; and then the self-consciousness of the knower, not as an individual but as pure, will-less subject of knowledge. The condition under which both components always enter united was the abandoning of the mode of knowledge bound to the principle of sufficient reason, which on the other hand is the only one suited to the service of the will, and also to science.—The pleasure too that is aroused by the contemplation of the beautiful we shall see proceed from those two components, now more from the one, now more from the other, according to what the object of aesthetic contemplation is.

All willing springs from need, that is, from lack, that is, from suffering. Fulfillment puts an end to this; yet against one wish that is fulfilled at least ten remain denied. Further, desire lasts long, its demands go on to infinity; fulfillment is short and meagerly measured out. But even the final satisfaction is itself only apparent: the fulfilled wish at once makes room for a new one; the former is an error recognized, the latter an error not yet recognized. No attained object of willing can give lasting satisfaction that no longer gives way: rather it is always like the alms thrown to the beggar, which keeps him alive today so as to prolong his torment until tomorrow.—Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled with our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hoping and fearing, so long as we are subjects of willing, lasting happiness and peace will never be ours. Whether we pursue or flee, fear harm or strive for enjoyment, is essentially all one: the care for the ever demanding will, in whatever shape, continually fills and moves consciousness; and without peace no true well-being is possible at all. Thus the subject of willing lies constantly on the revolving wheel of Ixion, draws always in the sieve of the Danaids, is the eternally languishing Tantalus.

But when some outward occasion or inward mood suddenly lifts us out of the endless stream of willing, wrests knowledge from the slavery of the will, so that attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing but grasps things free of their relation to the will, and thus regards them without interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively, given up to them entirely insofar as they are merely representations, not insofar as they are motives: then the peace that was always sought on that first road of willing, but always fled from us, has all at once come of itself, and we are wholly at ease. It is the painless state that Epicurus prized as the highest good and as the state of the gods: for we are, for that moment, released from the vile pressure of the will, we keep the Sabbath from the penal servitude of willing, the wheel of Ixion stands still.

This state, however, is precisely the one I described above as required for the knowledge of the Idea: pure contemplation, absorption in intuition, losing oneself in the object, forgetting of all individuality, suspension of the mode of knowledge that follows the principle of sufficient reason and grasps only relations. In it, at the same time and inseparably, the intuited single thing rises to the Idea of its species, and the knowing individual to pure subject of will-less knowing, and both as such no longer stand in the stream of time and of all other relations. It is then all one whether we watch the sun set from the dungeon or from the palace.

Inner mood, a preponderance of knowing over willing, can call forth this state in any surroundings. This is shown us by those excellent Netherlanders who directed such purely objective intuition upon the most insignificant objects and set up a lasting monument of their objectivity and mental calm in still life. The aesthetic beholder cannot regard it without emotion, since it presents to him the quiet, still, will-free state of mind of the artist, which was needed in order to intuit such insignificant things so objectively, to contemplate them so attentively, and to repeat this intuition with such presence of mind. And since the picture invites him too to share in such a state, his emotion is often still heightened by the contrast with his own restless state of mind, clouded by violent willing, in which he happens to be. In the same spirit landscape painters, especially Ruisdael, have often painted extremely insignificant landscape subjects, and thereby produced the same effect in a still more delightful way.

So much the inner power of an artistic mind accomplishes quite alone; but that purely objective frame of mind is facilitated and furthered from without by objects that come to meet it, by the abundance of beautiful nature, which invites intuition, indeed presses itself upon it. Whenever it opens up to our gaze all at once, it almost always succeeds in wresting us, if only for moments, from subjectivity, from the slavery of the will, and transposing us into the state of pure knowing. That is why one tormented by passions, or by want and care, is so suddenly refreshed, cheered and lifted up by a single free glance into nature: the storm of the passions, the press of desire and fear, and all the torment of willing are then at once calmed in a wonderful way. For in the moment when, torn loose from willing, we have given ourselves up to pure will-less knowing, we have as it were stepped into another world, where everything that moves our will and thereby shakes us so violently is no more. This liberation of knowledge lifts us out of all that as wholly as sleep and dream do: happiness and unhappiness have vanished; we are no longer the individual, that is forgotten, but only pure subject of knowledge; we exist only as the one eye of the world that looks out from all knowing beings, but in man alone can become wholly free from the service of the will. In this all difference of individuality so completely vanishes that it is then all one whether the beholding eye belongs to a mighty king or to a tormented beggar. For neither happiness nor misery is carried across that boundary. So near to us always lies a realm in which we have wholly escaped all our misery; but who has the strength to keep himself in it long? As soon as any relation of those objects thus purely intuited to our will, to our person, enters consciousness again, the spell is at an end: we fall back into the knowledge that the principle of sufficient reason governs, we know now no longer the Idea but the single thing, the link of a chain to which we too belong, and we are given back to all our misery.—Most people, because objectivity, that is, genius, is entirely lacking in them, stand almost always at this standpoint. Hence they do not like to be alone with nature: they need company, at least a book. For their knowing remains in the service of the will; they therefore seek in objects only whatever relation to their will there may be, and with everything that has no such relation there sounds in their inner being, like a ground bass, a constant, comfortless “It does me no good.” Thereby, in solitude, even the most beautiful surroundings take on for them a desolate, dark, alien, hostile look.

That bliss of will-less intuiting is, finally, also what spreads so wondrous a magic over the past and the distant, and by a self-deception presents them to us in so beautifying a light. For when we recall to mind long-vanished days spent in a distant place, it is the objects alone that our imagination calls back, not the subject of the will, which carried its incurable sufferings about with it then just as it does now; but these are forgotten, because since then they have often already made way for others. Now the objective intuition works in memory just as the present one would work if we could bring ourselves to give ourselves up to it free of will. Hence it comes about that, especially when some distress oppresses us more than usual, the sudden recollection of scenes of the past and the distant flies past us like a lost paradise. Only the objective, not the individually subjective, is called back by imagination, and we imagine that this objective stood before us then as purely, untroubled by any relation to the will, as its image does now in imagination; whereas in fact the relation of the objects to our willing caused us torment then as much as now. We can withdraw ourselves from all suffering through present objects just as well as through distant ones, as soon as we raise ourselves to a purely objective contemplation of them, and so are able to produce the illusion that only those objects, not we ourselves, were present. Then, rid of the wretched self, we become as pure subject of knowing wholly one with those objects, and as alien as our distress is to them, so alien is it, in such moments, to ourselves. The world as representation then alone remains, and the world as will has vanished.

By all these considerations I wish to have made clear of what kind and how great is the share which the subjective condition of aesthetic pleasure has in it, namely the liberation of knowing from the service of the will, the forgetting of one’s self as individual, and the elevation of consciousness to the pure, will-less, timeless subject of knowing, independent of all relations. With this subjective side of aesthetic contemplation there always enters at the same time, as its necessary correlate, the objective side of it, the intuitive apprehension of the Platonic Idea. But before we turn to the closer consideration of this and to the achievements of art in relation to it, it is more fitting to dwell a little longer on the subjective side of aesthetic pleasure, in order to complete the consideration of it by discussing the impression of the sublime, which depends on that side alone and arises through a modification of it. After that our investigation of aesthetic pleasure will, through the consideration of its objective side, receive its full completeness.

But before going on, the following remarks still belong to what has gone before. Light is the most delightful of things: it has become the symbol of all that is good and salutary. In all religions it designates eternal salvation, and darkness damnation. Ormuzd dwells in the purest light, Ahriman in eternal night. In Dante’s Paradise it looks roughly like Vauxhall in London, since all the blessed spirits there appear as points of light that arrange themselves into regular figures. The absence of light saddens us immediately; its return gladdens us. Colors arouse an immediate, lively delight, which reaches its highest degree when they are transparent. All this comes solely from the fact that light is the correlate and condition of the most perfect perceptual mode of knowledge, the only one that does not directly affect the will at all. For seeing is not capable, as the affection of the other senses is, of itself, immediately and through its sensory effect, of an agreeableness or disagreeableness of sensation in the organ; that is, it has no immediate connection with the will. Only the intuition arising in the understanding can have one, and that then lies in the relation of the object to the will. With hearing this is already different: tones can arouse pain immediately, and can also be immediately, sensuously pleasant, without reference to harmony or melody. Touch, as one with the feeling of the whole body, is still more subject to this immediate influence on the will; yet there is still a touching free of pain and of voluptuousness. Smells, however, are always agreeable or disagreeable, and tastes still more so. These last two senses are therefore the most contaminated with the will; hence they are always the least noble, and Kant called them the subjective senses. The joy in light is therefore in fact only the joy in the objective possibility of the purest and most perfect perceptual mode of knowledge, and as such is to be derived from the fact that pure knowing, freed and rid of all willing, is supremely delightful and already as such has a great share in aesthetic enjoyment.—From this view of light we may again derive the incredibly great beauty that we ascribe to the mirroring of objects in water. That lightest, swiftest, finest kind of action of bodies on one another, to which we too owe by far the most perfect and purest of our perceptions, the action by means of reflected rays of light, is here brought before our eyes quite clearly, surveyably and completely, in cause and effect, and indeed on a grand scale. Hence our aesthetic joy in it, which in the main is rooted wholly in the subjective ground of aesthetic pleasure and is joy in pure knowing and its ways [21].

39 To all these considerations, which are meant to bring out the subjective part of aesthetic pleasure—that is, this pleasure insofar as it is joy in mere perceptual knowing as such, as opposed to the will—there attaches itself, as directly connected with them, the following explanation of that mood which has been called the feeling of the sublime.

It has already been remarked above that being transposed into the state of pure intuiting occurs most easily when the objects come to meet it, that is, when through their manifold and at the same time definite and distinct form they readily become representatives of their Ideas, in which beauty, in the [22] On this, Chapter 33 of the second volume. objective sense, precisely consists. Above all, beautiful nature has this quality, and thereby wins from even the most insensible at least a fleeting aesthetic pleasure. Indeed, it is so striking how the plant world in particular invites aesthetic contemplation and as it were presses itself upon it, that one might say this coming to meet us was connected with the fact that these organic beings are not themselves, like animal bodies, immediate objects of knowledge, and so need the foreign understanding individual in order to step out of the world of blind willing into that of representation; so that they, as it were, long for this entrance, in order to obtain at least mediately what is denied them immediately. For the rest, I leave this daring thought, which perhaps borders on enthusiasm, wholly undecided, since only a very intimate and devoted contemplation of nature can arouse or justify it [23]. So long, then, as it is this coming to meet us of nature, the significance and distinctness of its forms, from which the Ideas individualized in them readily speak to us, that transposes us out of the knowledge of mere relations, which serves the will, into aesthetic contemplation, and thereby raises us to will-free subject of knowing, so long it is merely the beautiful that works on us, and the feeling of beauty that is aroused. But if those very objects whose significant forms invite us to their pure contemplation stand in a hostile relation to the human will in general, as it presents itself in its objectivity, the human body, are opposed to it, threaten it by their superior power that cancels all resistance, or dwindle it to nothing before their immeasurable greatness; and if the beholder nevertheless does not direct his attention to this hostile relation to his will that thrusts itself [24] All the more does it please and surprise me now, 40 years after I wrote down the above thought so timidly and hesitantly, to discover that St. Augustine had already expressed it: Arbusta formas suas varias, quibus mundi hujus visibilis structura formosa est, sentiendas sensibus praebent; ut, pro eo quod nosse non possunt, quasi innotescere velle videantur. (De civ. Dei, XI, 27.) upon him, but, though perceiving and acknowledging it, turns consciously away from it, tearing himself violently loose from his will and its relations and, given up to knowledge alone, calmly contemplates those very objects so fearful to the will as pure will-less subject of knowing, apprehending only their Idea, which is foreign to every relation, and therefore gladly lingering over their contemplation, and consequently being lifted by this very thing beyond himself, his person, his willing and all willing—then the feeling of the sublime fills him, he is in the state of elevation, and for that reason the object that occasions such a state is also called sublime. What distinguishes the feeling of the sublime from that of the beautiful is therefore this: with the beautiful, pure knowing has won the upper hand without a struggle, in that the beauty of the object, that is, its quality that facilitates the knowledge of its Idea, removed the will, and the knowledge of relations that is in thrall to the will, from consciousness without resistance and therefore imperceptibly, and left consciousness behind as pure subject of knowing, so that not even a recollection of the will remains. With the sublime, on the other hand, that state of pure knowing is first of all won by a conscious and violent tearing loose from the relations of the same object to the will which are recognized as unfavorable, by a free elevation, accompanied by consciousness, above the will and the knowledge that relates to it. This elevation must not only be won with consciousness but also maintained, and is therefore accompanied by a constant remembrance of the will, yet not of a single, individual willing, such as fear or desire, but of human willing in general, insofar as it is expressed universally through its objectivity, the human body. Were a real single act of will to enter consciousness, through actual personal distress and danger from the object, then the individual will thus really moved would at once gain the upper hand, the calm of contemplation would become impossible, and the impression of the sublime would be lost, giving place to anxiety, in which the individual’s striving to save himself drove out every other thought.—A few examples will contribute very much to making this theory of the aesthetically sublime clear and to placing it beyond doubt; at the same time they will show the diversity of the degrees of that feeling of the sublime. For since it is one with the feeling of the beautiful in its principal determination, the pure, will-free knowing and the knowledge, necessarily entering with it, of the Ideas that stand outside all relation determined by the principle of sufficient reason, and differs from the feeling of the beautiful only by an addition, namely the elevation above the recognized hostile relation of the very object contemplated to the will in general, there arise, according as this addition is strong, loud, urgent, near, or only faint, distant, merely hinted, several degrees of the sublime, indeed transitions from the beautiful to the sublime. I hold it more suitable to the exposition to bring these transitions, and in general the weaker degrees of the impression of the sublime, before the eyes first in examples, although those whose aesthetic receptivity is not very great at all, and whose imagination is not lively, will understand only the examples of the higher, more distinct degrees of that impression that follow later; they must therefore keep to these alone, and let the examples of the very weak degrees of the said impression, which are to be cited first, rest.

Just as man is at once the impetuous and gloomy pressure of willing (designated by the pole of the genitals as its focal point) and the eternal, free, serene subject of pure knowing (designated by the pole of the brain), so, corresponding to this opposition, the sun is at once source of light, the condition of the most perfect mode of knowledge and thereby of the most delightful of things—and source of warmth, the first condition of all life, that is, of all appearance of the will on its higher stages. What warmth is for the will, therefore, light is for knowledge. For that very reason light is the greatest diamond in the crown of beauty and has the most decisive influence on the knowledge of every beautiful object: its presence in general is an indispensable condition; its favorable position heightens the beauty even of the most beautiful. Above all else, however, the beautiful in architecture is heightened by its favor, through which even the most insignificant becomes the most beautiful object.—If we now see, in the severe winter, in the general numbness of nature, the rays of the low-standing sun thrown back by masses of stone, where they illuminate without warming and are thus favorable only to the purest mode of knowledge, not to the will, then the contemplation of the beautiful effect of the light on these masses transposes us, like all beauty, into the state of pure knowing. Here, however, through the faint recollection of the lack of warming by those very rays, that is, of the life-giving principle, this state already demands a certain elevation above the interest of the will, contains a faint summons to persist in pure knowing, turning away from all willing, and is precisely thereby a transition from the feeling of the beautiful to that of the sublime. It is the faintest breath of the sublime in the beautiful, which latter itself appears here only in slight degree. An almost equally faint example is the following.

Let us transport ourselves into a very lonely region, with unbounded horizon, under a wholly cloudless sky, trees and plants in quite motionless air, no animals, no human beings, no moving waters, the deepest stillness—such surroundings are like a summons to seriousness, to contemplation, with a tearing loose from all willing and its neediness. But precisely this already gives such merely lonely and deeply resting surroundings a touch of the sublime. For because they offer the will, which needs constant striving and attaining, no objects, neither favorable nor unfavorable, only the state of pure contemplation remains; and whoever is not capable of this is abandoned, to his humiliating abasement, to the emptiness of the unoccupied will, to the torment of boredom. To that extent such surroundings give a measure of our own intellectual worth, for which in general the degree of our capacity to endure, or love, solitude is a good yardstick. The surroundings described give, then, an example of the sublime in a low degree, in that in them, as a contrast to the state of pure knowing, in its calm and all-sufficiency, there is mixed a recollection of the dependence and wretchedness of the will, which needs constant driving.—This is the kind of the sublime that is praised in the sight of the endless prairies in the interior of North America.

Now let such a region also be stripped of plants and show only bare rocks; then through the total absence of the organic, which is necessary to our subsistence, the will is already made downright anxious. The desolation takes on a fearful character; our mood becomes more tragic; the elevation to pure knowing takes place with a more decided tearing loose from the interest of the will, and as we persist in the state of pure knowing, the feeling of the sublime emerges distinctly.

In a still higher degree the following surroundings can occasion it. Nature in stormy motion; chiaroscuro, through threatening black thunderclouds; enormous, bare, overhanging cliffs that by their interlocking shut off the view; rushing, foaming waters; total desolation; the wailing of the air sweeping through the ravines. Our dependence, our struggle with hostile nature, our will broken in it, now comes vividly before our eyes. But so long as personal distress does not gain the upper hand, and we remain in aesthetic contemplation, the pure subject of knowing looks through that struggle of nature, through that image of the broken will, and calmly, unshaken, untouched (unconcerned), apprehends the Ideas in the very objects that are threatening and fearful to the will. In this very contrast lies the feeling of the sublime.

But the impression becomes still more powerful when we have the struggle of the enraged forces of nature before our eyes on a grand scale: when in those surroundings a falling torrent by its raging deprives us of the possibility of hearing our own voice—or when we stand by the vast sea roused in storm. Waves as high as houses rise and sink, dashed violently against steep shore cliffs, they spray the foam high into the air, the storm howls, the sea roars, lightning flashes from black clouds and thunderclaps drown out storm and sea. Then, in the unshaken spectator of this scene, the duality of his consciousness reaches its highest distinctness. He feels himself at once as individual, as frail appearance of the will, which the slightest blow of those forces can shatter, helpless against mighty nature, dependent, abandoned to chance, a vanishing nothing in the face of tremendous powers; and with that, at the same time, as eternal calm subject of knowing, who, as condition of the object, is the bearer of this whole world, and to whom the fearful struggle of nature is only his representation, he himself in calm apprehension of the Ideas, free and alien to all willing and all needs. It is the full impression of the sublime. Here it is occasioned by the sight of a power threatening the individual with annihilation, a power incomparably superior to him.

In quite another way it can arise at the presentation of a mere greatness in space and time, whose immeasurability dwindles the individual to nothing. We can call the first kind the dynamically sublime, the second the mathematically sublime, retaining Kant’s names and his correct division, although in the explanation of the inner nature of that impression we depart from him entirely and concede to neither moral reflections nor hypostases from scholastic philosophy any share in it.

When we lose ourselves in the contemplation of the infinite greatness of the world in space and time, and meditate on the millennia that have passed and those to come—or also when the night sky actually brings countless worlds before our eyes, and so the immeasurability of the world forces itself upon consciousness—we feel ourselves dwindled to nothing; we feel ourselves, as individual, as animate body, as transient appearance of the will, like a drop in the ocean, dwindling away, dissolving into nothing. But at the same time, against such a specter of our own nothingness, against such a lying impossibility, there rises the immediate consciousness that all these worlds exist only in our representation, only as modifications of the eternal subject of pure knowing, which we find ourselves to be as soon as we forget individuality, and which is the necessary, the conditioning bearer of all worlds and all times. The greatness of the world, which disquieted us before, now rests in us: our dependence on it is canceled by its dependence on us.—All this, however, does not come at once into reflection, but shows itself as a merely felt consciousness that one is, in some sense (which philosophy alone makes clear), one with the world, and is therefore not weighed down but lifted up by its immeasurability. It is the felt consciousness of what the Upanishads of the Vedas repeatedly express in such manifold turns, above all in the saying already adduced above: Illae omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est. (Oupnek’hat, vol. 1, p. 122). It is elevation above one’s own individuality, the feeling of the sublime.

In a quite immediate way we receive this impression of the mathematically sublime already from a space which, indeed, is small when considered against the structure of the world, but which, by having become immediately perceptible to us as a whole, in all three dimensions, acts on us with its entire magnitude, which suffices to make the measure of our own body almost infinitely small. A space empty to perception can never do this, and hence never an open one, but only one immediately perceptible through limitation in all dimensions, that is, a very high and large vault, like that of St. Peter’s in Rome, or St. Paul’s in London. The feeling of the sublime arises here through becoming aware of the vanishing nothingness of our own body before a greatness which, on the other hand, itself lies only in our representation, and of which we as knowing subject are the bearer; thus here as everywhere through the contrast between the insignificance and dependence of our self as individual, as appearance of the will, and the consciousness of ourselves as pure subject of knowing. Even the vault of the starry heaven, when it is contemplated without reflection, acts only like that stone vault, and not with its true magnitude but only with its apparent one.—Some objects of our intuition arouse the impression of the sublime in that, both by virtue of their spatial greatness and of their great age, that is, their duration in time, we feel ourselves dwindled to nothing in the face of them, and yet revel in the enjoyment of the sight of them: of this kind are very high mountains, the Egyptian pyramids, colossal ruins of high antiquity.

Indeed, our explanation of the sublime can be carried over to the ethical as well, namely to what is called the sublime character. This too springs from the will’s not being aroused by objects which would indeed be suited to arouse it, knowing retaining the upper hand in this case as well. Such a character will accordingly regard men purely objectively, not according to the relations they might have to his will. He will, for example, notice their faults, even their hatred and injustice toward himself, without being thereby aroused to hatred on his part; he will look upon their happiness without feeling envy; he will recognize their good qualities without, however, wishing a closer connection with them; he will perceive the beauty of women without desiring them. His personal happiness or unhappiness will not strongly affect him; rather he will be as Hamlet describes Horatio: for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man, that fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks. etc. (A. 3. sc. 2.) [25]

For in his own course of life and its mishaps he will see less his individual lot than the lot of mankind in general, and will accordingly conduct himself in it more as one who knows than as one who suffers.

40 Because opposites illuminate one another, the remark may find its place here that the real opposite of the sublime is something that at first glance one perhaps does not recognize as such: the charming. By this, however, I understand that which [26] For you were always as though, while everything struck you, you suffered nothing: Fate’s blows and gifts you have taken with equal thanks, etc. arouses the will by holding out to it immediately the granting, the fulfillment.—If the feeling of the sublime arose from the fact that an object directly unfavorable to the will becomes object of pure contemplation, which is then maintained only by a constant turning away from the will and elevation above its interest, and this is just what constitutes the sublimity of the mood; then the charming, on the contrary, draws the beholder down out of the pure contemplation required for every apprehension of the beautiful, in that, through objects that immediately appeal to it, it necessarily stirs up his will, whereby the contemplator no longer remains pure subject of knowing but becomes needy, dependent subject of willing.—That every beautiful thing of the cheerful kind is commonly called charming is a concept taken too widely, through lack of proper discrimination, which I must set entirely aside, indeed disapprove.—In the sense given and explained, however, I find in the realm of art only two kinds of the charming, and both unworthy of it. The one, quite low, is in the still life of the Netherlanders, when it strays so far that the objects represented are articles of food, which by their deceptive rendering necessarily excite the appetite for them, which is precisely an agitation of the will that puts an end to every aesthetic contemplation of the object. Painted fruit is still admissible, since it presents itself as a further development of the flower and, through form and color, as a beautiful natural product, without one’s being directly compelled to think of its edibility; but unfortunately we often find, with deceptive naturalness, dishes set out and prepared, oysters, herrings, lobsters, bread and butter, beer, wine, and so on, which is wholly reprehensible.—In history painting and sculpture the charming consists in nude figures, whose posture, half-clothing and whole manner of treatment aim at exciting lasciviousness in the beholder, whereby the purely aesthetic contemplation is at once canceled, and the purpose of art thus worked against. This fault corresponds wholly to the one just censured in the Netherlanders. The works of antiquity, for all the beauty and complete nudity of the figures, are almost always free of it, because the artist himself created them in a purely objective spirit, filled with ideal beauty, not in the spirit of subjective, base desire.—The charming is therefore to be avoided everywhere in art.

There is also a negative charming, which is still more reprehensible than the positive charming just discussed: and this is the disgusting. Precisely like the properly charming, it rouses the will of the beholder and thereby destroys the purely aesthetic contemplation. But what is stirred up thereby is a violent not-willing, a recoil: it rouses the will by holding out to it objects of its abhorrence. Hence it has always been recognized that it is wholly inadmissible in art, where even the ugly, so long as it is not disgusting, can be tolerated in its proper place, as we shall see below.

41 The course of our consideration has made it necessary to insert the discussion of the sublime here, where that of the beautiful was completed only by half, only on its one, the subjective, side. For it was only a particular modification of this subjective side that distinguished the sublime from the beautiful. Whether, namely, the state of pure will-less knowing, which every aesthetic contemplation presupposes and demands, set in as if of itself, without resistance, by the mere vanishing of the will from consciousness, the object inviting and drawing us to it; or whether this state was first won by a free, conscious elevation above the will, to which the contemplated object itself stands in an unfavorable, hostile relation, a relation which, if one were to dwell on it, would cancel the contemplation—this is the difference between the beautiful and the sublime. In the object the two are not essentially different: for in every case the object of aesthetic contemplation is not the single thing, but the Idea striving for revelation in it, that is, the adequate objectivity of the will at a determinate grade. Its necessary correlate, withdrawn like itself from the principle of sufficient reason, is the pure subject of knowing, just as the correlate of the single thing is the knowing individual, both of which lie in the domain of the principle of sufficient reason.

When we call an object beautiful, we thereby declare that it is object of our aesthetic contemplation, which includes two things: on the one hand, that its sight makes us objective, that is, that in contemplating it we are conscious of ourselves no longer as individuals but as pure will-less subject of knowing; and on the other hand, that we know in the object not the single thing but an Idea. This can happen only insofar as our contemplation of the object is not given up to the principle of sufficient reason, does not follow out its relation to anything outside it (which in the end always connects with relations to our willing), but rests on the object itself. For the Idea and the pure subject of knowing enter consciousness always at the same time, as necessary correlates, and with this entrance all difference of time at once vanishes, since both are wholly foreign to the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms and lie outside the relations posited by it, comparable to the rainbow and the sun, which have no part in the constant motion and succession of the falling drops. Hence, if I contemplate a tree aesthetically, that is, with the eyes of an artist, and so know not it but its Idea, it is at once without significance whether it is this tree or its forebear that bloomed a thousand years ago, and likewise whether the contemplator is this or any other individual living at any time and place. With the principle of sufficient reason the single thing and the knowing individual are canceled, and nothing remains but the Idea and the pure subject of knowing, which together make up the adequate objectivity of the will at this grade. And not only from time but also from space is the Idea exempt: for it is not the spatial form that hovers before me, but its expression, its pure significance, its innermost being, which unlocks itself to me and addresses me, that is really the Idea, and it can be quite the same amid great differences in the spatial proportions of the form.

Since, then, on the one hand every existing thing can be regarded purely objectively and outside all relation; and since, on the other hand, the will appears in every thing, at some grade of its objectivity, and the thing is accordingly the expression of an Idea; every thing is also beautiful.—That even the most insignificant thing admits of purely objective and will-less contemplation, and thereby proves itself beautiful, is attested by the still life of the Netherlanders, already mentioned above (§. 38) in this connection. But one thing is more beautiful than another in that it facilitates that purely objective contemplation, comes to meet it, indeed as it were compels it, and then we call it very beautiful. This is the case partly because, as a single thing, through the very distinct, purely determinate, thoroughly significant relation of its parts, it purely expresses the Idea of its species, and through the completeness united in it of all the expressions possible to its species reveals the Idea of that species perfectly, so that it greatly facilitates for the beholder the transition from the single thing to the Idea, and thereby also the state of pure contemplativeness; and partly that superiority of special beauty in an object lies in this, that the Idea itself which speaks to us out of it is a high grade of the objectivity of the will, and therefore thoroughly significant and full of meaning. That is why man is beautiful above all else, and the revelation of his nature is the highest aim of art. Human form and human expression are the most significant object of the plastic arts, just as human action is the most significant object of poetry.—Yet every thing nevertheless has its own peculiar beauty: not only every organic thing and everything that presents itself in the unity of an individuality, but also everything inorganic, formless, indeed every artifact. For all of these reveal the Ideas through which the will objectifies itself at the lowest grades; they give, as it were, the deepest, fading bass notes of nature. Gravity, rigidity, fluidity, light, and so on, are the Ideas that express themselves in rocks, buildings, waters. Beautiful garden art and architecture can do nothing more than help them to unfold those qualities of theirs distinctly, many-sidedly and completely, give them opportunity to express themselves purely, whereby they invite aesthetic contemplation and facilitate it. Bad buildings and regions, on the other hand, which nature neglected or art spoiled, accomplish this little or not at all; yet from these too those general fundamental Ideas of nature cannot wholly vanish. To the beholder who seeks them they speak here too, and even bad buildings and the like are still capable of aesthetic contemplation: the Ideas of the most general qualities of their material are still recognizable in them, only that the form artificially given them is no means of facilitation, but rather an obstacle, which makes aesthetic contemplation harder. Artifacts, consequently, also serve the expression of Ideas; only it is not the Idea of the artifact that speaks from them, but the Idea of the material to which this artificial form was given. In the language of the Scholastics this can be expressed very conveniently in two words, namely: in the artifact the Idea of its forma substantialis expresses itself, not that of its forma accidentalis, which latter leads to no Idea, but only to a human concept from which it proceeded. It is understood that by artifact here no work of the plastic arts is expressly meant. For the rest, the Scholastics in fact understood by forma substantialis what I call the grade of objectification of the will in a thing. We shall return presently, in considering beautiful architecture, to the expression of the Idea of the material.—According to our view, however, we cannot assent to Plato when he asserts (De Rep., X, p. 284–285, et Parmen., p. 79, ed. Bip.) that table and chair express the Ideas table and chair; rather we say that they express the Ideas that already express themselves in their mere material as such. According to Aristotle (Metaph., XI, ch. 3), however, Plato himself would have posited Ideas only of natural beings: ὁ Πλατων εφη, ὁτι ειδη εστιν ὁποσα φυσει. (Plato dixit, quod ideae eorum sunt, quae natura sunt) and in ch. 5 it is said that, according to the Platonists, there are no Ideas of house and ring. At any rate Plato’s immediate disciples, as Alcinous reports to us (introductio in Platonicam philosophiam, ch. 9), already denied that there are Ideas of artifacts. He says, namely: Ὁριζονται δε την ιδεαν, παραδειγμα των κατα φυσιν αἰωνιον. Ουτε γαρ τοις πλειστοις των απο Πλατωνος αρεσκει, των τεχνικων ειναι ιδεας, οἱον ασπιδος η λυρας, ουτε μην των παρα φυσιν, οἱον πυρετου και χολερας, ουτε των κατα μερος, οἱον Σωκρατους και Πλατωνος, αλλ’ ουτε των ευτελων τινος, οἱον ρυπου και καρφους, ουτε των προς τι, οἱον μειζονος και ὑπερεχοντος· ειναι γαρ τας ιδεας νοησεις θεου αιωνιους τε και αυτοτελεις.—(Definiunt autem ideam exemplar aeternum eorum, quae secundum naturam existunt. Nam plurimis ex iis, qui Platonem secuti sunt, minime placuit, arte factorum ideas esse, ut clypei atque lyrae; neque rursus eorum, quae praeter naturam, ut febris et cholerae; neque particularium, ceu Socratis et Platonis; neque etiam rerum vilium, veluti sordium et festucae; neque relationum, ut majoris et excedentis: esse namque ideas intellectiones dei aeternas, ac seipsis perfectas.)—On this occasion yet another point may be mentioned in which our doctrine of Ideas departs very greatly from Plato’s. He teaches, namely (De Rep., X, p. 288), that the object which fine art intends to present, the model of painting and poetry, is not the Idea but the single thing. Our whole exposition so far maintains precisely the opposite, and Plato’s opinion will mislead us the less in this as it is the source of one of the greatest and acknowledged errors of that great man, namely his low esteem and rejection of art, especially of poetry: his false judgment on this he attaches directly to the passage cited.

42 I return to our exposition of the aesthetic impression. The knowledge of the beautiful, to be sure, always posits purely knowing subject and known Idea as object at once and inseparably. Yet the source of aesthetic enjoyment will lie now more in the apprehension of the known Idea, now more in the bliss and peace of mind of pure knowing, freed from all willing and thereby from all individuality and the pain that proceeds from it; and this predominance of the one or the other component of aesthetic enjoyment will depend on whether the Idea apprehended intuitively is a higher or a lower grade of the objectivity of the will. Thus in the aesthetic contemplation (in reality, or through the medium of art) of beautiful nature in the inorganic and vegetable, and of the works of beautiful architecture, the enjoyment of pure will-less knowing will predominate, because the Ideas apprehended here are only low grades of the objectivity of the will, and therefore not appearances of deep significance and meaningful content. When, on the other hand, animals and human beings are the object of aesthetic contemplation or presentation, the enjoyment will consist more in the objective apprehension of these Ideas, which are the most distinct revelations of the will; because such Ideas lay out the greatest variety of forms, richness and deep significance of appearances, and reveal to us most perfectly the nature of the will, be it in its violence, terribleness, satisfaction, or in its breaking (the last in tragic presentations), finally even in its turning or self-abolition, which is especially the theme of Christian painting; just as in general history painting and the drama have for their object the Idea of the will illumined by full knowledge.—We now want to go through the arts one by one, whereby the theory of the beautiful set up here will receive completeness and distinctness.

43 Matter as such cannot be the presentation of an Idea. For it is, as we found in the first book, through and through causality: its being is sheer acting. Causality, however, is a form of the principle of sufficient reason; knowledge of the Idea, on the other hand, essentially excludes the content of that principle. We also found in the second book matter as the common substratum of all the particular appearances of the Ideas, and consequently as the connecting link between the Idea and the appearance or the single thing. So for the one reason as well as for the other, matter cannot of itself present an Idea. A posteriori this is confirmed by the fact that of matter as such no intuitive representation at all is possible, but only an abstract concept: in the former, namely, only the forms and qualities present themselves of which matter is the bearer, and in all of which Ideas are revealed. This corresponds also to the fact that causality (the whole essence of matter) cannot be presented intuitively by itself, but only a determinate causal connection.—On the other hand, every appearance of an Idea, since as such it has entered into the form of the principle of sufficient reason, or into the principium individuationis, must present itself in matter, as a quality of it. To that extent, then, as said, matter is the connecting link between the Idea and the principium individuationis, which is the form of the knowledge of the individual, or the principle of sufficient reason.—Plato has therefore quite rightly set up, beside the Idea and its appearance, the single thing, which two otherwise comprise all things of the world, only matter as a third, different from both (Timaeus, p. 345). The individual, as appearance of the Idea, is always matter. Every quality of matter, too, is always appearance of an Idea, and as such also capable of aesthetic contemplation, that is, knowledge of the Idea presenting itself in it. This holds even of the most general qualities of matter, without which it never is, and whose Ideas are the weakest objectivity of the will. Such are: gravity, cohesion, rigidity, fluidity, reaction to light, and so on.

If we now consider architecture merely as fine art, leaving aside its destination to useful purposes, in which it serves the will, not pure knowing, and is thus no longer art in our sense, we can attribute to it no other aim than to bring to distinct intuitiveness some of those Ideas which are the lowest grades of the objectivity of the will: namely gravity, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, these general properties of stone, these first, simplest, dullest visibilities of the will, ground-bass notes of nature; and then beside them light, which in many respects is an opposite of those. Even on this low grade of the objectivity of the will we already see its nature reveal itself in discord: for really the conflict between gravity and rigidity is the sole aesthetic material of beautiful architecture; to let it emerge perfectly distinctly in manifold ways is its task. It solves this by depriving those indestructible forces of the shortest way to their satisfaction and holding them off by a detour, whereby the conflict is prolonged and the inexhaustible striving of both forces becomes visible in manifold ways.—The whole mass of the building, left to its original inclination, would present a mere lump, bound as firmly as possible to the body of the earth, toward which gravity, in which the will here appears, presses unceasingly, while rigidity, likewise objectivity of the will, resists. But precisely this inclination, this striving, is prevented by architecture from immediate satisfaction and permitted only a mediate one, by detours. So, for example, the entablature can press upon the earth only by means of the column; the vault must support itself, and can satisfy its striving toward the mass of the earth only through the mediation of the piers, and so on. But precisely on these forced detours, precisely through these checks, those forces dwelling in the crude mass of stone unfold themselves most distinctly and manifoldly; and farther than this the purely aesthetic purpose of architecture cannot go. Hence the beauty of a building lies indeed in the evident fitness of every part, not to the external arbitrary purpose of man (to that extent the work belongs to useful architecture), but immediately to the subsistence of the whole, to which the place, size and form of every part must have so necessary a relation that, if possible, were any part removed, the whole would have to collapse. For only in that each part bears as much as it fittingly can, and each is supported precisely where and precisely as much as it must be, does that counterplay, that conflict between rigidity and gravity, which constitute the life, the expressions of will, of the stone, unfold to the most perfect visibility, and do these lowest grades of the objectivity of the will reveal themselves distinctly. Likewise the shape of every part must be determined by its purpose and its relation to the whole, not by caprice. The column is the very simplest form of the support, determined merely by the purpose; the twisted column is tasteless; the square pier is in fact less simple, though accidentally easier to make, than the round column. Likewise the forms of frieze, beam, arch, dome are wholly determined by their immediate purpose and thereby explain themselves. The ornaments of the capitals and so on belong to sculpture, not to architecture, by which, as additional decoration, they are merely admitted, and could also be omitted.—In accordance with what has been said, it is indispensable for the understanding and aesthetic enjoyment of a work of architecture to have an immediate, intuitive knowledge of its material, according to its weight, rigidity and cohesion; and our pleasure in such a work would be suddenly greatly diminished by the disclosure that pumice stone was the building material, for then it would strike us as a kind of sham building. Almost the same effect would be produced by the news that it was only of wood, while we had supposed stone; precisely because this now alters and shifts the relation between rigidity and gravity, and thereby the significance and necessity of all the parts, since those natural forces reveal themselves much more weakly in the wooden building. Hence from wood, too, no work of beautiful architecture can really be made, however much it may assume all the forms: this is explicable solely by our theory. But if we were told, finally, that the building whose sight delights us consists of quite different materials, of very unequal weight and consistency, which however could not be distinguished by the eye, the whole building would thereby become as unenjoyable to us as a poem in a language unknown to us. All this proves precisely that architecture acts not merely mathematically but dynamically, and that what speaks to us through it is not by any means mere form and symmetry, but rather those fundamental forces of nature, those first Ideas, those lowest grades of the objectivity of the will.—The regularity of the building and its parts is brought about partly by the immediate fitness of each member for the subsistence of the whole; partly it serves to facilitate the survey and understanding of the whole; partly, finally, the regular figures contribute to beauty, in that they reveal the lawfulness of space as such. But all this is only of subordinate worth and necessity and by no means the main thing, since even symmetry is not indispensably required, ruins being beautiful still.

A quite special relation the works of architecture still have to light: they gain double beauty in full sunshine with the blue sky as background, and show again a wholly different effect in moonlight. Hence, too, in the erection of a beautiful work of architecture, special regard is always taken of the effects of the light and of the quarters of the heavens. All this has its ground, to be sure, largely in the fact that bright and sharp illumination first makes all parts and their relations truly visible; but besides this I am of the opinion that architecture, as well as gravity and rigidity, is also destined to reveal the nature of light, which is wholly opposed to these. For when the light is caught, checked, thrown back by the great, opaque, sharply bounded and variously shaped masses, it unfolds its nature and properties most purely and distinctly, to the great enjoyment of the beholder, since light is the most delightful of things, as the condition and objective correlate of the most perfect perceptual mode of knowledge.

Because the Ideas that are brought to distinct intuition by architecture are the lowest grades of the objectivity of the will, and consequently the objective significance of what architecture reveals to us is comparatively slight, the aesthetic enjoyment at the sight of a beautiful and favorably lit building will lie not so much in the apprehension of the Idea as in the subjective correlate of that apprehension posited with it. It will therefore consist predominantly in this: that at this sight the beholder is torn loose from the mode of knowledge of the individual, which serves the will and follows the principle of sufficient reason, and raised up to that of the pure will-free subject of knowing; that is, in the pure contemplation itself, freed from all suffering of willing and of individuality.—In this respect the opposite of architecture, and the other extreme in the series of the fine arts, is the drama, which brings the most significant Ideas to knowledge, and in the aesthetic enjoyment of which, therefore, the objective side is decidedly predominant.

Architecture differs from the plastic arts and from poetry in that it gives not a copy but the thing itself. It does not repeat, as they do, the known Idea, whereby the artist lends the beholder his eyes; rather, here the artist merely sets the object in order for the beholder and facilitates for him the apprehension of the Idea, by bringing the actual, individual object to a distinct and complete expression of its nature.

The works of architecture are very seldom, like the other works of fine art, erected for purely aesthetic purposes: rather these are subordinated to other, useful purposes, foreign to art itself; and there the great merit of the architect consists in nevertheless carrying through and attaining the purely aesthetic purposes in their subordination to foreign ones, by skillfully adapting them in manifold ways to the arbitrary purpose of each case, and judging rightly what aesthetic-architectonic beauty is compatible and can be united with a temple, what with a palace, what with an arsenal, and so on. The more a rough climate multiplies those demands of need and utility, determines them more firmly and prescribes them more inexorably, the less room for play has the beautiful in architecture. In the mild climate of India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, where the demands of necessity were smaller and more loosely determined, architecture could pursue its aesthetic purposes most freely; under the northern sky these were much stunted for it. Here, where boxes, pointed roofs and towers were the requirement, architecture, since it could unfold its own beauty only within very narrow limits, had to adorn itself all the more, by way of compensation, with ornament borrowed from sculpture, as may be seen in Gothic fine architecture.

If, then, architecture must in this way suffer great restrictions through the demands of necessity and utility, it has on the other hand in these very demands a strong support; for, given the extent and costliness of its works and the narrow sphere of its aesthetic mode of operation, it could not maintain itself at all as mere fine art if it did not at the same time have, as a useful and necessary trade, a firm and honorable place among human occupations. The lack of precisely this last is what prevents another art from standing beside it as a sister, although in aesthetic respect it is quite properly to be assigned to it as its counterpart: I mean the fine art of the water-conduit. For what architecture accomplishes for the Idea of gravity where this appears combined with rigidity, that same thing the other accomplishes for the same Idea where fluidity is associated with it, that is, formlessness, easiest displaceability, transparency. Waterfalls plunging foaming and roaring over rocks, cataracts quietly dissolving in spray, fountains driving up as lofty columns of water, and clear-mirroring lakes reveal the Ideas of fluid heavy matter exactly as the works of architecture unfold the Ideas of rigid matter. In the useful art of the water-conduit the beautiful art finds no support, since the purposes of the former, as a rule, cannot be united with its own, and this takes place only by exception, as for example in the Cascata di Trevi at Rome [27].

44 What the two arts mentioned accomplish for those lowest grades of the objectivity of the will, fine garden art accomplishes in a certain measure for the higher grade of vegetable nature. The scenic beauty of a spot rests largely on the manifold natural objects found together on it, and then on their separating out purely, standing forth distinctly, and yet presenting themselves in fitting connection and variation. These two conditions are what beautiful garden art helps along; yet it is far from being as much master of its material as architecture is of its own, and therefore its effect is limited. The beauty it displays belongs almost wholly to nature; it itself has done little for it. On the other hand it can do very little against the disfavor of nature, and where nature does not work for it but against it, its achievements are slight.

Insofar, then, as the plant world, which without the mediation of art offers itself everywhere to aesthetic enjoyment, is an object of [28] On this, Chapter 35 of the second volume.

art, it belongs mainly to landscape painting. In the domain of this, all the rest of nature that lacks knowledge lies with it as well.—In still life and in painted mere architecture, ruins, church interiors and the like, the subjective side of aesthetic enjoyment is the predominant one: that is, our pleasure in them lies not mainly in the immediate apprehension of the Ideas presented, but more in the subjective correlate of this apprehension, in pure will-less knowing. For, in that the painter lets us see things through his eyes, we receive here at the same time a sympathetic feeling and the after-sense of the deep peace of mind and total silence of the will that were needed in order to sink knowledge so wholly into those lifeless objects and to apprehend them with such love, that is, here with such a degree of objectivity.—The effect of landscape painting proper is, it is true, on the whole still of this kind too; but because the Ideas presented, as higher grades of the objectivity of the will, are already more significant and meaningful, the objective side of aesthetic pleasure already emerges more and holds the balance against the subjective. Pure knowing as such is no longer wholly the main thing; rather, with equal power the known Idea works, the world as representation at a significant grade of the objectification of the will.

But a much higher grade is revealed by animal painting and animal sculpture, of the latter of which we have significant remains from antiquity, for example horses in Venice, on Monte Cavallo, on the Elgin reliefs, also at Florence, in bronze and marble, in the same place the ancient boar, the howling wolves, also the lions at the arsenal in Venice, also in the Vatican a whole room full of mostly ancient animals, and so on. In these presentations the objective side of aesthetic pleasure obtains a decided preponderance over the subjective. The calm of the subject knowing these Ideas, who has quieted his own will, is indeed present, as in every aesthetic contemplation, but its effect is not felt: for we are occupied by the restlessness and violence of the will presented. It is that willing, which also makes up our own nature, that here comes before our eyes, in shapes in which its appearance is not, as in us, governed and mitigated by presence of mind, but presents itself in stronger features and with a distinctness that verges on the grotesque and monstrous, but in compensation also without dissimulation, naive and open, lying free in the light of day; and on this precisely our interest in animals rests. The characteristic of the species already emerged in the presentation of plants, yet showed itself only in the forms; here it becomes much more significant and expresses itself not only in the shape, but in action, posture and gesture, although always still only as character of the species, not of the individual.—In this knowledge of Ideas of higher grades, which we receive in painting through foreign mediation, we can also share immediately, through purely contemplative intuition of plants and observation of animals, and indeed of the latter in their free, natural and comfortable state. The objective contemplation of their manifold, wondrous shapes and of their doings and ways is an instructive lesson from the great book of nature, is a deciphering of the true Signatura rerum [29]: we see in it the manifold grades and modes of the manifestation of the will, which, in all beings the one and the same, everywhere wills the same thing, that which objectifies itself precisely as life, as existence, in such endless variety, in such different shapes, which are all accommodations to the different external conditions, comparable to many variations on the same theme. If we were, however, to communicate to the contemplator the disclosure of their inner nature also for reflection, and in a single word, we could best put that Sanskrit formula, which occurs so often in the holy books of the Hindus and is called Mahavakya, that is, the great word, to [30] Jakob Böhm, in his book De Signatura rerum, ch. 1, §. 15, 16, 17, says: “And there is no thing in nature that does not also reveal its inner form outwardly: for the inward works constantly toward revelation.———Every thing has its mouth for revelation.———And that is the language of nature, in which every thing speaks out of its own property and ever reveals and presents itself.———For every thing reveals its mother, who thus gives the essence and the will to the formation.” this use: “Tat twam asi,” that is: “you are this living thing.”

45 To present directly and intuitively the Idea in which the will reaches the highest degree of its objectification is, finally, the great task of history painting and of sculpture. The objective side of the joy in the beautiful is here decidedly predominant, and the subjective has receded into the background. It is to be noted, further, that even on the next grade below this, in animal painting, the characteristic is wholly one with the beautiful: the most characteristic lion, wolf, horse, sheep, bull was also always the most beautiful. The reason for this is that animals have only character of the species, no individual character. In the presentation of man, however, the character of the species separates from the character of the individual: the former is now called beauty (wholly in the objective sense), the latter, however, retains the name of character or expression, and the new difficulty arises of presenting both perfectly at once in the same individual.

Human beauty is an objective expression that designates the most perfect objectification of the will at the highest grade of its knowability, the Idea of man in general, completely expressed in the intuited form. Yet however much the objective side of the beautiful comes to the fore here, the subjective remains its constant companion. And precisely because no object carries us away so quickly to purely aesthetic intuiting as the most beautiful human countenance and figure, at the sight of which an unspeakable pleasure instantly seizes us and lifts us beyond ourselves and all that torments us, this is possible only because this most distinct and purest knowability of the will transposes us also most easily and quickly into the state of pure knowing, in which our personality, our willing with its constant pain, vanishes so long as the purely aesthetic joy lasts. Hence Goethe says: “Whoever beholds human beauty, nothing evil can blow upon him: he feels himself in harmony with himself and with the world.”—That nature succeeds with a beautiful human figure we must explain by the fact that the will, in objectifying itself at this highest grade in an individual, through fortunate circumstances and its own force wholly overcomes all the hindrances and resistance which the appearances of the will at lower grades oppose to it, such as the forces of nature, from which it must always first win and wrest the matter that belongs to all. Further, the appearance of the will at the higher grades always has manifoldness in its form: already the tree is only a systematic aggregate of the innumerably repeated sprouting fibers; this composition increases ever more as we go higher, and the human body is a highly combined system of quite different parts, each of which has a life subordinate to the whole, yet also peculiar to itself, vita propria. That all these parts now be subordinated to the whole precisely in the proper way and coordinated with one another, conspire harmoniously to the presentation of the whole, nothing excessive, nothing stunted—all this is the rare set of conditions whose result is beauty, the perfectly stamped character of the species.—So nature. But how art?—It is thought: by imitation of nature.—But by what is the artist to recognize nature’s successful work, the one to be imitated, and find it out among the failures, if he does not anticipate the beautiful before experience? Besides, has nature ever produced a man perfectly beautiful in all parts?—Then it has been thought that the artist must gather together the beautiful parts distributed singly among many men, and compose from them a beautiful whole: a perverse and thoughtless opinion. For it is again the question, by what is he to recognize that precisely these forms are the beautiful ones and those not?—We see too how far in beauty the old German painters got by imitation of nature. Look at their nude figures.—Purely a posteriori and from mere experience no knowledge of the beautiful is possible at all: it is always, at least in part, a priori, although of a quite different kind from the forms of the principle of sufficient reason that we are conscious of a priori.

These concern the universal form of appearance as such, as it grounds the possibility of knowledge in general, the universal, exceptionless How of appearing, and from this knowledge mathematics and pure natural science proceed. That other kind of knowledge a priori, on the other hand, which makes the presentation of the beautiful possible, concerns, instead of the form, the content of appearances, instead of the How, the What of appearing. That we all recognize human beauty when we see it, but that in the true artist this happens with such clarity that he shows it as he has never seen it, and surpasses nature in his presentation: this is possible only because the will, whose adequate objectification at its highest grade is here to be judged and found, is indeed we ourselves. Through this alone do we in fact have an anticipation of that which nature (which is precisely the will that makes up our own nature) strives to present; and this anticipation in the true man of genius is accompanied by such a degree of presence of mind that, in recognizing in the single thing its Idea, he as it were understands nature at half a word and now purely speaks out what she only stammers, that he impresses on the hard marble the beauty of form which in a thousand attempts fails her, sets it over against nature, as it were calling to her: “That was what you wanted to say!” and “Yes, that was it!” echoes back from the connoisseur.—Only so could the Greek of genius find the archetype of the human form and set it up as canon for the school of sculpture; and only by virtue of such an anticipation is it possible for all of us to recognize the beautiful where nature has actually succeeded in the particular. This anticipation is the ideal: it is the Idea insofar as it is known, at least by half, a priori, and, in that as such it comes to meet, in a supplementary way, what is given a posteriori through nature, becomes practical for art. The possibility of such an anticipation of the beautiful a priori in the artist, as of its recognition a posteriori in the connoisseur, lies in the fact that artist and connoisseur are themselves the in-itself of nature, the objectifying will. For only like is known by like, as Empedocles said: only nature can understand itself; only nature will fathom itself: but also only by mind is mind apprehended [31].

The perverse opinion that the Greeks found the ideal of human beauty which they set up quite empirically, by gathering together single beautiful parts, here baring and noting a knee, there an arm, has, incidentally, one wholly analogous to it in regard to poetry, namely the assumption that, for example, Shakespeare noted from his own experience of life in the world the countlessly manifold characters in his dramas, so true, so sustained, so worked out from the depths, and then reproduced them. The impossibility and absurdity of such an assumption needs no discussion: it is evident that the man of genius produces the works of the plastic arts only through a presaging anticipation of the beautiful, and the works of poetry only through just such an anticipation of the characteristic; although both need experience as a schema, by which alone what is obscurely conscious to them a priori is called forth into full distinctness, and the possibility of deliberate presentation now enters.

Human beauty was explained above as the most perfect objectification of the will at the highest grade of its knowability. It expresses itself through form; and this lies in space alone and has no necessary relation to time, as movement, for example, has. To that extent we can say: the adequate objectification of the will through a merely spatial appearance is beauty, in the objective sense. The plant is nothing other than such a merely spatial appearance of the will, since no movement, and consequently no relation to time (apart from its development), belongs to the expression of its nature: its mere shape expresses its whole nature and lays it open. Animal and man [32] The last sentence is the German rendering of Helvetius’s il n’y a que l’esprit qui sente l’esprit, which I did not need to note in the first edition. But since then, through the stupefying influence of Hegelian pseudo-wisdom, the age has been brought so low and become so coarse that many might well even fancy that here too an allusion is made to the opposition of “mind and nature”: I am therefore obliged to guard myself expressly against the imputation of such rabble-philosophemes. however need, for the complete revelation of the will appearing in them, still a series of actions, whereby that appearance in them obtains an immediate relation to time. All this has already been discussed in the previous book; it connects with our present consideration as follows. As the merely spatial appearance of the will can objectify it at each determinate grade perfectly or imperfectly, which constitutes precisely beauty or ugliness, so too the temporal objectification of the will, that is, the action, and indeed the immediate action, thus movement, can correspond purely and perfectly to the will that objectifies itself in it, without foreign admixture, without superfluity, without deficiency, expressing just precisely the determinate act of will of the moment; or else all this can be the reverse. In the first case the movement takes place with grace; in the other, without. As beauty, then, is the corresponding presentation of the will in general through its merely spatial appearance, so grace is the corresponding presentation of the will through its temporal appearance, that is, the perfectly correct and appropriate expression of every act of will, through the movement and posture that objectify it. Since movement and posture already presuppose the body, Winckelmann’s expression is very correct and apt when he says: “Grace is the peculiar relation of the acting person to the action.” (Works, vol. 1, p. 258.) It follows of itself that plants can be credited with beauty, but not with grace, unless in a figurative sense; animals and men, however, with both, beauty and grace. Grace consists, according to what has been said, in this: that every movement and posture be performed in the easiest, most fitting and most convenient way, and thus be the purely corresponding expression of its intention, or of the act of will, without superfluity, which presents itself as purposeless, meaningless fiddling or contorted posture, and without deficiency, which presents itself as wooden stiffness. Grace presupposes as its condition a correct proportion of all the limbs, a regular, harmonious structure of the body, since only by means of this are perfect ease and evident fitness possible in all postures and movements: thus grace is never without a certain degree of beauty of body. Both, perfect and united, are the most distinct appearance of the will at the topmost grade of its objectification.

It belongs, as mentioned above, to the distinguishing mark of mankind that in it the character of the species and that of the individual come apart, so that, as was said in the previous book, every man represents in a certain measure a wholly peculiar Idea. The arts, therefore, whose aim is the presentation of the Idea of mankind, have as their task, beside beauty, as the character of the species, also the character of the individual, which is preeminently called character; yet this again only insofar as it is not to be regarded as something accidental, wholly peculiar to the individual in his singularity, but as a side of the Idea of mankind that stands out particularly in just this individual, for the revelation of which the presentation of him is therefore serviceable. Thus character, though as such individual, must nevertheless be apprehended and presented ideally, that is, with emphasis on its significance in regard to the Idea of mankind in general (to whose objectification it contributes in its own way); otherwise the presentation is portrait, repetition of the single as such, with all its accidents. And even the portrait should, as Winckelmann says, be the ideal of the individual.

That character, to be apprehended ideally, which is the emphasizing of a peculiar side of the Idea of mankind, now presents itself visibly, partly through the abiding physiognomy and bodily constitution, partly through transient affect and passion, modification of knowing and willing reciprocally by one another, all of which expresses itself in mien and movement. Since the individual always belongs to mankind and, on the other hand, mankind always reveals itself in the individual, and indeed with a peculiar ideal significance of the latter, neither may beauty be canceled by character, nor character by beauty: because cancellation of the character of the species by that of the individual would give caricature, and cancellation of the individual by the character of the species would give meaninglessness. Hence presentation, when it aims at beauty, as sculpture chiefly does, will nevertheless always modify this (that is, the character of the species) somewhat by the individual character, and will always express the Idea of mankind in a determinate, individual way, emphasizing a particular side of it; because the human individual as such has in a certain measure the dignity of an Idea of his own, and it is essential to the Idea of mankind that it present itself in individuals of peculiar significance. Hence we find in the works of the ancients the beauty which they clearly apprehended expressed not through a single figure but through many, bearing different character, grasped as it were each time from another side, and accordingly presented differently in Apollo, differently in Bacchus, differently in Hercules, differently in Antinous: indeed, the characteristic can limit the beautiful and finally even step forth to the point of ugliness, in the drunken Silenus, in the Faun, and so on. But if the characteristic goes so far as the actual cancellation of the character of the species, thus to the unnatural, it becomes caricature.—Still much less than beauty may grace be impaired by the characteristic: whatever posture and movement the expression of character may demand, it must still be executed in the way most fitting, most appropriate, easiest for the person. This will be observed not only by the sculptor and painter, but also by every good actor; otherwise caricature arises here too, as distortion, dislocation.

In sculpture beauty and grace remain the main thing. The real character of the mind, emerging in affect, passion, interplay of knowing and willing, representable only through the expression of the face and the gesture, is preeminently the property of painting. For although eyes and color, which lie outside the domain of sculpture, contribute much to beauty, they are still far more essential to character. Further, beauty unfolds itself more fully to contemplation from several standpoints; expression, character, on the other hand, can be perfectly apprehended from one standpoint as well.

Because beauty is evidently the chief aim of sculpture, Lessing sought to explain the fact that Laocoön does not cry out by saying that crying out is not to be reconciled with beauty. Since for Lessing this subject became the theme, or at least the point of departure, of a book of his own, and so much has also been written on it before and after him, I may be permitted to put forward my opinion on it here by way of episode, although so special a discussion does not really belong in the context of our consideration, which is directed throughout to the general.

46 That Laocoön, in the famous group, does not cry out is evident, and the general, ever recurring astonishment at it must therefore come from the fact that in his situation we should all cry out; and nature too demands it, since in the most violent physical pain and suddenly occurring greatest bodily anguish, all reflection that might perhaps bring about a silent endurance is wholly driven out of consciousness, and nature gives herself air by crying out, whereby she expresses at once the pain and the anguish, calls the rescuer, and frightens the assailant. Winckelmann therefore already missed the expression of crying out; but in seeking the artist’s justification he in fact made Laocoön into a Stoic, who thinks it not in keeping with his dignity to cry out secundum naturam, but imposes on his pain the further useless constraint of choking back its expressions. Winckelmann therefore sees in him “the tried spirit of a great man, who wrestles with tortures and seeks to suppress the expression of feeling and to shut it up within himself: he does not break out into loud cries, as in Virgil, but only anxious sighs escape him,” and so on (Works, vol. 7, p. 98.—The same more fully vol. 6, p. 104 ff.). This opinion of Winckelmann’s Lessing then criticized in his Laocoön and corrected in the manner indicated above: in place of the psychological ground he put the purely aesthetic one, that beauty, the principle of ancient art, does not admit the expression of crying out. Another argument he adds, namely that a wholly transient state, incapable of duration, must not be represented in the motionless work of art, has a hundred examples against it of excellent figures that are fixed in wholly fleeting movements, dancing, wrestling, catching, and so on. Indeed Goethe, in the essay on Laocoön which opens the Propyläen (p. 8), holds the choice of such a wholly transient moment to be positively necessary.—In our own day Hirt (Horen, 1797, tenth issue), tracing everything back to the highest truth of expression, decided the matter to the effect that Laocoön does not cry out because, already on the point of dying of suffocation, he can no longer cry out. Lastly Fernow (Römische Studien, vol. 1, p. 426 ff.) has discussed and weighed all those three opinions, yet himself added no new one, but mediated and united those three.

I cannot help being astonished that such thoughtful and acute men laboriously draw in inadequate grounds from afar, seize on psychological, indeed physiological arguments, to explain a thing whose ground lies quite near and is at once evident to the unprejudiced—and especially that Lessing, who came so near to the right explanation, nevertheless by no means hit the real point.

Before all psychological and physiological investigation whether Laocoön in his situation would cry out or not, which, incidentally, I should affirm entirely, it is to be decided, with regard to the group, that crying out could not be represented in it, solely on the ground that the representation of it lies wholly outside the domain of sculpture. One could not produce from marble a crying Laocoön, but only one tearing his mouth open and fruitlessly striving to cry, a Laocoön whose voice has stuck in his throat, vox faucibus haesit. The essence, and consequently also the effect on the spectator, of crying out lies wholly in the sound, not in the gaping of the mouth. This latter phenomenon, which necessarily accompanies crying out, must first be motivated and justified by the sound produced through it: then it is, as characteristic of the action, admissible, indeed necessary, even if it detracts from beauty. But in the plastic art, to which the presentation of crying out itself is wholly foreign and impossible, to present the violent means of crying out, which disturbs all the features and the rest of the expression, the gaping of the mouth, would be truly senseless; because one would then bring before the eyes the means, which for the rest demands many sacrifices, while its end, the crying out itself, together with its effect on the mind, would be left out. Indeed, what is more, one would thereby produce the invariably ridiculous sight of an exertion that remains without effect, truly comparable to what a wag procured for himself when he firmly stopped up with wax the horn of the sleeping night watchman, then woke him with a cry of fire, and amused himself over his fruitless efforts to blow.—Where, on the contrary, the presentation of crying out lies within the domain of the presenting art, it is wholly admissible, because it serves truth, that is, the complete presentation of the Idea. So in poetry, which for its intuitive presentation lays claim to the reader’s imagination: hence in Virgil Laocoön cries like a bull that has torn itself loose after the axe has struck it; hence Homer (Il., XX, 48–53) lets Mars and Minerva cry out quite frightfully, without prejudice to their divine dignity as well as divine beauty. Likewise in the art of the stage: Laocoön on the stage had to cry out absolutely; Sophocles also makes Philoctetes cry out, and on the ancient stage he will indeed really have cried out. As a wholly similar case I remember having seen in London the famous actor Kemble, in a play translated from the German, Pizarro, play the American Rolla, a half-savage, but of very noble character: nevertheless, when he was wounded, he cried out loudly and violently, which was of great and excellent effect, because, as highly characteristic, it contributed much to truth.—On the contrary, a painted or stone mute crier would be still far more ridiculous than painted music, which is already censured in Goethe’s Propyläen; since crying out detracts far more from the rest of the expression and from beauty than music does, which mostly occupies only hands and arms and is to be regarded as an action characterizing the person, and can to that extent quite properly be painted, provided only that it requires no violent movement of the body or distortion of the mouth: so for example St. Cecilia at the organ, Raphael’s violin player in the Sciarra gallery at Rome, and others.—Because, then, owing to the limits of art, the pain of Laocoön could not be expressed by crying out, the artist had to set every other expression of it in motion: this he has accomplished in the highest perfection, as Winckelmann (Works, vol. 6, p. 104 ff.) so masterfully describes, whose excellent description therefore retains its full worth and truth as soon as one abstracts from the imputation of a Stoic disposition [33].

47 Because beauty, together with grace, is the chief object of sculpture, it loves the nude, and tolerates clothing only insofar as this does not hide the forms. It makes use of drapery not as a concealment but as a mediate presentation of the form, a mode of presentation that occupies the understanding greatly, since it arrives at the intuition of the cause, namely the form of the body, only through the effect alone immediately given, the fall of the folds. Accordingly, in sculpture drapery is in a certain measure what foreshortening is in painting. Both are hints, but not symbolic ones, rather such as, when successful, directly compel the understanding to intuit what is hinted at just as if it were actually given.

Let me be allowed to insert here, by the way, a simile concerning the speaking arts. Namely, as the beautiful bodily form is visible to best advantage with the lightest clothing, or with none at all, so that a very beautiful man, if he had taste as well and were also allowed to follow it, would prefer to go almost naked, clothed only after the manner of the ancients;—just so every beautiful and thoughtful mind will always express itself in the most natural, most unreserved, simplest way,³⁴ This episode, too, has received its supplement in Chapter 36 of the second volume. striving, if it is at all possible, to communicate its thoughts to others, in order thereby to lighten the loneliness which it must feel in a world like this. Conversely, however, poverty of mind, confusion, perversity will clothe itself in the most far-fetched expressions and obscurest phrases, so as to veil in difficult and pompous phrases small, tiny, sober or everyday thoughts, like him who, because the majesty of beauty is lacking to him, wants to make up for this lack by clothing, and seeks to hide the pettiness or ugliness of his person under barbaric finery, tinsel, feathers, ruffs, puffs and cloak. As embarrassed as he would be if he had to go naked, so embarrassed would many an author be if one forced him to translate his so pompous, obscure book into its small, clear content.

48 History painting has, besides beauty and grace, character as its chief object. By this is to be understood the presentation of the will at the highest grade of its objectification, where the individual, as emphasizing a particular side of the Idea of mankind, has peculiar significance, and makes this known not through mere figure alone, but through action of every kind and the modifications of knowing and willing that occasion and accompany it, visible in mien and gesture. Since the Idea of mankind is to be presented in this scope, the unfolding of its many-sidedness in significant individuals must be brought before the eyes, and these in turn can be made visible in their significance only through manifold scenes, occurrences and actions. History painting solves this infinite task of its own by bringing before the eyes scenes of life of every kind, of great and small significance. No individual and no action can be without meaning: in all and through all the Idea of mankind unfolds itself more and more. For this reason no event of human life is to be excluded from painting. One therefore does great injustice to the excellent painters of the Netherlandish school if one prizes only their technical skill, but for the rest looks down on them with contempt because they mostly presented subjects from common life, while one holds significant only the occurrences of world history or Biblical story. One should consider first of all that the inner significance of an action is quite different from the outer, and the two often go apart from one another. The outer significance is the importance of an action in relation to its consequences for and in the real world; thus according to the principle of sufficient reason. The inner significance is the depth of insight into the Idea of mankind which it opens up, in drawing to light the more rarely emerging sides of that Idea, by letting individualities that express themselves distinctly and decisively unfold their peculiarities by means of suitably placed circumstances. Only the inner significance counts in art: the outer counts in history. The two are wholly independent of one another, can occur together, but each can also appear alone. An action of the highest importance for history can be, in inner significance, a very everyday and common one; and conversely a scene from everyday life can be of great inner significance if in it human individuals and human doing and willing appear, down to the most hidden folds, in a bright and distinct light. Also, with very different outer significance, the inner can be the same and one, so that, for example, it is all one to the latter whether ministers over the map quarrel about lands and peoples, or peasants in the tavern want to prove to each other over cards and dice that they are in the right; as it is all the same whether one plays chess with golden or with wooden pieces. Besides, the scenes and occurrences which make up the life of so many millions of men, their doings and ways, their need and their joy, are already for that reason important enough to be an object of art, and must, through their rich manifoldness, give material enough for the unfolding of the many-sided Idea of mankind. Even the fleetingness of the moment which art has fixed in such a picture (called nowadays a genre picture) arouses a faint, peculiar emotion: for to hold fast, in the lasting picture, the fleeting world which transforms itself unceasingly, in single occurrences that yet represent the whole, is an achievement of the painter’s art by which it seems to bring time itself to a standstill, in that it raises the single thing to the Idea of its species. Finally, the historical subjects of painting, significant in the outer sense, often have the disadvantage that precisely what is significant in them cannot be presented intuitively but must be supplied in thought. In this respect the nominal meaning of the picture must be distinguished from the real: the former is the outer meaning, but one that comes in only as concept; the latter is the side of the Idea of mankind which becomes manifest through the picture for intuition. For example, let the former be Moses found by the Egyptian princess, a moment of the highest importance for history; the real meaning, on the other hand, what is actually given to intuition, is a foundling rescued by a distinguished lady from its floating cradle, an occurrence that may have happened often. The costume alone can here make that determinate historical case recognizable to the scholar; but costume is valid only for the nominal meaning, indifferent for the real: for this latter knows only man as such, not the arbitrary forms. Subjects taken from history have no advantage over those taken from mere possibility, which are therefore to be named not individually but only generally: for what is really significant in the former is surely not the individual, not the single event as such, but the universal in it, the side of the Idea of mankind that expresses itself through it. On the other hand, determinate historical subjects are by no means to be rejected on that account: only the properly artistic view of them, in the painter as in the beholder, never goes to the individually single in them, which really constitutes the historical, but to the universal that expresses itself in it, to the Idea. Also only such historical subjects are to be chosen where the main thing is really presentable and need not merely be supplied in thought; otherwise the nominal meaning removes itself too far from the real: what is merely thought in the picture becomes the most important and does injury to what is intuited. If already on the stage it does not do for the main thing to go on behind the scene (as in French tragedy), it is in the picture evidently a still far greater fault. Historical subjects have a decidedly harmful effect only when they restrict the painter to a field chosen arbitrarily and not according to the purposes of art but others, and above all when this field is poor in picturesque and significant objects, if it is, for example, the history of a small, secluded, obstinate, hierarchical—that is, delusion-ruled—backwater people, despised by the great contemporary peoples of the Orient and Occident, like the Jews.—Since the migration of nations lies once and for all between us and all ancient peoples, as the former change of the sea bed lies between the present surface of the earth and that earlier one whose organisms show themselves to us only petrified, it is to be regarded as a great misfortune that the people whose past culture should chiefly serve as the foundation of our own were not the Indians, or the Greeks, or even only the Romans, but precisely these Jews. But especially it was an ill star for the painters of genius of Italy, in the 15th and 16th centuries, that in the narrow circle to which they were arbitrarily assigned for the choice of subjects they had to resort to miseries of every kind: for the New Testament, in its historical part, is for painting almost still less favorable than the Old, and the history of martyrs and church teachers that follows it is altogether an unlucky subject. Yet one has to distinguish very carefully from the pictures whose object is the historical or mythological of Judaism and Christianity those in which the real, that is, the ethical spirit of Christianity is revealed to intuition by the presentation of men full of this spirit. These presentations are in fact the highest and most admirable achievements of the painter’s art; they too have succeeded only for the greatest masters of this art, especially Raphael and Correggio, the latter above all in his earlier pictures. Paintings of this kind are really not to be counted among the historical ones: for they mostly present no event, no action, but are mere groupings of saints, the Redeemer himself, often as a child, with his mother, angels and so on. In their mien, especially the eyes, we see the expression, the reflection, of the most perfect knowledge, namely that which is not directed to single things but has perfectly apprehended the Ideas, thus the whole nature of the world and of life. This knowledge, reacting in them on the will, does not, like that other, furnish motives for it, but on the contrary has become a quietive of all willing, from which the perfect resignation that is the innermost spirit of Christianity as of Indian wisdom, the giving up of all willing, the turning back, the abolition of the will and with it of the whole nature of this world, that is, redemption, has proceeded. So did those masters of art, deserving of eternal praise, express in their works the highest wisdom intuitively. And here is the summit of all art, which, having followed the will, in its adequate objectivity, the Ideas, through all grades, from the lowest, where causes, then where stimuli, and finally where motives move it so manifoldly and unfold its nature, now ends with the presentation of its free self-abolition through the one great quietive that dawns on it from the most perfect knowledge of its own nature [35].

49 At the foundation of all our considerations of art so far lies throughout the truth that the object of art, whose presentation is the aim of the artist, and whose knowledge must therefore precede his work as its germ and origin, is an Idea, in Plato’s sense, and absolutely nothing else; not the single thing, the object of common apprehension; nor the concept, the object of rational thinking and of science. Although Idea and concept have something in common, in that both, as unities, represent a plurality of actual things, the great difference between the two will have become clear and evident enough from what was said in the first book about the concept and in the [36] This passage presupposes the following book entirely for its understanding. present book about the Idea. That Plato too, however, already grasped this distinction purely I by no means wish to assert: rather, many of his examples of Ideas and of his discussions of them are applicable merely to concepts. In the meantime we let this rest and go our own way, glad whenever we tread the trace of a great and noble mind, yet pursuing not his footsteps but our goal.—The concept is abstract, discursive, within its sphere wholly indeterminate, determinate only as to its boundary, attainable and comprehensible to anyone who has only reason, communicable by words without further mediation, to be exhausted entirely by its definition. The Idea, on the other hand, which may at a pinch be defined as the adequate representative of the concept, is thoroughly intuitive and, though representing an infinite multitude of single things, yet thoroughly determinate. By the individual as such it is never known, but only by him who has raised himself above all willing and all individuality to pure subject of knowing: thus it is attainable only by the man of genius, and then by him who, through an elevation of his pure power of knowledge, mostly occasioned by the works of genius, is in a mood of genius. Hence it is communicable not absolutely but only conditionally, in that the Idea apprehended and repeated in the work of art speaks to each only according to the measure of his own intellectual worth; for which reason precisely the most excellent works of every art, the noblest products of genius, must remain forever books sealed to the dull majority of men and inaccessible to it, separated from it by a wide gulf, just as the society of princes is inaccessible to the rabble. To be sure, even the most commonplace let the acknowledged great works pass on authority, so as, namely, not to betray their own weakness; yet they remain silently ever ready to pronounce their sentence of condemnation on them, as soon as one lets them hope they can do so without exposing themselves, whereupon their long-suppressed hatred of everything great and beautiful, which never spoke to them and thereby humbled them, and of its authors, joyfully gives itself air. For in general, to acknowledge and allow another’s worth willingly and freely, one must have worth of one’s own. On this is founded the necessity of modesty accompanying all merit, as also the disproportionately loud fame of this virtue, which alone out of all its sisters is every time appended to the praise of anyone who ventures to praise a man in any way distinguished, in order to conciliate and to still the wrath of worthlessness. What, then, is modesty other than feigned humility, by means of which, in a world bursting with base envy, one wants to beg for excellences and merits the pardon of those who have none? For whoever arrogates none to himself, because he really has none, is not modest, but only honest.

The Idea is the unity fallen apart into plurality by virtue of the form of time and space of our intuitive apprehension; the concept, on the other hand, is the unity restored out of plurality by means of the abstraction of our reason. The latter can be designated as unitas post rem, the former as unitas ante rem. Finally, the difference between concept and Idea can also be expressed by a simile, by saying: the concept is like a dead receptacle in which what one has put in really lies side by side, but from which also no more can be taken out (by analytic judgments) than one has put in (by synthetic reflection); the Idea, on the other hand, develops in him who has grasped it representations that are new in regard to the concept of the same name: it is like a living, developing organism, endowed with generative power, which produces what did not lie encased in it.

According to all that has been said, the concept, however useful it is for life, and however serviceable, necessary and productive for science, is for art eternally unfruitful. The apprehended Idea, on the other hand, is the true and only source of every genuine work of art. In its powerful originality it is drawn only from life itself, from nature, from the world, and also only by the true man of genius, or by him who is inspired, for the moment, up to the pitch of genius. Only from such immediate conception do genuine works arise, which carry immortal life in themselves. Precisely because the Idea is and remains intuitive, the artist is not conscious in abstracto of the intention and goal of his work; not a concept but an Idea hovers before him: hence he can give no account of his doing; he works, as people put it, from mere feeling and unconsciously, indeed instinctively. Imitators, mannerists, imitatores, servum pecus, on the contrary, proceed in art from the concept: they note what pleases and takes effect in genuine works, make it clear to themselves, grasp it in the concept, thus abstractly, and now imitate it, openly or covertly, with shrewd deliberateness. They suck, like parasitic plants, their nourishment from the works of others, and, like polyps, take on the color of their food. Indeed, carrying the comparison further, one could maintain that they are like machines which chop up very finely what one puts into them and mix it together, but can never digest it, so that the foreign constituents can still always be found again, sought out from the mixture and separated; the man of genius alone, on the other hand, would be like the organic body that assimilates, transforms and produces. For he is, to be sure, brought up and formed by his predecessors and their works; but he is fertilized only by life and the world itself immediately, through the impression of the intuitive. Hence even the highest culture never harms his originality. All imitators, all mannerists grasp the nature of the exemplary achievements of others in the concept; but concepts can never impart inner life to a work. The age, that is, the dull multitude of each time, itself knows only concepts and clings to them, and therefore receives mannered works with swift and loud applause; but the same works are already unenjoyable after a few years, because the spirit of the age, that is, the ruling concepts, on which alone they could be rooted, have changed. Only the genuine works, which are drawn immediately from nature, from life, remain, like these themselves, eternally young and always of primal force. For they belong to no age but to mankind; and as they were, for that very reason, received lukewarmly by their own age, to which they scorned to conform, and, because they uncovered mediately and negatively its particular aberration, were acknowledged late and unwillingly, so, for their part, they cannot grow old either, but speak to us fresh and ever anew even in the latest times. Then they are also no longer exposed to being overlooked and misjudged, since they stand crowned and sanctioned by the applause of the few capable heads who appear singly and sparingly through the centuries [37] and cast their votes, whose slowly growing sum establishes the authority which alone is that tribunal meant when one appeals to posterity. It is those successively appearing individuals alone; for the mass and multitude of posterity will always be and remain as perverse and dull as the mass and multitude of contemporaries always was and always is.—Read the complaints of great minds, from every century, about their contemporaries: they always sound like today’s; because the human race is always the same. At every time and in every art mannerism takes the place of the spirit, which is always the property only of individuals; but mannerism is the old, cast-off garment of the last-existing and recognized appearance of the spirit. In accordance with all this, as a rule the applause of posterity is not acquired otherwise than at the expense of the applause of contemporaries; and conversely [38].

50 If now the aim of all art is communication of the apprehended Idea, which precisely in such mediation through the mind of the artist, in which it appears cleansed of everything foreign and isolated, now becomes comprehensible also to him who has weaker receptivity and no productivity; and if, further, starting out from the concept is reprehensible in art; then we cannot approve of it when a work of art is determined, intentionally and avowedly, for the expression of a concept: this is the case in allegory. An allegory is a work of art that means something other than it presents. But the intuitive, and hence also the Idea, expresses itself immediately and wholly perfectly, and has no need of the mediation of something else by which it may be hinted at. What, then, in [39] Apparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto.

40 On this, Chapter 34 of the second volume. this way, through something wholly other, is hinted at and represented, because it cannot itself be brought before intuition, is always a concept. By allegory, therefore, a concept is always to be designated, and consequently the mind of the beholder is to be led away from the intuitive representation presented to a wholly different, abstract, non-intuitive one, which lies entirely outside the work of art: here, then, picture or statue is to accomplish what writing accomplishes, only far more perfectly. What we declare to be the aim of art, presentation of the Idea to be apprehended only intuitively, is here not the aim. For what is intended here, however, no great perfection of the work of art is required at all; it suffices that one see what the thing is supposed to be, since, as soon as this is found, the aim is achieved and the mind is now led to a wholly different kind of representation, to an abstract concept, which was the goal set. Allegories in the plastic arts are consequently nothing other than hieroglyphs: the artistic worth which they may otherwise have as intuitive presentations accrues to them not as allegories but otherwise. That the Night of Correggio, the Genius of Fame by Hannibal Caracci, the Hours of Poussin, are very beautiful pictures is to be entirely separated from their being allegories. As allegories they accomplish no more than an inscription, indeed rather less. We are here again reminded of the distinction made above between the real and the nominal meaning of a picture. The nominal is here precisely the allegorical as such, for example the genius of fame; the real is what is actually presented: here a beautiful winged youth, surrounded in flight by beautiful boys. This expresses an Idea; but this real meaning works only so long as one forgets the nominal, allegorical one: if one thinks of this, one leaves the intuition, and an abstract concept occupies the mind; and the transition from the Idea to the concept is always a fall. Indeed, that nominal meaning, that allegorical intention, often does injury to the real meaning, the intuitive truth: so, for example, the unnatural lighting in the Night of Correggio, which, however beautifully executed, is yet motivated merely allegorically and is impossible in reality. If, therefore, an allegorical picture has artistic worth, this is wholly separate from and independent of what it accomplishes as allegory: such a work of art serves two ends at once, namely the expression of a concept and the expression of an Idea; only the latter can be the end of art, the other is a foreign end, the playful amusement of letting a picture at the same time do service as an inscription, as hieroglyph, invented for the benefit of those whom the real essence of art can never speak to. It is the same as when a work of art is at the same time a useful implement, where it also serves two ends: for example a statue that is at the same time a candelabrum or a caryatid, or a bas-relief that is at the same time the shield of Achilles. Pure friends of art will approve neither the one nor the other. To be sure, an allegorical picture, precisely in this quality, can also produce a lively impression on the mind; the same, however, would then, under like circumstances, be produced by an inscription as well. For example, if in the mind of a man the wish for fame is lastingly and firmly rooted, in that he perhaps even regards fame as his rightful property, which is withheld from him only so long as he has not yet produced the documents of his possession, and he now steps before the genius of fame with his laurel crowns; his whole mind is thereby stirred and his power called to activity: but the same would happen if he suddenly saw the word “Fame” large and distinct on the wall. Or if a man has made known a truth which is important either as an assertion for practical life or as an insight for science, but has found no belief; then an allegorical picture representing Time as it lifts the veil and lets naked Truth be seen will work powerfully on him: but the same would be accomplished by the device “Le tems découvre la vérité.” For what really works here is always only the abstract thought, not what is intuited.

If, according to what has been said, allegory in the plastic arts is a faulty striving, serving an end wholly foreign to art, it becomes quite intolerable when it leads so far astray that the presentation of forced and violently dragged-in interpretive quibbles falls into the silly. Such is, for example, a tortoise as a hint of feminine seclusion; the glancing down of Nemesis into the bosom of her garment, hinting that she sees even into what is hidden; the explanation of Bellori that Hannibal Caracci clothed Voluptuousness in a yellow garment because he wanted to hint that her joys soon wither and become yellow as straw.—If now, however, there is between what is presented and the concept thereby hinted at no connection at all founded on subsumption under that concept or on association of ideas, but sign and signified are connected quite conventionally, by positive, accidentally occasioned statute, then I call this variety of allegory symbol. So the rose is symbol of secrecy, the laurel symbol of fame, the palm symbol of victory, the shell symbol of pilgrimage, the cross symbol of the Christian religion: to this belong also all hints by mere colors immediately, such as yellow as the color of falseness, and blue as the color of fidelity. Such symbols may often be of use in life, but their worth is foreign to art: they are to be regarded quite like hieroglyphs, or even like Chinese word-writing, and really stand in one class with coats of arms, with the bush that hints at an inn, with the key by which one recognizes chamberlains, or the leather by which one recognizes miners.—If finally certain historical or mythical persons, or personified concepts, are made recognizable by symbols fixed once for all, these would really be called emblems: of this kind are the animals of the Evangelists, the owl of Minerva, the apple of Paris, the anchor of hope, and so on. In the meantime, by emblems one mostly understands those figurative, simple presentations, explained by a motto, which are meant to illustrate a moral truth, of which there are great collections, by J. Camerarius, Alciatus and others: they make the transition to poetic allegory, of which more below.—Greek sculpture appeals to intuition, therefore it is aesthetic; Hindostanic sculpture appeals to the concept, therefore it is merely symbolic.

This judgment on allegory, founded on our considerations so far of the inner essence of art and closely connected with them, is directly opposed to the view of Winckelmann, who, far from declaring allegory, as we do, to be something wholly foreign to the aim of art and often disturbing it, speaks up for it everywhere, and even (Works, vol. 1, p. 55 ff.) places the highest aim of art in the “presentation of general concepts and non-sensuous things.” Let it be left to each to adopt the one view or the other. Only, with these and similar views of Winckelmann concerning the real metaphysics of the beautiful, the truth became very clear to me that one can have the greatest receptivity and the most correct judgment about the beautiful in art without being able, however, to give an abstract and properly philosophical account of the essence of the beautiful and of art: just as one can be very noble and virtuous and have a very delicate conscience, deciding in single cases with the exactness of a gold balance, without being thereby able to fathom philosophically the ethical significance of actions and to present it in abstracto.

Allegory has, however, a wholly different relation to poetry than to the plastic arts, and though objectionable here, it is quite admissible and serviceable there. For in the plastic arts it leads from the given intuitive, the proper object of all art, to abstract thoughts; in poetry, however, the relation is reversed: here what is immediately given in words is the concept, and the immediate aim is always to lead from this to the intuitive, whose presentation the imagination of the hearer must undertake. If in the plastic arts one is led from the immediately given to something else, this must always be a concept, because here only the abstract cannot be immediately given; but a concept may never be the origin, and its communication never the aim, of a work of art. In poetry, on the other hand, the concept is the material, the immediately given, which may therefore very well be left in order to call up a wholly different intuitive, in which the goal is reached. In the context of a poem many a concept, or abstract thought, may be indispensable which is nevertheless in itself and immediately not capable of any intuitiveness at all: this is then often brought to intuitiveness by some example to be subsumed under it. This already happens in every figurative expression, and happens in every metaphor, simile, parable and allegory, which all differ only by the length and fullness of their presentation. In the speaking arts, similes and allegories are for this reason of excellent effect. How beautifully Cervantes says of sleep, to express that it withdraws us from all mental and bodily suffering, “it is a cloak that covers the whole man.” How beautifully Kleist expresses allegorically the thought that philosophers and investigators enlighten the human race, in the verse:

“Those whose nightly lamp illuminates the whole globe.” How strongly and intuitively Homer designates the mischief-bringing Ate, in saying: “she has tender feet, for she does not tread on the hard ground, but walks only on the heads of men” (Il., XIX, 91). How greatly the fable of Menenius Agrippa about the stomach and the limbs worked on the Roman people, who had withdrawn from the city. How beautifully Plato’s allegory of the cave, already mentioned, at the beginning of the seventh book of the Republic, expresses a most abstract philosophical dogma. Likewise the fable of Persephone, who by tasting a pomegranate in the underworld falls to it, is to be regarded as a profound allegory of philosophical tendency: this becomes especially clear through the treatment of this fable, beyond all praise, which Goethe has woven as an episode into the Triumph of Sensibility. Three extended allegorical works are known to me: one open and avowed is the incomparable Criticon of Balthasar Gracian, which consists of a great rich web of interlinked, highly ingenious allegories, which serve here for the cheerful clothing of moral truths, to which he thereby imparts the greatest intuitiveness, and amazes us by the wealth of his inventions. Two concealed ones, however, are Don Quixote and Gulliver in Lilliput. The former allegorizes the life of every man who will not, like the others, merely look after his personal welfare, but pursues an objective, ideal end which has taken possession of his thinking and willing; whereupon he certainly cuts a strange figure in this world. In Gulliver one need only take everything physical spiritually to notice what the satirical rogue, as Hamlet would call him, meant by it.—Since, then, in poetic allegory the concept is always the given, which it wants to make intuitive through a picture, it may well even be at times expressed or supported by a painted picture: this is nevertheless not regarded as a work of the plastic arts, but only as a designating hieroglyph, and makes no claim to painterly, but only to poetic worth. Of this kind is that beautiful allegorical vignette of Lavater’s, which must work so heartening on every noble champion of truth: a hand that, holding a light, is stung by a wasp, while above, at the flame, gnats burn up: beneath it the motto:

“And though it singe the gnat’s wing, and burst its skull and all its little brain; light remains light still; and though the fiercest wasp should sting me, I will not let it go.”

To this belongs further that gravestone with the blown-out, smoking light and the inscription:

“When it is over, it will be plain, whether it was tallow candle or wax.”—

Of this kind, finally, is an old German family tree on which the last scion of the family, whose line reached high up, expressed his resolve to end his life in complete abstinence and chastity and therefore to let his line die out, by having himself depicted at the root of the many-branched tree, cutting off the tree above him with a pair of shears. To this belong in general the emblems mentioned above, commonly so called, which one might also describe as short painted fables with an express moral.—Allegories of this kind are always to be counted with the poetic, not the painterly, and are precisely thereby justified: also the pictorial execution remains here always a side matter, and no more is demanded of it than that it present the thing recognizably. But as in the plastic arts, so in poetry also, allegory passes over into symbol when between what is intuitively brought forward and the abstract designated by it there is no connection other than an arbitrary one. Because all that is symbolic rests fundamentally on agreement, the symbol has, among other disadvantages, also this one, that its meaning is forgotten in time and it then falls entirely mute: who, if he did not know it, would guess why the fish is the symbol of Christianity? Only a Champollion: for it is through and through a phonetic hieroglyph. Hence the Revelation of John now stands there as poetic allegory much like the reliefs with magnus Deus sol Mithra, on which people still keep interpreting [41].

51 If, with our considerations so far on art in general, we now turn from the plastic arts to poetry, we shall not doubt that it too has the aim of revealing the Ideas, the grades of the objectification of the will, and of communicating them to the hearer with the distinctness and vividness with which the poetic mind apprehended them. Ideas are essentially intuitive: if, therefore, in poetry what is communicated immediately through words is only abstract concepts, the intention is nevertheless evidently to let the hearer intuit the Ideas of life in the representatives of these concepts, which can happen only with the aid of his own imagination. But in order to set this in motion in a way answering the purpose, the abstract concepts, which are the immediate material of poetry as of the driest prose, must be so put together that their spheres intersect in such a manner that none can persist in its abstract generality, but in its place an intuitive representative appears before the imagination, which the words of the poet now modify further and further according to his intention. As the chemist obtains solid precipitates from perfectly clear and transparent liquids by combining them, so the poet understands how to precipitate, as it were, from the abstract, transparent generality of concepts,⁴² On this, Chapter 36 of the second volume. by the way he combines them, the concrete, the individual, the intuitive representation. For only intuitively is the Idea known; but knowledge of the Idea is the aim of all art. Mastery in poetry, as in chemistry, makes one able to obtain every time precisely the precipitate one intends. To this end serve the many epithets in poetry, by which the generality of every concept is restricted, more and more, down to intuitiveness. Homer adds to almost every noun an epithet whose concept intersects the sphere of the first concept and at once considerably diminishes it, whereby he already comes so much nearer to intuition: for example,

Εν δ’ επεσ’ Ωκεανῳ λαμπρον φαος ἠελιοιο, Ἑλκον νυκτα μελαιναν επι ζειδωρον αρουραν.

(Occidit vero in Oceanum splendidum lumen solis, Trahens noctem nigram super almam terram.)

And “A gentle wind blows from the blue sky, the myrtle stands still and the laurel high,”—this precipitates from a few concepts the whole delight of the southern climate before the imagination.

A quite special aid of poetry is rhythm and rhyme. Of their incredibly powerful effect I know no other explanation to give than that our imaginative powers, essentially bound to time, have thereby acquired a peculiarity by virtue of which we inwardly follow every regularly recurring noise and as it were chime in with it. Thereby rhythm and rhyme become partly a binding agent of our attention, in that we follow the recitation more willingly, and partly there arises through them in us a blind agreement with what is recited, preceding all judgment, whereby it obtains a certain emphatic power of conviction independent of all grounds.

By virtue of the generality of the material which poetry uses to communicate the Ideas, namely concepts, the extent of its domain is very great. The whole of nature, the Ideas of all grades, are representable by it, in that it proceeds, according to the Idea to be communicated, now descriptively, now narratively, now presenting immediately dramatically. If, however, in the presentation of the lower grades of the objectivity of the will the plastic art mostly surpasses it, because nature without knowledge, and also merely animal nature, reveals almost its whole essence in a single well-chosen moment, man, on the contrary, insofar as he expresses himself not through his mere figure and expression of mien, but through a chain of actions and the thoughts and affects accompanying them, is the chief object of poetry, with which in this no other art can compare, because it has here the benefit of progression, which the plastic arts lack.

Revelation of that Idea which is the highest grade of the objectivity of the will, presentation of man in the connected series of his strivings and actions, is thus the great subject of poetry.—To be sure, experience also teaches, history also teaches, to know man; yet more often men than man: that is, they give more empirical notices of the conduct of men toward one another, from which rules for one’s own conduct emerge, than that they let deep glances be cast into the inner nature of man. Meanwhile this latter is by no means excluded from them: yet whenever it is the nature of mankind itself that opens itself to us in history or in our own experience, we, in the one case, and the historian, in the other, have already apprehended it with artists’ eyes, already poetically, that is, according to the Idea, not the appearance, according to the inner nature, not the relations. One’s own experience is unavoidably the condition of understanding poetry, as of history: for it is as it were the dictionary of the language that both speak. History, however, stands to poetry as portrait painting to history painting: the former gives what is true in the particular, the latter what is true in the universal; the former has the truth of the appearance and can certify it from the appearance, the latter has the truth of the Idea, which is to be found in no single appearance, yet speaks from all. The poet presents, with choice and intention, significant characters in significant situations: the historian takes both as they come. Indeed, he is not to regard and select the events and the persons according to their inner, genuine significance, expressing the Idea, but according to the outer, apparent, relative significance, important in relation to the connection, to the consequences. He may consider nothing in and for itself, according to its essential character and expression, but must consider everything according to relation, in the concatenation, in influence on what follows, and especially on his own age. For this reason he will not pass over an action of a king that is of little significance, indeed in itself common: for it has consequences and influence. On the other hand, actions of individuals that are in themselves highly significant, and very distinguished individuals themselves, if they have no consequences, no influence, are not to be mentioned by him. For his consideration follows the principle of sufficient reason and seizes the appearance, of which this is the form. The poet, however, apprehends the Idea, the nature of mankind, outside all relation, outside all time, the adequate objectivity of the thing in itself at its highest grade. Even though, now, in that way of considering things necessary to the historian too, the inner nature, the significance of the appearances, the kernel of all those shells, can never be wholly lost and can at least by him who seeks it still be found and known; yet that which is significant in itself, not in relation, the real unfolding of the Idea, will be found far more correctly and distinctly in poetry than in history, and to the former therefore, however paradoxical it sounds, much more real, genuine, inner truth is to be ascribed than to the latter. For the historian is to follow the individual event exactly according to life, as it develops in time along the manifold entangled chains of grounds and consequences; but he cannot possibly possess all the data for this, have seen everything or ascertained everything: at every moment he is deserted by the original of his picture, or a false one is slipped in in its place, and this so often that I believe I may assume that in all history there is more of the false than of the true. The poet, on the other hand, has apprehended the Idea of mankind from some determinate side, just the one to be presented; it is the nature of his own self that objectifies itself to him in it: his knowledge is, as expounded above on the occasion of sculpture, half a priori: his model stands before his mind, fixed, distinct, brightly lit, cannot desert him: hence he shows us in the mirror of his mind the Idea purely and distinctly, and his depiction is, down to the particular, true as life itself [43]. The great ancient historians are therefore, in the particulars where the data desert them, for example in the speeches of their heroes, poets; indeed their whole way of treating the material approaches the epic: but this very thing gives their presentations unity, and lets them retain inner truth even where the outer was inaccessible to them or even falsified. And having compared history just now to portrait painting, in contrast to poetry, which would correspond to history painting, we find Winckelmann’s saying that the portrait should be the ideal of the individual followed also by the ancient historians, since they present the particular in such a way that the side of the Idea of mankind expressing itself in it stands forth: the modern ones, on the contrary, with few exceptions, mostly give only “a rubbish barrel and a lumber room and at most a grand state pageant.”—Whoever, then, wants to know the [44] It goes without saying that I speak throughout exclusively of the so rare, great, genuine poet and mean no one less than that shallow crowd of mediocre poets, rhymesters and fairy-tale inventors, which especially nowadays in Germany grows so rank, but to which one should call unceasingly in the ears from all sides:

Mediocribus esse poëtis Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.

It is itself worthy of serious consideration what a quantity of one’s own and others’ time and paper is spoiled by this swarm of mediocre poets and how harmful their influence is, in that the public partly always grasps for the new, partly also by nature has more inclination to the perverse and flat, as being more homogeneous to it; hence those works of the mediocre draw it away from the genuine masterpieces and from its culture through them, and hold it back, and consequently, working directly against the favorable influence of the men of genius, ever more spoil taste and thus hinder the progress of the age. Criticism and satire should therefore scourge the mediocre poets without any indulgence or pity, until they are brought, for their own good, to employ their leisure rather in reading good things than in writing bad.—For if even the gentle god of the Muses was put into such wrath by the bungling of the uncalled that he could flay Marsyas, I do not see on what mediocre poetry would ground its claims to toleration.

mankind, according to its inner nature, identical in all appearances and developments, according to its Idea, to him the works of the great, immortal poets will hold up a far more faithful and distinct image than the historians ever can: for even the best of these are, as poets, by no means the first, and also do not have free hands. The relation of the two can in this respect also be elucidated by the following simile. The mere, pure historian, working by the data alone, is like one who, with no knowledge of mathematics, investigates by measuring the proportions of figures found by chance, whose empirically found statement is therefore burdened with all the errors of the drawn figure: the poet, on the contrary, is like the mathematician, who constructs those proportions a priori, in pure intuition, and states them, not as the drawn figure actually has them, but as they are in the Idea, which the drawing is to make sensible.—For this reason Schiller says:

“What has never and nowhere come to pass, that alone never grows old.” With regard to knowledge of the essence of humanity, I must even concede a greater value to biographies, above all to autobiographies, than to history proper, at least as it is commonly written. For one thing, the data for the former can be gathered more accurately and completely than for the latter; for another, in history proper it is not so much men who act as peoples and armies, and the individuals who still step forward appear at so great a distance, with so much around them and so large a retinue, and besides wrapped in stiff robes of state or heavy, unyielding armor, that it is truly hard to make out the human movement through all of it. The faithfully portrayed life of an individual, on the other hand, within a narrow sphere, shows the conduct of men in all its nuances and shapes: the excellence, the virtue, even the saintliness of a few, the perversity, wretchedness, and malice of most, the villainy of some. Moreover, in the respect considered here, which is the only one that concerns us, namely the inner significance of what appears, it makes no difference at all whether the objects around which the action turns are, relatively speaking, trifles or matters of weight, farmsteads or kingdoms: for all these things, in themselves without significance, acquire it only through the will’s being moved by them, and only to that extent: the motive has significance solely through its relation to the will; the relation it has, as a thing, to other such things does not come into consideration at all. As a circle an inch across and one forty million miles across have exactly the same geometrical properties, so the events and history of a village and those of an empire are in essence the same; and one can study and come to know humanity in the one as in the other. It is also a mistake to suppose that autobiographies are full of deceit and pretense. On the contrary, lying (though possible anywhere) is perhaps harder there than anywhere else. Pretense is easiest in mere conversation; indeed, paradoxical as it sounds, it is at bottom harder even in a letter, because there a man, left to himself, looks into himself and not outward, finds it hard to bring what is foreign and distant close, and does not have the measure of the impression on the other before his eyes; this other, on the contrary, composed, in a mood foreign to the writer, looks the letter over, reads it repeatedly and at different times, and so easily finds out the hidden intention. An author, too, can most easily be known as a man from his book, because all those conditions operate here more strongly and more lastingly; and to pretend in an autobiography is so hard that there is perhaps not a single one that is not, taken as a whole, truer than any other written history. The man who sets down his life surveys it as a whole and in its large outlines; the particular grows small, the near recedes, the far comes near again, considerations shrink: he sits himself down to confession, and has sat down of his own free will: the spirit of lying does not take hold of him here so easily; for in every man there is also an inclination to truth, which with every lie must first be overcome, and which has here taken up an uncommonly strong position. The relation between biography and the history of peoples can be made intuitive by the following simile. History shows us humanity as a view from a high mountain shows us nature: we see much at once, wide stretches, great masses; but nothing becomes distinct, nor recognizable in its whole proper essence. The depicted life of the individual, by contrast, shows us the man as we know nature when we walk about among its trees, plants, rocks, and waters. But as landscape painting, in which the artist lets us look into nature through his eyes, greatly eases for us the knowledge of its Ideas and the state of will-less, pure knowing that this requires; so, for the presentation of the Ideas that we may seek in history and biography, poetry has a great deal in its favor over both: for here too the genius holds up to us the clarifying mirror, in which everything essential and significant steps toward us assembled and set in the brightest light, while the accidental and the alien is eliminated [45].

The presentation of the Idea of humanity, which is the poet’s task, he can now carry out in one of two ways: either so that the one presented is at the same time the one presenting: this happens in lyric poetry, in the song proper, where the poet only vividly beholds and describes his own state, whereby a certain subjectivity is, from the nature of its object, essential to this kind of poetry;—or else the one to be presented is wholly different from the one presenting, as in all the other kinds, where the presenter more or less hides behind what is presented and in the end vanishes entirely. In the romance the presenter still expresses his own state somewhat through the tone and bearing of the whole: far more objective than the song, it therefore still has something subjective; this is already fainter in the idyll, much more so in the novel, almost wholly gone in the epic proper, and in the drama finally gone to the last trace, drama being the most objective, in more than one respect the most perfect, and also the most difficult kind of poetry. The lyric kind is for that very reason the easiest, and while art otherwise belongs only to the true genius, so rare, even a man not very eminent on the whole can produce a beautiful song when, in fact, through [46] On this, see Chapter 38 of the second volume. strong stimulus from without, some enthusiasm raises his powers of mind: for all that is needed is a vivid intuition of his own state in the excited moment. This is proved by many single songs of individuals who have remained otherwise unknown, especially the German folk songs, of which we have an excellent collection in the “Wunderhorn,” and likewise by countless love songs and other songs of the people in all languages. For to seize the mood of the moment and embody it in song is the whole achievement of this poetic kind. Yet in the lyric poetry of true poets the inner nature of all humanity is mirrored, and everything that millions of men, past, present, and to come, have felt and will feel in the same situations, since these are forever recurring, finds its corresponding expression there. Because those situations, through their constant recurrence, stand fast like humanity itself and always call forth the same feelings, the lyric productions of true poets remain correct, effective, and fresh for thousands of years. Indeed, the poet is in general the universal man: everything that has ever moved the heart of any man, and everything that human nature in any situation brings forth out of itself, whatever dwells and broods anywhere in a human breast, is his theme and his material; as, besides, is the whole of the rest of nature. Hence the poet can sing sensual pleasure as well as mysticism, be Anacreon or Angelus Silesius, write tragedies or comedies, portray the sublime or the base disposition, according to mood and calling. Accordingly, no one may prescribe to the poet that he should be noble and sublime, moral, pious, Christian, or this or that, still less reproach him with being this and not that. He is the mirror of humanity, and brings to its consciousness what it feels and pursues.

Let us now consider more closely the essence of the song proper, taking as examples excellent and at the same time pure models, not ones that already approach another kind in some way, such as the romance, the elegy, the hymn, the epigram, and so on; then we shall find that the peculiar essence of the song in the narrowest sense is as follows.—It is the subject of the will, that is, one’s own willing, that fills the consciousness of the singer, often as a willing set free and satisfied (joy), yet still more often as a willing checked (sorrow), always as emotion, passion, a stirred state of mind. Beside this, however, and at the same time, the sight of the surrounding nature makes the singer conscious of himself as the subject of pure, will-less knowing, whose unshakable, blessed calm now stands in contrast to the pressure of the ever-limited, ever-needy willing: the feeling of this contrast, of this interplay, is really what is expressed in the song as a whole and what in general constitutes the lyric state. In this state pure knowing comes toward us, as it were, to deliver us from willing and its pressure: we follow; but only for moments: willing, the memory of our personal ends, tears us away again and again from calm contemplation; yet again and again the nearest beautiful surroundings, in which pure will-less knowledge offers itself to us, lure us away from willing. Therefore in the song and the lyric mood willing (the personal interest in ends) and the pure beholding of the surroundings that present themselves are wondrously mixed and interwoven: relations between the two are sought and imagined; the subjective mood, the affection of the will, imparts its color to the surroundings beheld, and these in turn reflect their color back upon it: of this whole state of mind, thus mingled and divided, the genuine song is the imprint.—To make this abstract dissection of a state very far removed from all abstraction comprehensible through examples, one can take up any of Goethe’s immortal songs: as particularly clear for this purpose I will recommend only a few: “Shepherd’s Lament,” “Welcome and Farewell,” “To the Moon,” “On the Lake,” “Autumn Feeling”; the songs proper in the “Wunderhorn” also are excellent examples, quite especially the one that begins: “O Bremen, I must now leave you.”—As a comic and aptly hitting parody of the lyric character, a song by Voss strikes me as remarkable, in which he describes the feelings of a drunken lead-roofer falling from a tower, who in passing makes the observation, very foreign to his state and therefore belonging to will-free knowledge, that the tower clock shows half past eleven.—Whoever shares with me the view set forth of the lyric state will also admit that it is really the intuitive and poetic knowledge of that proposition set up in my treatise on the principle of sufficient reason and already mentioned in this work, that the identity of the subject of knowing with that of willing may be called the miracle κατ’ ἐξοχην; so that the poetic effect of the song ultimately rests on the truth of that proposition. In the course of life those two subjects, or, to speak popularly, head and heart, move ever further apart: one separates one’s subjective feeling more and more from one’s objective knowledge. In the child both are still wholly fused: it can hardly tell itself apart from its surroundings, it merges with them. In the youth all perception at first produces feeling and mood, and even blends with it; as Byron expresses very beautifully:

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling [47].

For that very reason the youth clings so closely to the intuitive outer side of things; for that very reason he is fit only for lyric poetry, and only the man for dramatic. The old man can at most still be thought of as an epic poet, like Ossian, Homer: for narrating belongs to the character of old age.

In the more objective kinds of poetry, especially the novel, epic, and drama, the end, the revelation of the Idea of humanity, is attained chiefly by two means: by a correct and deeply conceived presentation of significant characters, and by the invention of significant situations in which they unfold. For as it falls to the chemist not only to present the simple substances and their principal compounds pure and genuine, but also to expose them to the influence of such reagents as make their peculiarities distinctly and strikingly [48] Not in myself alone do I live; I become one part of what surrounds me, and to me high mountains are a feeling. visible; just so it falls to the poet not only to set before us significant characters, true and faithful as nature itself, but, to make them known to us, he must place them in such situations as bring their peculiarities fully to unfold and show them distinctly, in sharp outlines; these are therefore called significant situations. In real life and in history chance only rarely brings about situations of this quality, and there they stand singly, lost and hidden amid the multitude of the insignificant. The thoroughgoing significance of the situations is to distinguish the novel, the epic, the drama from real life, just as much as the assembling and choosing of significant characters; but in both, the strictest truth is the indispensable condition of their effect, and lack of unity in the characters, their contradiction with themselves or with the essence of humanity in general, as well as impossibility or a near-impossible improbability in the events, even if only in secondary circumstances, offend in poetry just as much as misdrawn figures, or false perspective, or faulty lighting do in painting: for there as here we demand the faithful mirror of life, of humanity, of the world, only made clearer by the presentation and made significant by the arrangement. Since the end of all the arts is one, the presentation of Ideas, and their essential difference lies only in which grade of the objectification of the will the Idea to be presented is, by which the material of the presentation is again determined, even the arts furthest removed from one another can be illuminated by comparison. Thus, for example, in order to grasp fully the Ideas that express themselves in water, it is not enough to see it in the still pond and in the evenly flowing stream; rather those Ideas unfold completely only when the water appears under all circumstances and obstacles that, acting upon it, induce it to the full manifestation of all its properties. That is why we find it beautiful when it plunges down, roars, foams, leaps up again, or when it falls and dissolves into spray, or finally, artificially forced, strives upward as a jet: thus showing itself differently under different circumstances, it yet always faithfully maintains its character: it is as natural to it to spurt upward as to rest mirroring; it is equally ready for the one as for the other, as soon as the circumstances occur. What the artist of fountains accomplishes with fluid matter, the architect accomplishes with rigid matter, and the epic or dramatic poet the same with the Idea of humanity. Unfolding and making distinct the Idea that expresses itself in the object of each art, the will that objectifies itself at each grade, is the common end of all the arts. The life of man, as it mostly shows itself in actuality, resembles water as it mostly shows itself, in pond and river: but in the epic, the novel, and the tragedy chosen characters are placed in such circumstances that all their peculiarities unfold, the depths of the human mind open, and become visible in extraordinary and significant actions. Thus poetry objectifies the Idea of man, to which it is peculiar to present itself in highly individual characters.

Tragedy is to be regarded as the summit of poetic art, both in the greatness of its effect and in the difficulty of its execution, and it is acknowledged to be so. It is very significant for the whole of our inquiry, and well worth noting, that the end of this highest poetic achievement is the presentation of the terrible side of life: that the nameless pain, the wretchedness of mankind, the triumph of wickedness, the mocking rule of chance, and the irretrievable fall of the just and the innocent are here set before us; for in this lies a significant hint about the nature of the world and of existence. It is the conflict of the will with itself which here, at the highest grade of its objectivity, unfolds most completely and steps forth in all its terror. It becomes visible in the suffering of mankind, which is brought about partly by chance and error, which appear as rulers of the world and, through a malice that goes so far as to seem intentional, are personified as fate; partly it proceeds from mankind itself, through the crossing strivings of the individuals’ wills, through the wickedness and perversity of most. It is one and the same will that lives and appears in them all, but whose appearances fight against one another and tear one another to pieces. In this individual it comes forth mightily, in that more weakly, here brought more to reflection and mitigated by the light of knowledge, there less, until at last, in a single individual, this knowledge, purified and heightened by suffering itself, reaches the point where the appearance, the veil of Maya, deceives it no longer, the form of appearance, the principium individuationis, is seen through by it, the egoism that rests on this form thereby dies away, and the motives that were before so powerful lose their power, and in their place the perfect knowledge of the essence of the world, working as a quietive of the will, brings about resignation, the giving up not merely of life but of the whole will to life itself. Thus we see in tragedy at last the noblest, after long struggle and suffering, renounce forever the ends they had until then pursued so vehemently, and all the enjoyments of life, or willingly and joyfully give up life itself: so the constant prince of Calderon; so Gretchen in “Faust”; so Hamlet, whom his Horatio would gladly follow, but whom Hamlet bids remain and draw painful breath a while longer in this harsh world, in order to clear up Hamlet’s fate and cleanse his memory;—so also the Maid of Orleans, the Bride of Messina: they all die purified by suffering, that is, after the will to live has first died within them; in Voltaire’s “Mohammed” this is even said in so many words, in the closing words that the dying Palmira calls out to Mohammed: “The world is for tyrants: live on, you!”—The demand for so-called poetic justice, on the other hand, rests on a complete misjudgment of the essence of tragedy, indeed of the essence of the world. It appears with effrontery, in all its flatness, in the criticisms that Dr. Samuel Johnson has furnished on the individual plays of Shakespeare, in which he complains, quite naively, of the thoroughgoing neglect of it; a neglect which is indeed there: for what have the Ophelias, the Desdemonas, the Cordelias done to deserve it?—But only the flat, optimistic, Protestant-rationalist, or really Jewish view of the world will make the demand for poetic justice and find in its satisfaction its own. The true sense of tragedy is the deeper insight that what the hero atones for is not his particular sins but original sin, that is, the guilt of existence itself:

Pues el delito mayor Del hombre es haber nacido.

(For the greatest guilt of man is that he was born.)

As Calderon says outright.

Concerning the manner of treating tragedy, I will allow myself only one remark. The presentation of a great misfortune is alone essential to tragedy. But the many different ways in which the poet brings it about can be brought under three kinds. It can happen, namely, through the extraordinary wickedness of a character, brushing the farthest limits of possibility, who becomes the author of the misfortune; examples of this kind are Richard III, Iago in “Othello,” Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Franz Moor, the Phaedra of Euripides, Creon in the “Antigone,” and the like. It can further happen through blind fate, that is, chance and error: of this kind a true model is Sophocles’ King Oedipus, also the Women of Trachis, and in general most of the tragedies of the ancients belong here; among the moderns, examples are “Romeo and Juliet,” Voltaire’s “Tancred,” “The Bride of Messina.” But the misfortune can finally be brought about also by the mere position of the persons toward one another, by their relationships; so that there is need neither of a monstrous error, nor of an unheard-of chance, nor of a character reaching the limits of humanity in evil; but characters such as are ordinary in a moral respect, in circumstances such as occur often, are so set against one another that their situation compels them, knowing and seeing, to bring the greatest calamity upon each other, without the wrong lying wholly on any one side. This last kind seems to me far preferable to the other two; for it shows us the greatest misfortune not as an exception, not as something brought about by rare circumstances or monstrous characters, but as something proceeding easily and of itself, almost as essential, from the doings and characters of men, and by that very fact brings it frighteningly close to us. And if in the other two kinds we behold the monstrous fate and the appalling wickedness as terrible powers, but ones that threaten us only from a great distance, and which we might well escape without taking refuge in renunciation; the last kind shows us those forces that destroy happiness and life as such that the way to us too stands open to them at every moment, and the greatest suffering brought about by entanglements whose essentials our own fate too could take on, and by actions that we too perhaps would be capable of committing, so that we could not complain of injustice: then we feel ourselves, shuddering, already in the midst of hell. The execution in this last kind has, however, also the greatest difficulty; for here the greatest effect has to be produced with the slightest expenditure of means and moving causes, merely through their position and distribution: hence even in many of the best tragedies this difficulty is evaded. As a perfect model of this kind, however, one play is to be cited which in other respects is far surpassed by several others by the same great master: it is “Clavigo.” “Hamlet” belongs here in a way, if one looks merely at his relation to Laertes and Ophelia; “Wallenstein” too has this merit; “Faust” is wholly of this kind if one regards only the affair with Gretchen and her brother as the main action; likewise Corneille’s “Cid,” except that it lacks the tragic outcome, which the analogous relation of Max to Thekla, on the other hand, has [49].

52 Having now in the foregoing considered all the fine arts, in the generality that suits our standpoint, beginning with beautiful architecture, whose end as such is to make distinct the objectification of the will at the lowest grade of its visibility, where it shows itself as [50] On this, see Chapter 37 of the second volume. a dull, unknowing, lawful striving of mass and yet already reveals self-division and conflict, namely between gravity and rigidity;—and closing our inquiry with tragedy, which at the highest grade of the objectification of the will brings before our eyes this very discord of the will with itself, in terrible greatness and distinctness;—we find that one fine art nevertheless has remained excluded from our consideration and had to remain so, since in the systematic connection of our exposition there was no fitting place for it at all: it is music. It stands wholly apart from all the others. We do not recognize in it the imitation, the repetition, of any Idea of the beings in the world: and yet it is so great and exceedingly glorious an art, it acts so mightily on the innermost of man, it is there so wholly and so deeply understood by him, as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness even surpasses that of the perceptual world itself;—that we surely have to look for more in it than an exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi, which is what Leibniz declared it to be⁵¹ and was nevertheless quite right, so far as he considered only its immediate and outward significance, its shell. Were it nothing more, however, the satisfaction it affords would have to be like that which we feel when a sum comes out right, and could not be that inward joy with which we see the deepest interior of our being brought to speech. On our standpoint, therefore, where the aesthetic effect is what we have in view, we must grant it a far more serious and profound significance, relating to the innermost essence of the world and of our own self, in respect of which the numerical ratios into which it can be resolved are related not as the thing signified but themselves first as the sign. That it must stand to the world, in some sense, as presentation to the thing presented, as copy to original, we can infer from the analogy with the other arts, all of which have this character, and with whose effect on us its own is on the whole of the same kind, only stronger, quicker, more necessary, more infallible.

52 Leibnitii epistolae, collectio Kortholti: ep. 154.

Also, this imitative relation of music to the world must be a very intimate one, infinitely true and accurately hitting, because it is understood instantly by everyone and gives evidence of a certain infallibility in that its form can be reduced to quite definite rules, expressible in numbers, from which it cannot deviate at all without ceasing wholly to be music.—Yet the point of comparison between music and the world, the respect in which the former stands to the latter in the relation of imitation or repetition, lies very deeply hidden. Men have practiced music at all times without being able to give an account of this: content to understand it immediately, they renounce an abstract comprehension of this immediate understanding itself.

While I surrendered my mind wholly to the impression of the art of tone in its manifold forms, and then returned again to reflection and to the course of my thoughts set forth in the present work, there came to me a disclosure about its inner essence and about the nature of its relation of imitation to the world, which by analogy must necessarily be presupposed; a disclosure which for myself is entirely sufficient and satisfying for my inquiry, and which will no doubt be equally evident to anyone who has followed me so far and agreed with my view of the world; but which I recognize as essentially impossible to prove, since it assumes and posits a relation of music, as a representation, to what can essentially never be representation, and will have music regarded as the copy of an original that can itself never be immediately represented. I can therefore do nothing more than here, at the close of this third book, devoted chiefly to the consideration of the arts, set forth this disclosure about the wonderful art of tones that suffices for me, and I must leave assent or denial of my view to the effect which, on each reader, is exerted partly by music, partly by the whole single thought that I have communicated in this work. Besides, in order to be able to give one’s approval, with genuine conviction, to the account of the significance of music that is to be given here, I hold it necessary that one often listen to music with sustained reflection upon it, and for this again it is required that one be already very familiar with the whole thought I have presented.

The adequate objectification of the will is the (Platonic) Ideas; to stimulate knowledge of these through the presentation of individual things (for such the works of art themselves always are) (which is possible only with a corresponding change in the knowing subject) is the end of all the other arts. They all, therefore, objectify the will only indirectly, namely by means of the Ideas: and since our world is nothing other than the appearance of the Ideas in multiplicity, through entering into the principium individuationis (the form of the knowledge possible to the individual as such); music, since it passes over the Ideas, is also entirely independent of the appearing world, simply ignores it, could in a certain way exist even if there were no world at all: which cannot be said of the other arts. For music is as direct an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are, whose multiplied appearance makes up the world of individual things. Music is therefore by no means, like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas; but the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity the Ideas also are: for that very reason the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts: for these speak only of shadows, but it of the essence. Since, however, it is the same will that objectifies itself both in the Ideas and in music, only in each of the two in an entirely different way, there must be, though absolutely no direct likeness, yet a parallelism, an analogy, between music and the Ideas, whose appearance in multiplicity and imperfection is the visible world. The demonstration of this analogy will, as an elucidation, make easier the understanding of this explanation, difficult by reason of the obscurity of the subject.

In the deepest tones of harmony, in the fundamental bass, I recognize again the lowest grades of the objectification of the will, inorganic nature, the mass of the planet. All the high tones, easily moved and dying away more quickly, are, as is well known, to be regarded as arising from the secondary vibrations of the deep fundamental tone, which they always faintly sound along with whenever it is struck, and it is a law of harmony that only those high tones may fall upon a bass note which really already sound of themselves together with it (its sons harmoniques) through the secondary vibrations. This is analogous to the fact that the whole of the bodies and organisms of nature must be regarded as having arisen through gradual development out of the mass of the planet: this is, as their support, so their source; and the same relation the higher tones have to the fundamental bass.—The depth has a limit beyond which no tone is audible any more: this corresponds to the fact that no matter is perceptible without form and quality, that is, without the manifestation of a force that cannot be further explained, in which precisely an Idea expresses itself, and more generally to the fact that no matter can be wholly without will: so that, as a certain degree of pitch is inseparable from tone as such, so a certain degree of manifestation of will is inseparable from matter.—The fundamental bass is therefore for us in harmony what inorganic nature is in the world, the crudest mass, on which everything rests and out of which everything rises and develops.—Next, then, in the whole of the ripieno parts that produce the harmony, between the bass and the leading voice that sings the melody, I recognize again the whole graduated series of the Ideas in which the will objectifies itself. Those standing nearer the bass are the lower of those grades, the bodies still inorganic but already manifesting themselves in many ways; the higher-lying ones represent to me the plant and animal world.—The determinate intervals of the scale are parallel to the determinate grades of the objectification of the will, to the determinate species in nature. The deviation from the arithmetical exactness of the intervals, through some temperament, or brought about by the chosen key, is analogous to the individual’s deviation from the type of the species: indeed the impure discords, which give no determinate interval, can be compared to the monstrous abortions between two animal species, or between man and animal.—To all these bass and ripieno parts, which make up harmony, there is now lacking, however, that coherence in progression which the upper voice alone has, the voice that sings the melody, and which alone also moves swiftly and lightly in modulations and runs, while all those others have only a slower movement, without a coherence subsisting in each for itself. Most ponderously moves the deep bass, the representative of the crudest mass: its rising and falling occurs only in great steps, in thirds, fourths, fifths, never by a single tone; unless it were a bass transposed by double counterpoint. This slow movement is also physically essential to it: a quick run or trill in the depth cannot even be imagined. Faster, yet still without melodic coherence and meaningful progression, move the higher ripieno parts, which run parallel to the animal world. The incoherent course and lawful determination of all the ripieno parts is analogous to the fact that in the whole unreasoning world, from the crystal to the most perfect animal, no being has a really coherent consciousness that would make its life a meaningful whole, none experiences a succession of mental developments, none perfects itself through education, but everything stands there evenly at every time as it is according to its kind, determined by fixed law.—Finally in the melody, in the high, singing principal voice that leads the whole and, with unbound freedom, advances in uninterrupted, significant coherence of one thought from beginning to end, representing a whole, I recognize the highest grade of the objectification of the will, the deliberate life and striving of man. As he alone, because he is endowed with reason, always looks forward and backward, on the path of his actuality and of the countless possibilities, and so accomplishes a deliberate and thereby, as a whole, coherent course of life:—so, correspondingly, the melody alone has significant, purposeful coherence from beginning to end. It therefore tells the history of the will illuminated by deliberation, whose imprint in actuality is the series of its deeds; but it says more, it tells its most secret history, paints every stirring, every striving, every movement of the will, all that which reason comprises under the broad and negative concept feeling and cannot take up further into its abstractions. Hence it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and passion, as words are the language of reason: already Plato explains it as ἡ των μελων κινησις μεμιμημενη, εν τοις παθημασιν ὁταν ψυχη γινηται (melodiarum motus, animi affectus imitans), De leg. VII, and Aristotle too says: δια τι οἱ ρυθμοι και τα μελη, φωνη ουσα, ηθεσιν εοικε; (cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces sunt, moribus similes sese exhibent?), Probl. c. 19.

Just as the essence of man consists in this, that his will strives, is satisfied, and strives anew, and so on forever, indeed his happiness and well-being is only this, that the passage from wish to satisfaction and from this to a new wish proceeds rapidly, since the failure of satisfaction is suffering, and the failure of the new wish empty longing, languor, boredom; so, corresponding to this, the essence of melody is a constant deviating, straying from the fundamental tone, along a thousand paths, not only to the harmonic steps, to the third and the dominant, but to every tone, to the dissonant seventh and to the augmented intervals, yet always a final return to the fundamental tone follows: on all these paths melody expresses the many-shaped striving of the will, but always also, through the final refinding of a harmonic step, and still more of the fundamental tone, satisfaction. The invention of melody, the uncovering in it of all the deepest secrets of human willing and feeling, is the work of the genius, whose working here lies more evidently than anywhere far from all reflection and conscious intention and could be called an inspiration. The concept is here, as everywhere in art, unfruitful: the composer reveals the innermost essence of the world and utters the profoundest wisdom, in a language that his reason does not understand; as a magnetic somnambulist gives disclosures about things of which when awake she has no concept. Hence in a composer, more than in any other artist, the man is wholly separate and distinct from the artist. Even in the explanation of this wonderful art the concept shows its poverty and its limits: I will nevertheless try to carry our analogy through.—As the rapid passage from wish to satisfaction and from this to a new wish is happiness and well-being, so rapid melodies without great strayings are cheerful; slow ones, falling upon painful dissonances and finding their way back to the fundamental tone only after many bars, are, as analogous to delayed, hindered satisfaction, sad. The delay of the new stirring of the will, languor, could have no other expression than the held fundamental tone, whose effect would soon be unbearable: very monotonous, insipid melodies already approach this. The short, easily grasped phrases of quick dance music seem to speak only of an easily attained, common happiness; the Allegro maestoso, on the other hand, in great phrases, long passages, wide strayings, signifies a greater, nobler striving toward a distant goal, and its final attainment. The Adagio speaks of the suffering of a great and noble striving which scorns all petty happiness. But how wonderful is the effect of minor and major! How astonishing that the change of a half tone, the entry of the minor third instead of the major, forces upon us at once and unfailingly an anxious, painful feeling, from which the major again delivers us just as instantly. The Adagio in minor attains the expression of the highest pain, becomes the most shattering lament. Dance music in minor seems to signify the missing of the petty happiness which one should rather scorn, seems to speak of the attainment of a low end amid toils and drudgeries.—The inexhaustibility of possible melodies corresponds to the inexhaustibility of nature in the variety of individuals, physiognomies, and courses of life. The transition from one key to a wholly other, since it entirely cancels the connection with what went before, is like death, in that the individual ends in it; but the will that appeared in this one lives on as before, appearing in other individuals, whose consciousness, however, has no connection with that of the first.

In demonstrating all these analogies, however, one must never forget that music has to them no direct but only an indirect relation; for it never expresses the appearance, but solely the inner essence, the in-itself of all appearance, the will itself. It does not, therefore, express this or that particular and determinate joy, this or that sorrow, or pain, or horror, or jubilation, or merriment, or peace of mind; but joy, sorrow, pain, horror, jubilation, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential element, without any accessories, and so without the motives for them. Yet we understand them perfectly in this abstracted quintessence. From this it arises that our imagination is so easily excited by music and now tries to give shape to that invisible and yet so vividly moved spirit world which speaks to us so wholly directly, and to clothe it in flesh and bone, that is, to embody it in an analogous example. This is the origin of song with words and finally of opera,—which for that very reason should never leave this subordinate position in order to make itself the main thing and music the mere means of its expression, which is a great mistake and a grievous perversity. For everywhere music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves, whose differences therefore do not always enter into it. Just this universality, belonging to it alone, together with the most exact determinateness, gives it the high value which it has as the panacea for all our sufferings. If music, then, seeks too much to attach itself to the words and to model itself on the events, it is striving to speak a language that is not its own. From this fault no one has kept himself so pure as Rossini: hence his music speaks so distinctly and purely its own language that it has no need of words at all, and therefore, even performed on mere instruments, has its full effect.

According to all this we can regard the appearing world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing, which is therefore itself the sole mediator of their analogy, knowledge of which is required in order to see into that analogy. Music is accordingly, when regarded as an expression of the world, a language of the highest degree of universality, which even stands to the universality of concepts roughly as these do to individual things. Its universality, however, is by no means that empty universality of abstraction, but of a wholly different kind, and is combined with thoroughgoing distinct determinateness. In this it resembles the geometrical figures and the numbers, which, as the universal forms of all possible objects of experience and applicable to all a priori, are yet not abstract but intuitive and thoroughly determinate. All possible strivings, excitements, and manifestations of the will, all those processes in the inner life of man which reason throws into the broad negative concept feeling, are to be expressed by the infinitely many possible melodies, but always in the universality of mere form, without the material, always only according to the in-itself, not the appearance, as it were the innermost soul of them, without body. From this intimate relation which music has to the true essence of all things is also to be explained this, that when fitting music is played to any scene, action, event, or surroundings, it seems to open to us their most secret sense and appears as the most correct and distinct commentary upon it; likewise that to him who gives himself up wholly to the impression of a symphony, it is as if he saw all possible events of life and of the world pass by him: yet, when he reflects, he can name no likeness between that play of tones and the things hovering before him. For music is, as said, different from all the other arts in this, that it is not a copy of the appearance, or more correctly, of the adequate objectivity of the will, but the direct copy of the will itself, and so presents, for everything physical in the world, the metaphysical, for all appearance the thing in itself. One could accordingly just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will: from this, then, it is explicable why music makes every painting, indeed every scene of real life and of the world, step forth at once with heightened significance; certainly the more so, the more analogous its melody is to the inner spirit of the given appearance. On this rests the fact that one can set a poem to music as a song, or an intuitive presentation as a pantomime, or both as an opera. Such single pictures of human life, set to the universal language of music, are never bound to it or corresponding to it with thoroughgoing necessity; but they stand to it only in the relation of an arbitrary example to a universal concept: they present, in the determinateness of actuality, that which music says in the universality of mere form. For melodies are, in a certain way, like the universal concepts, an abstraction from actuality. This, namely, the world of individual things, supplies the intuitive, the particular and individual, the single case, both to the universality of concepts and to the universality of melodies, which two universalities are, however, in a certain respect opposed to each other; in that concepts contain only the forms first abstracted from intuition, as it were the stripped-off outer shell of things, and are thus quite properly abstracta; music, on the other hand, gives the innermost kernel preceding all formation, or the heart of things. This relation could be expressed very well in the language of the Scholastics by saying: the concepts are the universalia post rem, music however gives the universalia ante rem, and actuality the universalia in re. To the general sense of the melody attached to a poem, other examples, equally arbitrarily chosen, of the universal expressed in it could correspond in the same degree: hence the same composition suits many stanzas, hence also the vaudeville. That a relation between a composition and an intuitive presentation is possible at all rests, as said, on the fact that both are only quite different expressions of the same inner essence of the world. When now in the individual case such a relation is really present, that is, the composer has known how to express in the universal language of music the stirrings of will that make up the kernel of an event: then the melody of the song, the music of the opera, is expressive. The analogy discovered by the composer between those two must, however, have proceeded from the direct knowledge of the essence of the world, unconscious to his reason, and must not be an imitation consciously intended, mediated by concepts: otherwise music does not express the inner essence, the will itself, but only imitates its appearance inadequately; as all properly imitative music does, for example “The Seasons” of Haydn, also his “Creation” in many passages where appearances of the perceptual world are directly imitated; so also in all battle pieces: which is wholly to be rejected.

The inexpressible inwardness of all music, by virtue of which it passes before us as so wholly familiar and yet eternally distant a paradise, so wholly intelligible and yet so inexplicable, rests on this, that it reproduces all the stirrings of our innermost being, but wholly without the actuality and far from its torment. Likewise the seriousness essential to it, which wholly excludes the ridiculous from its own immediate domain, is to be explained by this, that its object is not representation, with respect to which alone deception and ridiculousness are possible; its object is directly the will, and this is essentially the most serious of all things, as that on which everything depends.—How rich in content and significance its language is, even the repeat signs bear witness, together with the Da capo, which in works in the language of words would be intolerable, but in that language are very fitting and agreeable: for in order to grasp it wholly one must hear it twice.

If in this whole account of music I have now endeavored to make clear that it expresses, in a language of the highest universality, in a single homogeneous material, namely mere tones, and with the greatest determinateness and truth, the inner essence, the in-itself of the world, which we think, according to its most distinct manifestation, under the concept will; if further, according to my view and aim, philosophy is nothing other than a complete and correct repetition and expression of the essence of the world in very general concepts, since only in such is an overview of that whole essence possible that is everywhere sufficient and applicable; then whoever has followed me and entered into my way of thinking will not find it so very paradoxical if I say that, supposing it succeeded in giving a perfectly correct, complete explanation of music going into detail, that is, a detailed repetition in concepts of what it expresses, this would at once also be a sufficient repetition and explanation of the world in concepts, or one wholly equivalent to such, and thus the true philosophy; and that we can consequently parody the saying of Leibniz cited above, which on a lower standpoint is quite right, in the sense of our higher view of music, as follows: Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi. For scire, to know, means everywhere to have set down in abstract concepts. Since now, further, by virtue of the manifoldly confirmed truth of the Leibnizian saying, music, apart from its aesthetic or inner significance, and regarded merely externally and purely empirically, is nothing other than the means of grasping directly and in concreto larger numbers and more complex numerical ratios, which otherwise we can know only indirectly, by apprehension in concepts; we can now, by uniting those two so different and yet correct views of music, form a concept for ourselves of the possibility of a philosophy of numbers, such as that of Pythagoras was, and also that of the Chinese in the Y-king, and then, in this sense, interpret that saying of the Pythagoreans which Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math., L. VII) cites: τῳ αριθμῳ δε τα παντ’ επεοικεν (numero cuncta assimilantur). And if we finally bring this view to our interpretation of harmony and melody given above, we shall find a mere moral philosophy without explanation of nature, as Socrates wished to introduce it, wholly analogous to a melody without harmony, which Rousseau wanted exclusively, and, in contrast to this, a mere physics and metaphysics without ethics will correspond to a mere harmony without melody.—To these incidental reflections let me be permitted to attach a few remarks concerning the analogy of music with the appearing world. We found in the previous book that the highest grade of the objectification of the will, man, could not appear alone and torn off, but that the grades standing below him, and these again the deeper ones, were presupposed: just so now music, which like the world directly objectifies the will, is perfect only in complete harmony. The high leading voice of the melody needs, in order to make its whole impression, the accompaniment of all the other voices, down to the deepest bass, which is to be regarded as the origin of all: the melody itself enters as an integral part into the harmony, as this also into that: and as only so, in the full-voiced whole, music expresses what it aims to express, so the one and timeless will finds its perfect objectification only in the complete union of all the grades, which in countless degrees of heightened distinctness reveal its essence.—The following analogy is also very remarkable. We saw in the previous book that, notwithstanding the adaptation of all appearances of the will to one another, with respect to the species, which gives occasion for teleological consideration, there yet remains an ineradicable conflict among those appearances as individuals, visible at all grades of them, which makes the world a constant battlefield of all those appearances of the one and same will, whose inner contradiction with itself thereby becomes visible. Even to this there is something corresponding in music. A perfectly pure harmonic system of tones, namely, is impossible not only physically but even arithmetically. The numbers themselves, by which the tones can be expressed, have irresolvable irrationalities: not even a scale can be calculated within which every fifth would stand to the fundamental tone as 2 to 3, every major third as 4 to 5, every minor third as 5 to 6, and so on. For if the tones are right in relation to the fundamental tone, they are no longer so in relation to one another; since, for example, the fifth would have to be the minor third of the third, and so on: for the tones of the scale are to be compared to actors, who have to play now this role, now that. Hence a perfectly correct music cannot even be conceived, to say nothing of being performed; and for this reason every possible music deviates from perfect purity: it can only conceal the dissonances essential to it, by distributing them among all the tones, that is, by temperament. On this see Chladni’s “Acoustics,” § 30, and his “Short Survey of the Doctrine of Sound and Tone,” p. 12⁵³.

I would have much more to add about the way music is perceived, namely solely and only in and through time, with the complete exclusion of space, and also without the influence of knowledge of causality, that is, of the understanding: for [54] On this, see Chapter 39 of the second volume. tones already make the aesthetic impression as effect, and without our going back to their cause, as in intuition.—I will, however, not prolong these considerations further, since in this third book I have perhaps already been too detailed for some, or have gone too much into particulars. My purpose, however, made it necessary, and one will disapprove of it the less if one calls to mind the importance and high value of art, so seldom sufficiently recognized, considering that if, according to our view, the whole visible world is only the objectification, the mirror, of the will, accompanying it to its self-knowledge, indeed, as we shall soon see, to the possibility of its deliverance; and at the same time that the world as representation, when one considers it in isolation, by tearing oneself loose from willing and letting it alone occupy consciousness, is the most joyous and the only innocent side of life;—we have to regard art as the higher heightening, the more perfect development, of all this, since it accomplishes essentially just the same thing, only more concentrated, more perfected, with intention and deliberation, that the visible world itself does, and may therefore be called, in the full sense of the word, the flower of life. If the whole world as representation is only the visibility of the will, art is the making distinct of this visibility, the camera obscura, which shows the objects more purely and lets them be better surveyed and comprehended, the play within the play, the stage upon the stage in “Hamlet.”

The enjoyment of all beauty, the consolation that art affords, the artist’s enthusiasm, which lets him forget the troubles of life, this one prerogative of genius over others, which alone compensates him for the suffering heightened in equal measure with the clarity of consciousness and for the desolate solitude among a heterogeneous race,—all this rests on this, that, as will be shown to us further on, the in-itself of life, the will, existence itself, is a constant suffering, partly wretched, partly terrible; whereas the same, as representation alone, purely beheld, or repeated through art, free of torment, affords a significant spectacle. This purely knowable side of the world and the repetition of it in any art is the artist’s element. The contemplation of the spectacle of the objectification of the will holds him spellbound: he stops at it, does not tire of contemplating it and repeating it in presentation, and meanwhile himself bears the costs of the performance of that spectacle, that is, is himself the will that thus objectifies itself and remains in constant suffering. That pure, true, and deep knowledge of the essence of the world now becomes an end in itself for him: he stops at it. Hence it does not become for him, as we shall see in the next book with the saint who has attained resignation, a quietive of the will, does not deliver him forever, but only for moments, from life, and so is for him not yet the way out of it, but only for the time being a consolation in it; until his strength, heightened by it and finally weary of the play, lays hold of the earnest. As a symbol of this transition one can regard the Saint Cecilia of Raphael. To the earnest, then, let us too turn in the next book.

Plain English translation

Mouseia's complete machine-assisted Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same corrected German text of the 1859 third edition, then reviewed section by section against that German base and corrected, with the printed page consulted wherever a reading was in doubt. Footnote numbers are this edition's own, assigned in reading order, so note calls and the notes they point to can differ; a few notes the scan cut short end where the printed page ends.

The World as Representation, Second Consideration: Representation Independent of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: The Platonic Idea: The Object of Art.

30 In the first book we presented the world as mere representation, object for a subject. In the second book we looked at it from its other side and found that this side is will, which alone turned out to be what that world is besides representation. In keeping with this knowledge, we called the world as representation, both as a whole and in its parts, the objectivity of the will. That means: the will that has become object, that is, representation. We also remember that this objectification of the will had many grades, but definite ones. On them the essence of the will entered representation, that is, presented itself as object, with gradually rising clearness and completeness. In these grades we already recognized Plato’s Ideas there, insofar as those grades are the definite species, or the original, unchanging forms and properties of all natural bodies, both inorganic and organic, as well as the general forces that reveal themselves according to laws of nature. All these Ideas together present themselves in countless individuals and single things. They stand to these as their pattern to their copies. The plurality of such individuals can be represented only through time and space, and their coming to be and passing away only through causality. In all these forms we recognize only the different shapes of the principle of sufficient reason. That principle is the last principle of all finitude and all individuation, and the general form of representation as it falls within the knowledge of the individual as such. The Idea, on the other hand, does not enter that principle. So neither plurality nor change belongs to it. The individuals in which it presents itself are countless and ceaselessly come to be and pass away, but the Idea stays unchanged as the one and same, and the principle of sufficient reason has no meaning for it. But this principle is the form under which all knowledge of the subject stands, insofar as the subject knows as an individual. So the Ideas will lie wholly outside the sphere of knowledge of the subject as such. If the Ideas are to become objects of knowledge, then, this can happen only by the cancellation of individuality in the knowing subject. The closer and more detailed explanations of this are what will occupy us next.

31 First, though, one more very essential remark. In the previous book I hope I managed to bring about a conviction about what is called the thing in itself in Kant’s philosophy. There it appears as such an important but dark and paradoxical doctrine, and it was found to be a stumbling block, indeed the weak side of his philosophy, especially because of the way Kant introduced it, namely by the inference from the grounded to the ground. The conviction is this: if one arrives at it by the quite different path we have taken, it is nothing other than the will, in the sphere of this concept as widened and defined in the way I have stated. I hope further that, after what I have presented, no one will hesitate to recognize, in the definite grades of objectification of that will which makes up the in-itself of the world, what Plato called the eternal Ideas, or the unchangeable forms (ειδη). They are acknowledged as the main but also darkest and most paradoxical dogma of his teaching, and over a series of centuries they have been an object of reflection, dispute, mockery and reverence for so many minds of such different outlook.

Now if the will is the thing in itself for us, and the Idea is the immediate objectivity of that will at a definite grade, then we find Kant’s thing in itself and Plato’s Idea, which alone is οντως ον for him, these two great dark paradoxes of the two greatest philosophers of the West, to be not identical but still very closely related and distinguished by only a single determination. Indeed, for all their inner harmony and kinship, the two great paradoxes sound extremely different, because of the extraordinarily different individualities of their authors. For that very reason they are the best commentary on one another. They are like two quite different roads that lead to one goal.—

This can be made clear in a few words. What Kant says is, in essence, this: “Time, space and causality are not determinations of the thing in itself. They belong only to its appearance, since they are nothing but forms of our knowledge. But since all plurality and all coming to be and passing away are possible only through time, space and causality, it follows that these too attach only to the appearance and by no means to the thing in itself. Our knowledge, however, is conditioned by those forms. So all experience is only knowledge of the appearance, not of the thing in itself. Therefore its laws cannot be made to hold for the thing in itself either. What has been said extends even to our own self, and we know it only as appearance, not as what it may be in itself.” This is, in the important respect under consideration, the sense and content of Kant’s doctrine.—Plato, however, says: “The things of this world that our senses perceive have no true being at all. They are always becoming, but never are. They have only a relative being; they all exist only in and through their relation to one another. So one can just as well call their whole existence a non-being. Consequently they are not objects of real knowledge (επιστημη) either, for there can be such knowledge only of what is in and for itself and always in the same way. They are only the object of an opinion prompted by sensation (δοξα μετ’ αισθησεως αλογου). As long as we are limited to perceiving them, we are like people sitting in a dark cave, bound so tightly that they cannot even turn their heads. They would see nothing but the shadow images of real things, carried past between them and a fire burning behind them, cast by its light on the wall opposite. Even of one another, and each of himself, they would see only the shadows on that wall. Their wisdom would be to predict the order of those shadows, learned from experience. What alone can be called truly existing (οντως ον), because it always is but never comes to be or passes away, are the real original patterns of those shadow images. They are the eternal Ideas, the primal forms of all things. No plurality belongs to them. By its nature each is only one, since it is the original pattern itself, whose copies or shadows are all the single, perishable things of the same kind that share its name. Nor does coming to be or passing away belong to them, for they truly are, but are never becoming or perishing, like their vanishing copies. (These two negative determinations necessarily contain the presupposition that time, space and causality have no meaning or validity for them, and that they do not exist in these.) Only of them, therefore, is there real knowledge, since the object of such knowledge can be only what always and in every respect (and so in itself) is, not what is, but then again is not, depending on how one looks at it.”—That is Plato’s doctrine. It is obvious, and needs no further proof, that the inner sense of the two doctrines is quite the same. Both declare the visible world to be an appearance that is nothing in itself and has meaning and borrowed reality only through what expresses itself in it (for the one the thing in itself, for the other the Idea). According to both doctrines, all the forms of that appearance, even the most general and essential ones, are wholly foreign to this latter, truly existing thing. To deny these forms, Kant took them up directly in abstract terms and flatly denied time, space and causality, as mere forms of appearance, to the thing in itself. Plato, by contrast, did not reach the highest expression. He denied those forms to his Ideas only indirectly, by denying of the Ideas what is possible only through those forms, namely plurality of what is of one kind, and coming to be and passing away. For good measure, though, I want to make that remarkable and important agreement vivid by an example. Let an animal stand before us, in the full activity of life. Plato will say: “This animal has no true existence, only an apparent one, a constant becoming, a relative existence, which can just as well be called a non-being as a being. What truly is, is only the Idea that is pictured in that animal, or the animal in itself (αυτο το θηριον), which depends on nothing but is in and for itself (καθ’ εαυτο, αει ὡς αυτως), has not come to be, does not end, but is always in the same way (αει ον, και μηδεποτε ουτε γιγνομενον, ουτε απολλυμενον). Insofar as we know its Idea in this animal, it is quite the same and without significance whether we have this animal before us now or its ancestor who lived a thousand years ago; or whether it is here or in a far land; whether it presents itself in this or that way, posture, action; or finally whether it is this or any other individual of its kind. All this is nothing and concerns only the appearance. The Idea of the animal alone has true being and is the object of real knowledge.”—So Plato. Kant would perhaps say: “This animal is an appearance in time, space and causality, which are all conditions a priori, lying in our faculty of knowledge, of the possibility of experience, and not determinations of the thing in itself. So this animal, as we perceive it at this particular time and this given place, as an individual that has come to be within the connection of experience, that is, along the chain of causes and effects, and is just as necessarily perishable, is not a thing in itself but an appearance valid only in relation to our knowledge. To know it as what it may be in itself, and so independently of all determinations lying in time, space and causality, a different mode of knowledge would be needed from the only one possible to us, through senses and understanding.”

To bring Kant’s expression still closer to Plato’s, one could also say: time, space and causality are that arrangement of our intellect by which the one being of each kind, which is really the only one present, presents itself to us as a plurality of beings of the same kind, ever coming to be and passing away anew, in endless succession. The grasp of things by means of and in accordance with this arrangement is the immanent one. The one that becomes aware of how things stand with this arrangement is the transcendental one. We get the latter in abstracto through the Critique of Pure Reason. But as an exception it can also come about intuitively. That last point is my addition, and I am trying to explain it in this present third book.

If people had ever really understood and grasped Kant’s doctrine, if since Kant they had really understood and grasped Plato, if they had faithfully and seriously thought through the inner sense and content of the doctrines of both great masters, instead of throwing around the technical terms of the one and parodying the style of the other, they could not have failed to find long ago how much the two great sages agree, and that the pure meaning, the goal of both doctrines, is entirely the same. Then people would not only have stopped constantly comparing Plato with Leibniz, on whom his spirit did not rest at all, or even with a well-known gentleman still living [1], as if they wanted to mock the shade of the great thinker of antiquity. They would also have got much further than they have. Or rather, they would not have fallen back so shamefully, as they have in these last forty years. They would not have let themselves be led by the nose today by one windbag and tomorrow by another. And they would not have opened the nineteenth century in Germany, which announced itself so grandly, with philosophical farces staged over Kant’s grave (as the ancients sometimes did at the funeral rites of their own), to the just mockery of other nations. Nothing suits the serious and even stiff Germans less. But the real public of true philosophers is so small that even pupils who understand are brought to them by the centuries only sparingly.—Εισι δη ναρθηκοφοροι μεν πολλοι, βακχοι [2] F. H. Jacobi. δε γε παυροι. (Thyrsigeri quidem multi, Bacchi vero pauci.) Ἡ ατιμια φιλοσοφιᾳ δια ταυτα προσπεπτωκεν, ὅτι ου κατ’ αξιαν αυτης ἁπτονται· ου γαρ νοθους εδει ἁπτεσθαι, αλλα γνησιους. (Eam ob rem philosophia in infamiam incidit, quod non pro dignitate ipsam attingunt: neque enim a spuriis, sed a legitimis erat attrectanda.) Plat.

People went by the words, the words: “representations a priori, forms of intuiting and thinking that are conscious independently of experience, primal concepts of the pure understanding,” and so on. And then they asked whether Plato’s Ideas, which are supposed to be primal concepts too, and also memories from an intuition of truly existing things that came before this life, might be the same as Kant’s forms of intuiting and thinking, which lie a priori in our consciousness. These two wholly heterogeneous doctrines, Kant’s doctrine of the forms, which limit the individual’s knowledge to appearance, and Plato’s doctrine of the Ideas, whose knowledge expressly denies those very forms—these doctrines, which in that respect are diametrically opposed—because they resemble each other a little in their wording, people compared attentively, deliberated and argued over their sameness, then finally found that they were not the same after all, and concluded that Plato’s doctrine of Ideas and Kant’s critique of reason have no agreement at all [3]. But enough of that.

32 As a result of our inquiries so far, then, for all the inner agreement between Kant and Plato and the identity of the goal that hovered before both, or of the view of the world that stirred them to philosophize and guided them, Idea and thing in itself are still not simply one and the same for us. Instead, for us the Idea is only the immediate and therefore adequate objectivity of the thing in itself, which itself, however, is the [4] See, for example, “Immanuel Kant, a Monument by Fr. Bouterweck,” p. 49, and Buhle’s “History of Philosophy,” vol. 6, pp. 802–815 and 823.

will, the will insofar as it has not yet been objectified, has not yet become representation. For the thing in itself, according to Kant himself, is to be free of all the forms that cling to knowing as such. And it is only a mistake of Kant’s (as is shown in the Appendix) that he did not count among these forms, above all others, being-an-object-for-a-subject, since this is the first and most general form of all appearance, that is, of representation. He should therefore have expressly denied his thing in itself the being of an object, which would have saved him from that great inconsistency, discovered early. The Platonic Idea, by contrast, is necessarily an object, something known, a representation, and just by that, but only by that, different from the thing in itself. It has only laid aside the subordinate forms of appearance, all of which we include under the principle of sufficient reason, or rather has not yet entered them. But it has kept the first and most general form, that of representation in general, of being an object for a subject. It is the forms subordinate to this one (whose general expression is the principle of sufficient reason) that multiply the Idea into single, perishable individuals, whose number is entirely indifferent in relation to the Idea. So the principle of sufficient reason is again the form the Idea enters when it falls within the knowledge of the subject as an individual. The single thing that appears in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason is therefore only a mediate objectification of the thing in itself (which is the will). Between the thing in itself and the single thing stands the Idea, as the only immediate objectivity of the will, since it has taken on no other form belonging to knowing as such than that of representation in general, that is, of being an object for a subject. So the Idea alone is the most adequate objectivity possible of the will or thing in itself. It is the whole thing in itself, only under the form of representation. Herein lies the reason for the great agreement between Plato and Kant, although, in the strictest sense, what both speak of is not the same. The single things, though, are not a fully adequate objectivity of the will. Here it is already clouded by those forms, whose common expression is the principle of sufficient reason, but which are the condition of knowledge as it is possible to the individual as such.—If it is allowed to draw a conclusion from an impossible supposition, we would in fact no longer know single things, or events, or change, or plurality. We would grasp only Ideas, only the ladder of grades of objectification of that one will, the true thing in itself, in pure, unclouded knowledge. Our world would consequently be a Nunc stans, if we were not, as subject of knowing, at the same time individuals, that is, if our perception were not mediated by a body from whose affections it starts. This body is itself only concrete willing, objectivity of the will, and so an object among objects. As such, when it comes into the knowing consciousness, it can do so only in the forms of the principle of sufficient reason. So it already presupposes, and thereby brings in, time and all the other forms that principle expresses. Time is only the divided and broken-up view that an individual being has of the Ideas, which are outside time and therefore eternal. That is why Plato says time is the moving image of eternity: αιωνος εικων κινητη ὁ χρονος [5].

33 As individuals, then, we have no knowledge other than that which is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, and this form excludes knowledge of the Ideas. So it is certain that if it is possible for us to rise from knowledge of single things to knowledge of the Ideas, this can happen only through a change in the subject. The change must correspond and be analogous to that great change in the whole kind of the object, and by it the subject, insofar as it knows an Idea, is no longer an individual.

We remember from the previous book that knowing in general itself belongs to the will’s objectification at its higher grades. Sensibility, nerves and brain are just, like the other parts of the organic being, expression [6] On this see chapter 29 of the second volume. of the will at this grade of its objectivity. So the representation that arises through them is likewise meant to serve it, as a means (μηχανη) for reaching its now more complicated (πολυτελεστερα) purposes, for keeping alive a being with many needs. Originally, then, and by its nature, knowledge is wholly in the service of the will. Just as the immediate object, which becomes its starting point through applying the law of causality, is only objectified will, so all knowledge that follows the principle of sufficient reason stays in a nearer or more distant relation to the will. For the individual finds its body as an object among objects. The body has many kinds of connections and relations to all of them according to the principle of sufficient reason, so looking at them always leads back, by a nearer or longer route, to its body and so to its will. Since it is the principle of sufficient reason that puts objects in this relation to the body and so to the will, the knowledge that serves the will must also strive solely to learn about objects just those relations that the principle of sufficient reason sets. That is, it follows their many relations in space, time and causality. For only through these is the object interesting to the individual, that is, does it have a relation to the will. So knowledge that serves the will really knows nothing of objects but their relations. It knows objects only insofar as they exist at this time, in this place, under these circumstances, from these causes, with these effects; in a word, as single things. If one took away all these relations, the objects would also have vanished for it, precisely because it knew nothing else in them.—We must also not conceal that what the sciences look at in things is in essence likewise nothing other than all of that, namely their relations: the relations of time and space, the causes of natural changes, the comparison of forms, the motives of events. That is, nothing but relations. What sets them apart from common knowledge is only their form: their being systematic, and the easing of knowledge by gathering everything single into the general by subordinating concepts, and the completeness that this gains. All relation itself has only a relative existence. For example, all being in time is also again a non-being, for time is just that through which opposite determinations can belong to the same thing. So every appearance in time also is not, once more. For what separates its beginning from its end is only time, something essentially vanishing, without stability and relative, which is here called duration. Time, though, is the most general form of all objects of knowledge that stands in the service of the will, and the archetype of its other forms.

As a rule, then, knowledge always stays subject to the service of the will. It came forth for this service, and has, so to speak, sprouted from the will as the head from the trunk. In animals this servitude of knowledge to the will can never be done away with. In men such doing away occurs only as an exception, as we will soon look at more closely. This difference between man and animal is expressed outwardly by the difference in the relation of head to trunk. In the lower animals the two are still wholly grown together. In all animals the head is turned toward the earth, where the objects of the will lie. Even in the higher animals head and trunk are still much more one than in man, whose head appears set freely on the body, only carried by it, not serving it. The Apollo Belvedere presents this human advantage to the highest degree. The head of the god of the Muses, looking far around, stands so freely on the shoulders that it seems wholly wrested from the body and no longer subject to the care for it.

34 The passage from common knowledge of single things to knowledge of the Idea is, as I said, possible, but is to be regarded only as an exception. It happens suddenly. Knowledge tears itself loose from the service of the will, and just by that the subject stops being a merely individual one and is now the pure, will-less subject of knowledge. It no longer follows relations according to the principle of sufficient reason. Instead it rests in steady contemplation of the object presented, apart from its connection with any others, and is absorbed in it.

To become clear, this necessarily needs a detailed discussion. For the time being one must get past what seems strange in it, until, once the whole thought to be communicated in this work has been gathered together, the strangeness disappears of itself.

Suppose a person, lifted by the power of the mind, lets go of the usual way of looking at things. He stops following only their relations to one another along the thread of the shapes of the principle of sufficient reason, relations whose final aim is always the relation to his own will. So he no longer looks at the where, the when, the why and the what-for of things, but only and solely at the what. He also does not let abstract thinking, the concepts of reason, take over his consciousness. Instead, in place of all this, he gives the whole power of his mind to perception, sinks himself wholly into it, and lets his whole consciousness be filled by the quiet contemplation of the natural object that happens to be present, be it a landscape, a tree, a rock, a building or whatever it may be. In a meaningful German phrase, he loses himself entirely in this object. That is, he forgets his individuality, his will, and continues to exist only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object. It is as if the object were there alone, with no one to perceive it. One can no longer separate the one who perceives from the perception, but the two have become one, since the whole consciousness is completely filled and taken up by a single perceptual image. When in this way the object has stepped out of all relation to anything outside it, and the subject out of all relation to the will, then what is known is no longer the single thing as such. It is the Idea, the eternal form, the immediate objectivity of the will at this grade. And just by that, the one caught up in this perception is at the same time no longer an individual, for the individual has lost itself in such perception. He is pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge. This, striking as it is by itself now (and I know very well that it confirms the saying that comes from Thomas Paine, du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas), will become gradually clearer and less strange through what follows. This is also what hovered before Spinoza when he wrote: mens aeterna est, quatenus res sub aeternitatis specie concipit (Eth. V, pr. 31, schol.)⁷. In such contemplation, then, at one stroke the single thing becomes the Idea of its species, and the perceiving individual becomes the pure subject of knowing. The individual as such knows only single things; the pure subject of knowing knows only Ideas. For the individual is the subject of knowing in its relation to one definite single appearance of the will, and in its service. This single appearance of the will is as such subject to the principle of sufficient reason, in all its shapes. So all knowledge that relates to it also follows the principle of sufficient reason, and for the purposes of the will no other knowledge will do than this, which always has only relations to the object. The knowing individual as such and the single thing it knows are always somewhere and sometime, and members in the chain of causes and effects. The pure subject of knowledge and its correlate, the Idea, have stepped out of all those forms of the principle of sufficient reason. Time, place, the individual who knows and the individual who is known have no meaning for them. Only when, in the way described, a knowing individual raises itself to pure subject of knowing, and with that the object contemplated to Idea, does the world as representation step forth fully and purely, and the perfect objectification of the will take place, since the Idea alone is its adequate objectivity. This includes object and subject in the same way, since these [8] I also recommend reading what he says in the same place, L. II, prop. 40, schol. 2, likewise L. V, prop. 25 to 38, about the cognitio tertii generis, sive intuitiva, to clarify the mode of knowledge under discussion here, and very especially prop. 29, schol.; prop. 36, schol. and prop. 38 demonstr. et schol. are its only form. In it, though, the two perfectly balance each other. And as the object here too is nothing but the subject’s representation, so the subject, by being wholly absorbed in the object perceived, has itself become this object, since the whole consciousness is nothing more than its clearest image. This consciousness, if one thinks of all the Ideas, or grades of the will’s objectivity, passing through it one after another, really makes up the whole world as representation. The single things of all times and spaces are nothing but the Ideas, multiplied by the principle of sufficient reason (the form of knowledge of individuals as such) and thereby clouded in their pure objectivity. When the Idea steps forth, subject and object can no longer be told apart in it, because the Idea, the adequate objectivity of the will, the real world as representation, arises only when they completely fill and interpenetrate each other. In just the same way, the individual that knows in this and the individual that is known are, as things in themselves, not different. For if we set aside that real world as representation entirely, nothing is left but the world as will. The will is the in-itself of the Idea, which objectifies it perfectly. It is also the in-itself of the single thing and of the individual who knows it, which objectify it imperfectly. As will, outside representation and all its forms, it is one and the same in the object contemplated and in the individual who, swinging upward in this contemplation, becomes conscious of itself as pure subject. So those two are not different in themselves. For in themselves they are the will, which here knows itself. Plurality and difference exist only as the way this knowledge comes to it, that is, only in the appearance, by virtue of its form, the principle of sufficient reason. Just as I am not a knowing subject without the object, without the representation, but mere blind will, so the thing known is not an object without me, as subject of knowing, but mere will, blind urge. This will is in itself, that is, outside representation, one and the same as mine. Only in the world as representation, whose form is always at least subject and object, do we step apart as known and knowing individual. As soon as knowing, the world as representation, is taken away, nothing at all is left but mere will, blind urge. That the will gets objectivity, becomes representation, posits both subject and object at one stroke. But that this objectivity be pure, perfect, adequate objectivity of the will posits the object as Idea, free of the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and the subject as pure subject of knowledge, free of individuality and servitude to the will.

Now whoever, in the way described, has so deeply immersed and lost himself in the perception of nature that he exists only as purely knowing subject becomes directly aware, just by that, that as such he is the condition, and so the bearer, of the world and of all objective existence, since this now presents itself as dependent on his own. He draws nature into himself, so that he feels it only as an accident of his being. In this sense Byron says:

Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? [9]

But how could anyone who feels this consider himself absolutely perishable, in contrast to imperishable nature? Rather, the consciousness of what the Upanishad of the Veda declares will seize him: Hae omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est. (Oupnekhat, I, 122.)¹⁰

35 To gain a deeper insight into the nature of the world, it is absolutely necessary to learn to distinguish the will as thing in itself from its adequate objectivity. It is also necessary to distinguish the different grades at which this objectivity steps forth more clearly and more perfectly, that is, the Ideas themselves, from the mere appearance of the Ideas in the shapes of the principle of sufficient reason, the limited mode of knowledge of individuals. Then one will [11] Are mountains, waves, sky not a part of me and of my soul, I of them?

12 On this see chapter 30 of the second volume. agree with Plato when he attributes real being only to the Ideas, while to things in space and time, this world that is real for the individual, he grants only an apparent, dreamlike existence. Then one will see how the one and same Idea reveals itself in so many appearances and offers its essence to knowing individuals only piece by piece, one side after another. One will then also distinguish the Idea itself from the way its appearance falls into the individual’s observation, and recognize the former as essential, the latter as inessential. Let us look at this by way of example, first in the smallest thing, and then in the greatest.—When clouds drift, the figures they form are not essential to them; they are indifferent to them. But that, as elastic vapor, they are pressed together by the push of the wind, driven away, spread out, torn apart: this is their nature, this is the essence of the forces that objectify themselves in them, this is the Idea. The figures of the moment exist only for the individual observer.—To the brook that rolls downward over stones, the eddies, waves and foam shapes it shows are indifferent and inessential. That it follows gravity, and behaves as an inelastic, fully displaceable, formless, transparent fluid: this is its essence, this is the Idea when it is known perceptually. Those shapes exist only for us, as long as we know as individuals.—The ice on the windowpane shoots into form according to the laws of crystallization, which reveal the essence of the force of nature stepping forth here and present the Idea. But the trees and flowers it forms in doing so are inessential and exist only for us.—What appears in clouds, brook and crystal is the weakest echo of that will, which steps forth more perfectly in the plant, still more perfectly in the animal, and most perfectly in man. But only the essential part of all those grades of its objectification makes up the Idea. Its unfolding, on the other hand, as it is drawn apart in the shapes of the principle of sufficient reason into manifold and many-sided appearances, is inessential to the Idea. It lies merely in the individual’s mode of knowledge and has reality only for the individual. The same necessarily holds also of the unfolding of the Idea that is the most perfect objectivity of the will. So the history of the human race, the throng of events, the change of the ages, the many-shaped forms of human life in different countries and centuries—all this is only the accidental form of the appearance of the Idea. It does not belong to the Idea itself, in which alone the adequate objectivity of the will lies, but only to the appearance that falls within the individual’s knowledge. And it is as foreign, inessential and indifferent to the Idea itself as the figures that clouds form are to the clouds, the shape of its eddies and foam to the brook, and its trees and flowers to the ice.

For anyone who has grasped this well, and knows how to distinguish the will from the Idea, and the Idea from its appearance, world events will have meaning only insofar as they are the letters from which the Idea of man can be read, and not in and for themselves. He will not believe with the people that time brings forth anything really new and significant, that through it or in it anything absolutely real comes into existence, or even that time itself as a whole has beginning and end, plan and development, and perhaps as its final goal the highest perfection (by their concepts) of the last generation, which lives thirty years. So he will no more, with Homer, install a whole Olympus full of gods to steer those events of time than, with Ossian, take the figures of the clouds for individual beings, since, as said, both have equal significance in relation to the Idea appearing in them. In the manifold shapes of human life and the ceaseless change of events, he will regard as the lasting and essential thing only the Idea in which the will to life has its most perfect objectivity. It shows its different sides in the qualities, passions, errors and merits of the human race: in self-interest, hatred, love, fear, boldness, frivolity, dullness, cunning, wit, genius, and so on. All of these run together and congeal into thousandfold shapes (individuals) and keep staging the great and the small history of the world, and in itself it makes no difference whether what sets them in motion is nuts or crowns. Finally he will find that the world is like the dramas of Gozzi, in all of which the same persons always appear, with the same intention and the same fate. The motives and events, of course, are different in each play, but the spirit of the events is the same. The persons of one play also know nothing of the doings in another, in which they themselves acted. So after all the experiences of the earlier plays, Pantalone has still not become nimbler or more generous, Tartaglia more conscientious, Brighella bolder or Columbine more modest.—

Suppose we were once allowed a clear look into the realm of possibility, over all the chains of causes and effects. Suppose the Earth Spirit stepped forth and showed us in a picture the most excellent individuals, enlighteners of the world and heroes, whom chance destroyed before the time of their effectiveness. Suppose it then showed us the great events that would have changed world history and brought on periods of the highest culture and enlightenment, but which the blindest happenstance, the most insignificant accident, stopped at their birth. Suppose it finally showed us the glorious powers of great individuals that would have made whole ages fruitful, but which, led astray by error or passion, or forced by necessity, they wasted uselessly on unworthy and barren objects, or even squandered in play. If we saw all this, we would shudder and lament over the lost treasures of whole ages. But the Earth Spirit would smile and say: “The source from which the individuals and their powers flow is inexhaustible and infinite, like time and space. For they, just like these forms of all appearance, are also only appearance, visibility of the will. No finite measure can exhaust that infinite source. So for every event or work stifled in the germ, the undiminished infinity is still open for its return. In this world of appearance neither true loss nor true gain is possible. The will alone is: it, the thing in itself, it, the source of all those appearances. Its self-knowledge, and the affirmation or denial that is decided on that basis, is the only event in itself.”—¹³

14 This last sentence cannot be understood without acquaintance with the following book.

36 History follows the thread of events. It is pragmatic insofar as it derives them according to the law of motivation, the law that determines the appearing will where it is lit up by knowledge. At the lower grades of its objectivity, where it still works without knowledge, natural science looks at the laws of the changes of its appearances as etiology, and at what lasts in them as morphology. Morphology eases its nearly endless theme with the help of concepts, gathering up the general in order to derive the particular from it. Finally, mathematics looks at the mere forms in which the Ideas appear drawn apart into plurality for the knowledge of the subject as individual, that is, time and space. All of these, whose common name is science, follow the principle of sufficient reason in its different shapes. Their theme remains the appearance, its laws, connection and the relations that arise from them.—But what kind of knowledge looks at the one thing that exists outside and independent of all relation, the only thing in the world that is really essential, the true content of its appearances, what is subject to no change and therefore known with equal truth for all time; in a word, the Ideas, which are the immediate and adequate objectivity of the thing in itself, the will?—It is art, the work of the man of genius. It repeats the eternal Ideas grasped through pure contemplation, the essential and lasting part of all appearances of the world. Depending on the material in which it repeats them, it is visual art, poetry or music. Its only origin is the knowledge of the Ideas; its only goal is to communicate this knowledge.—Science follows the restless, unstable stream of grounds and consequences in their fourfold shape. At every goal reached it is sent on again, and it can never find a final goal or full satisfaction, any more than by running one reaches the point where the clouds touch the horizon. Art, by contrast, is at its goal everywhere. For it tears the object of its contemplation out of the stream of the world’s course and has it isolated before it. This single thing, which was a vanishingly small part in that stream, becomes for art a representative of the whole, an equivalent of the infinitely many in space and time. So art stays with this single thing. It stops the wheel of time. The relations vanish for it. Only the essential, the Idea, is its object.—We can therefore describe it outright as the way of looking at things independently of the principle of sufficient reason, in contrast to the way of looking that follows this principle, which is the road of experience and science. This latter way of looking can be compared to an endless line running horizontally. The former can be compared to the vertical line that cuts it at any point you like. The way that follows the principle of sufficient reason is the rational way of looking, which alone counts and helps in practical life and in science. The way that looks away from the content of that principle is the way of looking of genius, which alone counts and helps in art. The first is Aristotle’s way of looking; the second is on the whole Plato’s. The first is like the mighty storm that rushes on without beginning or goal, bending everything, moving everything, sweeping it along. The second is like the quiet sunbeam that cuts across the path of this storm, wholly unmoved by it. The first is like the countless, violently moving drops of the waterfall, which keep changing and rest not for a moment. The second is like the rainbow that rests quietly on this raging turmoil.—Ideas are grasped only through the pure contemplation described above, which is wholly absorbed in the object. And the nature of genius consists precisely in the outstanding capacity for such contemplation. Since this demands a complete forgetting of one’s own person and its relations, genius is nothing other than the most perfect objectivity, that is, the objective direction of the mind, opposed to the subjective direction that goes to one’s own person, that is, the will. So genius is the capacity to behave in a purely perceiving way, to lose oneself in perception, and to withdraw knowledge, which originally exists only to serve the will, from that service. That is, it is the capacity to lose sight entirely of one’s interest, one’s willing and one’s purposes, and so to give up one’s personality fully for a time, in order to remain as pure knowing subject, clear eye of the world. And not for moments only, but for as long, and with as much reflective awareness, as is needed to repeat what was grasped by deliberate art, and “to fix in lasting thoughts what hovers in wavering appearance.”—It is as if, for the man of genius to emerge in an individual, that individual must have been given a measure of power of knowledge far exceeding what is needed for the service of an individual will. This surplus of knowledge, which has become free, becomes the subject purified of will, the bright mirror of the world’s essence.—This explains the liveliness, up to restlessness, in individuals of genius. The present can seldom be enough for them, because it does not fill their consciousness. This gives them that restless striving, that unceasing search for new objects worth contemplating, and also that almost never satisfied longing for beings like themselves, their equals, to whom they could communicate themselves. The ordinary child of earth, by contrast, is wholly filled and satisfied by the ordinary present and absorbed in it. Finding his equals everywhere, he also has that special comfort in everyday life that is denied to the man of genius.—Imagination has been recognized as an essential component of genius, and has even sometimes been held to be identical with it. The first is right; the second is wrong. The objects of the man of genius as such are the eternal Ideas, the lasting essential forms of the world and all its appearances. But knowledge of the Idea is necessarily perceptual, not abstract. So the knowledge of the man of genius would be limited to the Ideas of the objects actually present to his person, and dependent on the chain of circumstances that brought them to him, if imagination did not extend his horizon far beyond the reality of his personal experience. Imagination puts him in a position to construct everything else out of the little that has come into his actual apperception, and so to let almost all possible pictures of life pass before him. Besides, real objects are almost always only very defective specimens of the Idea that presents itself in them. So the man of genius needs imagination in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what it tried to form and, because of the struggle of its forms with one another mentioned in the previous book, did not bring about. We will come back to this below, when we consider sculpture. So imagination widens the horizon of the man of genius beyond the objects that offer themselves to his person in reality, both in quality and in quantity. For this reason, unusual strength of imagination is the companion, indeed the condition, of genius. But the reverse is not true. Imagination does not show genius. Even people entirely without genius can have a lot of imagination. For one can look at a real object in two opposite ways: purely objectively, in the way of genius, grasping its Idea; or commonly, merely in its relations to other objects and to one’s own will, according to the principle of sufficient reason. In the same way one can look at a fancy in both ways. Looked at in the first way, it is a means to knowledge of the Idea, the communication of which is the work of art. In the second case, the fancy is used to build castles in the air that suit selfishness and one’s own whim, and deceive and amuse for the moment. In that case, of the fancies thus linked, really only their relations are ever known. Whoever plays this game is a daydreamer. He will easily mix the pictures with which he amuses himself alone into reality, and so become unfit for it. He may write down the conjuring tricks of his imagination, and then they give the ordinary novels of every kind that entertain his equals and the great public, as the readers dream themselves into the hero’s place and then find the presentation very “cozy.”

The ordinary man is a factory product of nature, the kind she turns out by the thousands every day. As I said, he is at least quite unable to keep up any contemplation that is disinterested in every sense, and that is what real contemplation is. He can turn his attention to things only so far as they have some relation to his will, even if only a very indirect one. For that purpose, which only ever calls for knowledge of relations, the abstract concept of a thing is enough, and mostly even better suited. So the ordinary man does not stay long with mere intuition. He does not keep his eye long on one object. For everything that comes before him he quickly looks for the concept to put it under, as a lazy person looks for a chair, and then it interests him no further. That is why he is so quickly done with everything: works of art, beautiful objects of nature, and the sight of life in all its scenes, which is really full of meaning everywhere. He does not linger. He looks only for his own way in life, and perhaps for anything that could someday become his way. These are topographical notes in the widest sense. He wastes no time on the contemplation of life itself as such. The man of genius is different. His power of knowledge is in excess, so for part of his time it withdraws from the service of his will. He dwells on the contemplation of life itself and strives to grasp the Idea of each thing, not its relations to other things. In doing so he often neglects to look to his own way in life, and so for the most part he goes along it clumsily enough. For the ordinary man the faculty of knowledge is a lantern that lights his path. For the man of genius it is the sun that makes the world plain. This very different way of looking into life soon shows even in the outward appearance of the two. The look of a person in whom genius lives and works marks him out easily. It is lively and steady at once, and it has the character of contemplation, as we can see in the portraits of the few men of genius that nature has produced now and then among the countless millions. In the look of the others, unless it is dull or sober, as it mostly is, the true opposite of contemplation easily shows: scouting. So the “expression of genius” in a head consists in this: a decided predominance of knowing over willing is visible in it, and so a knowing with no relation at all to a willing, that is, a pure knowing, expresses itself in it. In heads as they usually are, on the other hand, the expression of willing prevails, and one sees that knowing is set going only at the urging of willing, so that it is directed merely at motives.

The knowledge of genius, or knowledge of the Idea, is the knowledge that does not follow the principle of sufficient reason. The knowledge that does follow it gives shrewdness and reasonableness in life and produces the sciences. So individuals of genius will have the faults that come from neglecting this second mode of knowledge. But note one limit. What I am going to say about this applies to them only so far as, and while, they are actually engaged in the mode of knowledge of genius. That is by no means the case in every moment of their lives. The great effort needed to grasp Ideas free of the will is spontaneous, but it necessarily relaxes again, and it has long gaps. In those gaps these people are much like ordinary men, in their merits as well as their faults. For this reason the working of genius has always been seen as an inspiration. Indeed, as the name itself indicates, it has been seen as the working of a superhuman being, different from the individual himself, who takes possession of him only from time to time. The dislike that individuals of genius have for directing their attention to the content of the principle of sufficient reason will show itself first with regard to the ground of being, as a dislike of mathematics. Mathematics looks at the most general forms of appearance, space and time, which are themselves only shapes of the principle of sufficient reason. So it is the exact opposite of the contemplation that looks only for the content of the appearance, the Idea expressing itself in it, and ignores all relations. Besides this, the logical treatment of mathematics will also go against genius. It shuts out real insight and does not satisfy. It offers only a chain of inferences according to the principle of the ground of knowing, and of all the powers of the mind it puts the heaviest demand on memory, since one must always keep in mind all the earlier propositions one appeals to. Experience also confirms that great men of genius in art have no ability for mathematics. No one was ever very distinguished in both at once. Alfieri tells us that he could never understand even the fourth theorem of Euclid. Goethe has been reproached more than enough for his lack of mathematical knowledge by the unintelligent opponents of his theory of colors. But here the question was not one of calculating and measuring from hypothetical data. It was one of direct knowledge of cause and effect by the understanding. So the reproach was completely perverse and out of place, and by it these opponents showed their total lack of judgment, just as much as they did by their other Midas-like pronouncements. Even today, almost half a century after Goethe’s theory of colors appeared, and even in Germany, the Newtonian nonsense stays undisturbed in possession of the professorial chairs, and people go on talking in all seriousness about the seven homogeneous lights and their different refrangibility. This will one day be counted among the great intellectual traits of mankind in general and of the Germans in particular.—The same reason, given above, explains the equally well-known fact that, conversely, outstanding mathematicians have little receptiveness for works of fine art. This shows itself most naively in the well-known anecdote of the French mathematician who read Racine’s Iphigenia and then asked with a shrug: Qu’est-ce que cela prouve?—Next, shrewdness really consists in a sharp grasp of relations according to the law of causality and motivation, but the knowledge of genius is not directed at relations. So a shrewd man, so far as and while he is shrewd, will not be a man of genius, and a man of genius, so far as and while he is one, will not be shrewd.—Finally, intuitive knowledge, in whose domain the Idea lies entirely, stands in general directly opposed to rational or abstract knowledge, which the principle of the ground of knowing guides. As is well known, one seldom finds great genius paired with a prevailing reasonableness. On the contrary, individuals of genius are often subject to violent emotions and unreasonable passions. Yet the cause of this is not a weakness of reason. It is partly an unusual energy of the whole appearance of will that the individual of genius is, an energy that shows itself in the violence of all his acts of will. It is partly the predominance of intuitive knowledge, through the senses and the understanding, over abstract knowledge, and so a decided turn toward the intuitive. In them the impression of the intuitive is so extremely energetic that it outshines the colorless concepts. These no longer guide their action, the impression does, and for that very reason their action becomes unreasonable. So the impression of the present is very powerful on them. It sweeps them into thoughtlessness, emotion and passion. For this reason too, and in general because their knowledge has partly withdrawn from the service of the will, in conversation they think less of the person they are speaking to than of the matter they are speaking about, which hovers vividly before them. So they judge or tell things too objectively for their own interest, and they do not keep quiet about what would be wiser left unsaid, and so on. Finally, for the same reason they are inclined to monologues, and in general they can show several weaknesses that really come close to madness. It has often been noticed that genius and madness have a side where they border on each other, and even pass into each other. Poetic inspiration has even been called a kind of madness. Horace calls it amabilis insania (Od. III, 4), and Wieland, at the opening of “Oberon,” calls it “sweet madness.” Even Aristotle, according to Seneca’s quotation (de tranq. animi, 15, 16), is said to have said: Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit. Plato expresses it in the myth of the dark cave quoted above (de Rep. 7). He says that those who have seen outside the cave the true sunlight and the things that really exist (the Ideas) can afterward no longer see in the cave, because their eyes have lost the habit of the dark. They can no longer properly make out the shadow images down there, and so, when they blunder, they are mocked by the others, who never got out of this cave or away from these shadow images. He also says outright in the Phaedrus (p. 317) that without a certain madness there can be no true poet, and indeed (p. 327) that everyone who recognizes the eternal Ideas in perishable things appears mad. Cicero also cites: Negat enim, sine furore, Democritus, quemquam poëtam magnum esse posse; quod idem dicit Plato (de divin. I, 37). And finally Pope says:

Great wits to madness sure are near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide¹⁵.

Especially instructive in this respect is Goethe’s “Torquato Tasso.” In it he sets before our eyes not only the suffering, the essential martyrdom of genius as such, but also its steady passage into madness. Finally, the fact that genius and madness touch directly is confirmed by the biographies of men of great genius, for example Rousseau, Byron and Alfieri, and by anecdotes from the lives of others. And on the other side I must mention that on frequent visits to madhouses I have found individual patients of unmistakably great gifts, whose genius showed clearly through their madness, which in them, however, had completely gained the upper hand. This cannot be put down to chance. On the one hand, the number of the mad is comparatively very small. On the other hand, an individual of genius is an appearance rarer than any ordinary estimate and shows up in nature only as the greatest exception. One can convince oneself of this only by counting the really great men of genius that the whole of civilized Europe has produced in all ancient and modern times, counting only those who delivered works that have kept a lasting value for mankind through all ages, and comparing their number with the 250 million who live in Europe at any one time, renewing themselves every thirty years. Indeed, I will not leave unmentioned that I have known some people of mental superiority that was not great but still decided, and who at the same time showed a slight touch of craziness. From this it might seem that every raising of the intellect above the ordinary measure, as an abnormality, already predisposes to madness. Meanwhile I will state my opinion, as briefly as I can, on the purely intellectual ground of this kinship between genius and madness. This discussion will certainly contribute to the [16] Great minds are related to madness, and only a thin wall separates the two. explanation of the real nature of genius, that is, of the quality of mind that alone can create true works of art. But this makes a short discussion of madness itself necessary [17].

A clear and complete insight into the nature of madness, a correct and distinct concept of what really distinguishes the madman from the healthy person, has still not been found, as far as I know.—Neither reason nor understanding can be denied to the mad. They speak and understand, they often reason quite correctly, and as a rule they also perceive what is present quite correctly and see the connection between cause and effect. Visions, like the fantasies of fever, are not a usual symptom of madness: delirium falsifies intuition, madness falsifies thoughts. For the most part the mad are not at all mistaken in their knowledge of what is immediately present. Their raving always concerns what is absent and past, and only through that its connection with the present. So their illness seems to me to strike the memory in particular. I do not mean that memory is wholly missing, for many know many things by heart and sometimes recognize people they have not seen for a long time. I mean that the thread of memory is broken, its continuous connection removed, and no evenly connected recollection of the past is possible. Single scenes of the past stand correctly, like the single present. But in their recollection there are gaps, which they then fill with fictions. These fictions are either always the same, and become fixed ideas, and then it is fixed delusion, melancholy. Or they are different every time, momentary notions, and then it is called folly, fatuitas. For this reason it is so hard to question a madman about his earlier course of life when he enters the madhouse. More and more, true and false mix in his memory. The immediate present is known correctly, but it is falsified by an invented connection with a [18] On this see chapter 31 of the second volume. supposed past. So the mad take themselves and others for the same as persons who exist only in their invented past, do not recognize some acquaintances at all, and thus, with a correct representation of the single present thing, have only false relations of it to what is absent. If madness reaches a high degree, complete loss of memory results. The madman is then quite incapable of any regard for anything absent or past, and is determined wholly by the mood of the moment, together with the fictions that fill the past in his head. Then, unless one constantly keeps one’s superior force before his eyes, one is not safe from ill-treatment or murder for a single moment.—The knowledge of the madman has this in common with that of the animal: both are limited to the present. But what distinguishes them is this. The animal really has no representation of the past as such, although the past works on the animal through the medium of habit. That is why a dog, for example, recognizes its former master even after years, that is, it gets the usual impression from the sight of him. But it has no recollection of the time that has passed since. The madman, on the other hand, always carries around in his reason a past too, in abstracto, but a false one, which exists only for him, and does so either all the time or only just now. The influence of this false past now also prevents him from using the present he knows correctly, a use which the animal does make. I explain to myself as follows why violent mental suffering and unexpected terrible events often cause madness. Every such suffering, as an actual event, is always limited to the present, so it is only passing, and to that extent not yet excessively heavy. It becomes immensely great only so far as it is lasting pain. But as such it is again only a thought, and therefore lies in the memory. Now suppose such a grief, such painful knowledge or remembrance, is so agonizing that it is simply unbearable, and the individual would succumb to it. Then nature, so tormented, takes refuge in madness as the last means of saving life. The mind, so greatly tortured, tears the thread of its memory, as it were, fills the gaps with fictions, and so flees from a mental pain that exceeds its strength into madness. It is like cutting off a limb attacked by gangrene and replacing it with a wooden one.—As an example consider the raging Ajax, King Lear and Ophelia. The creatures of true genius, the only ones one can appeal to here as generally known, are to be put on a level with real persons in truth. Besides, frequent real experience shows quite the same thing here. A weak analogue of this kind of passage from pain to madness is this: all of us often try, as if mechanically, to drive away a tormenting recollection that suddenly comes to us, by some loud utterance or movement, to divert ourselves from it, to distract ourselves by force.— As we have explained, the madman knows the single present correctly, and even some single things of the past, but he misjudges the connection and the relations, and so he errs and talks wildly. This is exactly the point where he touches the individual of genius. For the individual of genius also leaves behind knowledge of relations, which is knowledge according to the principle of sufficient reason. He does so in order to see and seek in things only their Ideas, and to grasp their real nature, which expresses itself to intuition. In regard to that nature a thing represents its whole species, and so, as Goethe says, one case stands for thousands. In doing this the man of genius too loses sight of the connection of things. The single object of his contemplation, or the present moment, which he grasps with excessive vividness, appears in such a bright light that the other links of the chain they belong to fall back into darkness, as it were. This gives exactly the phenomena that have a long-recognized resemblance to those of madness. What exists in the single thing only imperfectly, and weakened by modifications, the way of seeing of genius raises to the Idea of it, to the perfect. So he sees extremes everywhere, and for that very reason his actions run to extremes. He does not know how to hit the right measure. He lacks sobriety, and the result is what I have said. He knows the Ideas perfectly, but not the individuals. That is why, as has been noticed, a poet can know man deeply and thoroughly but know men very badly. He is easily deceived and is a plaything in the hand of the cunning [19].

37 Our account says that genius consists in the ability to know, independently of the principle of sufficient reason, the Ideas of things instead of the single things, which have their being only in relation. It also consists in being, in the face of these Ideas, the correlate of the Idea itself, that is, no longer an individual but the pure subject of knowing. Still, this ability must also dwell in all men, to a lesser and varying degree. Otherwise they would be as unable to enjoy works of art as to produce them, and would have no receptiveness at all for the beautiful and the sublime. Indeed these words could have no meaning for them. So we must assume that this power is present in all men, unless perhaps there are some who are quite incapable of any aesthetic pleasure. It is the power to know the Ideas in things, and by that very act to shed one’s personality for a moment. Genius has over other men only a much higher degree, and a longer duration, of this mode of knowledge. This lets him keep, during it, the presence of mind that is needed to repeat what he has known in this way in a deliberate work. That repetition is the work of art. Through it he communicates the Idea he has grasped to others. The Idea therefore stays unchanged and the same. So aesthetic pleasure is essentially one and the same, whether a work of art calls it up or the direct look at nature and life. The work of art is merely a means of making easier the knowledge in which that pleasure consists. The Idea meets us more easily out of the work of art than directly out of nature and reality. This is because the artist, who [20] On this see chapter 32 of the second volume. knew only the Idea, no longer reality, has also repeated in his work only the Idea, purely. He has set it apart from reality, leaving out all disturbing accidents. The artist lets us look into the world through his eyes. That he has these eyes, that he knows the essential in things, which lies outside all relations, is exactly the gift of genius, the inborn part. But that he is able also to lend us this gift, to put his eyes on us, is the acquired part, the technique of art. For this reason, now that I have set out, in what precedes, the inner nature of the aesthetic mode of knowledge in its most general outlines, the closer philosophical study of the beautiful and the sublime that follows will deal with both in nature and in art together, without separating them further. We will consider first what goes on in a person when the beautiful moves him, and when the sublime moves him. Whether he draws this emotion directly from nature and life, or shares in it only through the mediation of art, makes no essential difference, only an outward one.

38 In the aesthetic way of seeing we have found two inseparable components. One is the knowledge of the object, not as a single thing but as a Platonic Idea, that is, as the enduring form of this whole species of things. The other is the self-consciousness of the knower, not as an individual but as the pure, will-less subject of knowledge. The condition under which both components always enter together was the leaving behind of the mode of knowledge bound to the principle of sufficient reason. That mode of knowledge, on the other hand, is the only one suited to the service of the will, as well as to science.—The pleasure that contemplation of the beautiful arouses we will also see arise from those two components, now more from the one, now more from the other, depending on what the object of the aesthetic contemplation is.

All willing springs from need, so from lack, so from suffering. Fulfillment puts an end to this. But for every wish that is fulfilled, at least ten stay denied. Further, desire lasts long, its demands go on without limit, and fulfillment is short and sparingly measured. Even the final satisfaction itself is only apparent. The fulfilled wish at once makes room for a new one. The first is a recognized error, the second a not yet recognized one. No attained object of willing can give a lasting satisfaction that no longer gives way. It is always like the alms thrown to a beggar, which keeps him alive today so as to prolong his torment until tomorrow.—So as long as our consciousness is filled by our will, as long as we are given over to the pressure of wishes with their constant hoping and fearing, as long as we are the subject of willing, we will never have lasting happiness or peace. Whether we hunt or flee, fear misfortune or strive for enjoyment, is essentially all the same. Care for the always demanding will, in whatever form, constantly fills and moves consciousness. And without peace no true well-being is possible at all. So the subject of willing lies constantly on the turning wheel of Ixion, draws always in the sieve of the Danaids, and is the eternally languishing Tantalus.

But sometimes an outward occasion or an inner mood suddenly lifts us out of the endless stream of willing and tears knowledge away from its slave service to the will. Attention is then no longer directed at the motives of willing. It grasps things free of their relation to the will. That is, it looks at them without interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively, wholly given over to them so far as they are merely representations, not so far as they are motives. Then the peace that we always seek on that first road of willing, and that always flees us, has all at once come of itself, and we are completely well. It is the painless state that Epicurus praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods. For that moment we are freed from the base pressure of the will. We keep the Sabbath from the penal labor of willing. The wheel of Ixion stands still.

This state is exactly the one I described above as needed for knowledge of the Idea: pure contemplation, being absorbed in intuition, losing oneself in the object, forgetting all individuality, and suspending the mode of knowledge that follows the principle of sufficient reason and grasps only relations. At the same time, and inseparably, the single thing looked at rises to the Idea of its species, and the knowing individual rises to the pure subject of will-less knowing. Both, as such, no longer stand in the stream of time and all other relations. It is then all the same whether one sees the sun set from a prison or from a palace.

An inner mood, a predominance of knowing over willing, can call up this state in any surroundings. The excellent Dutch painters show this. They directed such purely objective intuition at the most insignificant objects, and in still life they set up a lasting monument to their objectivity and calm of mind. The aesthetic viewer does not look at it without being moved. It makes present to him the calm, quiet, will-free state of mind of the artist, which was needed to look at such insignificant things so objectively, to observe them so attentively, and to repeat this intuition with such presence of mind. The picture also invites the viewer to share in such a state. His emotion is then often increased still more by the contrast with his own restless state of mind, clouded by violent willing, in which he happens to be. In the same spirit landscape painters, especially Ruisdael, have often painted very insignificant objects of landscape, and in this way they have produced the same effect in an even more pleasing form.

So much is done by the inner power of an artistic mind alone. But that purely objective state of mind is made easier, and furthered from outside, by objects that meet it halfway: by the fullness of beautiful nature, which invites us, even presses us, to look. Whenever nature opens up before our eyes all at once, it almost always succeeds in tearing us, if only for moments, from subjectivity, from the slave service of the will, and in putting us into the state of pure knowing. That is why a person tormented by passions, or by want and care, is so suddenly refreshed, cheered and lifted up by a single free look at nature. The storm of passions, the pressure of wish and fear, and all the torment of willing are at once quieted in a marvelous way. For at the moment when, torn loose from willing, we have given ourselves up to pure will-less knowing, we have stepped, as it were, into another world, where everything that moves our will and so shakes us so violently no longer exists. This freeing of knowledge lifts us out of all of it just as much and just as completely as sleep and dream do. Happiness and unhappiness have vanished. We are no longer the individual, which is forgotten, but only pure subject of knowledge. We are there only as the one eye of the world, which looks out from all knowing beings but can become wholly free of the service of the will in man alone. So all difference of individuality disappears so completely that it is then all the same whether the seeing eye belongs to a mighty king or to a tormented beggar. For neither happiness nor misery is carried across that border. So near to us lies always a region in which we have entirely escaped all our misery. But who has the strength to stay in it long? As soon as any relation of those purely contemplated objects to our will, to our person, comes back into consciousness, the spell is over. We fall back into the knowledge that the principle of sufficient reason governs. We now know no longer the Idea but the single thing, the link in a chain to which we also belong, and we are given over again to all our misery.—Most people stand almost always at this standpoint, because objectivity, that is, genius, is wholly lacking in them. So they do not like to be alone with nature. They need company, at least a book. For their knowing stays in service to the will. So in objects they look only for whatever relation to their will there may be. With everything that has no such relation, a constant, hopeless “It is no use to me” sounds in their inner being, like a ground bass. Because of this, even the most beautiful surroundings take on for them, in solitude, a bleak, dark, strange, hostile look.

Finally, it is also that blessedness of will-less intuition which spreads such a wonderful charm over the past and over distance and shows them to us in a very beautifying light, through a self-deception. For when we call up long-past days spent in a distant place, it is only the objects that our imagination calls back, not the subject of will, who carried his incurable sufferings around with him then just as he does now. But those sufferings are forgotten, because since then they have often given way to others. Now objective intuition in memory works just as the present one would work if we could bring ourselves to give ourselves up to it free of will. That is why, especially when some distress presses on us more than usual, the sudden memory of scenes of the past and of distance flies by us like a lost paradise. Imagination calls back only the objective, not the individual-subjective, and we imagine that this objective part stood before us then just as purely, unclouded by any relation to the will, as its image does now in imagination. In fact the relation of the objects to our willing caused us torment then just as much as now. We can withdraw from all suffering through present objects just as well as through distant ones, as soon as we raise ourselves to a purely objective contemplation of them and so can bring about the illusion that only those objects, not we ourselves, are present. Then, freed of the wretched self, as pure subject of knowing we become entirely one with those objects. And as foreign as our distress is to them, so foreign is it, at such moments, to ourselves. The world as representation alone is then left, and the world as will has vanished.

By all these considerations I hope to have made clear what kind and how great a share in aesthetic pleasure the subjective condition of it has. This condition is the freeing of knowing from the service of the will, the forgetting of oneself as an individual, and the raising of consciousness to the pure, will-less, timeless subject of knowing, independent of all relations. With this subjective side of aesthetic contemplation there always enters at the same time, as its necessary correlate, the objective side, the intuitive grasp of the Platonic Idea. But before we turn to the closer study of this, and to what art achieves in relation to it, it is more suitable to stay a little longer with the subjective side of aesthetic pleasure. I want to complete the study of that side by discussing the impression of the sublime, which depends on it alone and arises through a modification of it. After that, our investigation of aesthetic pleasure will be complete, once we have considered its objective side.

But some remarks still belong to what I have said so far. Light is the most pleasing of things. It has become the symbol of everything good and salutary. In all religions it stands for eternal salvation, and darkness for damnation. Ormuzd lives in the purest light, Ahriman in eternal night. In Dante’s Paradise it looks about like Vauxhall in London, since all the blessed spirits there appear as points of light that arrange themselves into regular figures. The absence of light makes us sad at once, and its return makes us happy. Colors arouse a lively delight at once, which reaches its highest degree when they are transparent. All this comes only from the fact that light is the correlate and the condition of the most perfect mode of intuitive knowledge, the only one that does not affect the will directly at all. For seeing, unlike the affection of the other senses, is not capable, in itself, directly and by its sensory effect, of any pleasantness or unpleasantness of sensation in the organ. That is, it has no immediate connection with the will. Only the intuition that arises in the understanding can have such a connection, and then it lies in the relation of the object to the will. Hearing is already different. Tones can cause pain directly, and can also be directly pleasant to the senses, without any reference to harmony or melody. Touch, being one with the feeling of the whole body, is still more subject to this direct influence on the will. Yet there is still a touching that is free of pain and of pleasure. Smells, though, are always pleasant or unpleasant, and tastes still more so. These last two senses are therefore the most tainted with the will. That is why they are always the least noble, and why Kant called them the subjective senses. So the joy in light is in fact only joy in the objective possibility of the purest and most perfect mode of intuitive knowledge. As such it is to be derived from this: pure knowing, freed and rid of all willing, is highly pleasing, and already as such has a large share in aesthetic enjoyment.—From this view of light we can again derive the incredibly great beauty that we grant to the reflection of objects in water. That lightest, quickest, finest kind of action of bodies on one another, to which we also owe by far the most perfect and purest of our perceptions, the action by means of reflected rays of light, is brought before our eyes here quite clearly, in full view and complete, in cause and effect, and on a large scale. Hence our aesthetic joy in it. In the main it is rooted wholly in the subjective ground of aesthetic pleasure, and it is joy in pure knowing and its ways [21].

39 To all these considerations, which are meant to bring out the subjective part of aesthetic pleasure, that is, this pleasure so far as it is joy in mere intuitive knowing as such, as opposed to the will, there attaches itself, as directly connected with them, the following explanation of the mood that has been called the feeling of the sublime.

It has already been noted above that being put into the state of pure intuition happens most easily when the objects meet it halfway. That is, they easily become representatives of their Ideas through their varied and at the same time definite and distinct form, and in this beauty, in the [22] On this see chapter 33 of the second volume. objective sense, consists. Beautiful nature above all has this quality, and through it wins even from the most insensitive person at least a fleeting aesthetic pleasure. Indeed it is so striking how the plant world in particular invites aesthetic contemplation and presses itself on it, as it were, that one might say this meeting halfway is connected with the fact that these organic beings, unlike animal bodies, are not themselves immediate objects of knowledge. So they need a foreign understanding individual in order to step from the world of blind willing into that of representation. They would therefore, as it were, long for this step, so as to obtain at least indirectly what is denied them directly. For the rest, I leave this bold thought, which perhaps borders on enthusiasm, entirely undecided, since only a very intimate and devoted contemplation of nature can arouse or justify it [23]. So long as it is this meeting halfway of nature, the significance and distinctness of its forms, from which the Ideas individualized in them speak to us readily, that puts us from the knowledge of mere relations, which serves the will, into aesthetic contemplation, and so raises us to the will-free subject of knowing, so long it is merely the beautiful that acts on us, and the feeling of beauty that is aroused. But suppose those very objects, whose significant forms invite us to pure contemplation of them, stand in a hostile relation to the human will in general, as it presents itself in its objectivity, the human body. Suppose they are opposed to it, threaten it by an overwhelming power that cancels all resistance, or shrink it to nothing before their immeasurable size. And suppose the observer still does not direct his attention to this hostile relation to his will, which presses [24] All the more it pleases and surprises me now, 40 years after I wrote down the above thought so shyly and hesitantly, to discover that Saint Augustine had already expressed it: Arbusta formas suas varias, quibus mundi hujus visibilis structura formosa est, sentiendas sensibus praebent; ut, pro eo quod nosse non possunt, quasi innotescere velle videantur. (De civ. Dei, XI, 27.) itself on him. Instead, though he perceives and acknowledges it, he consciously turns away from it. He tears himself violently loose from his will and its relations, gives himself up to knowledge alone, and calmly contemplates those very objects that are fearful to the will as pure will-less subject of knowing, grasping only their Idea, which is foreign to every relation. So he gladly lingers in contemplating them, and by this very fact is lifted above himself, his person, his willing and all willing. Then the feeling of the sublime fills him. He is in the state of elevation, and that is why the object that causes such a state is also called sublime. What distinguishes the feeling of the sublime from that of the beautiful is this. In the beautiful, pure knowing has won the upper hand without a struggle. The beauty of the object, that is, its quality of making knowledge of its Idea easier, removed the will, and the knowledge of relations that does service to it, from consciousness without resistance, and so unnoticeably, and left consciousness behind as pure subject of knowing, so that not even a memory of the will stays behind. In the sublime, on the other hand, that state of pure knowing is first won by a conscious and violent tearing loose from the relations of the same object to the will, which are known to be unfavorable. It is won by a free rising above the will and the knowledge that relates to it, accompanied by consciousness. This elevation must not only be won with consciousness but also kept up, and so it is accompanied by a constant memory of the will. It is not a memory of a single, individual willing, such as fear or wish, but of human willing in general, so far as it is expressed universally by its objectivity, the human body. If a real single act of will came into consciousness, through actual personal distress and danger from the object, the individual will, truly moved in this way, would soon gain the upper hand. The calm of contemplation would become impossible, and the impression of the sublime would be lost, because it would give way to anxiety, in which the individual’s effort to save himself pushed out every other thought.—A few examples will do a great deal to make this theory of the aesthetically sublime clear and put it beyond doubt. At the same time they will show the different degrees of that feeling of the sublime. The feeling is one with that of the beautiful in its main determination, pure, will-free knowing, and the knowledge, necessarily entering with it, of the Ideas that stand outside every relation determined by the principle of sufficient reason. It differs from the feeling of the beautiful only through an addition: the rising above the known hostile relation of the very object contemplated to the will in general. So, depending on whether this addition is strong, loud, urgent, near, or only weak, distant, merely hinted at, there arise several degrees of the sublime, and indeed transitions from the beautiful to the sublime. I think it better suits the presentation to bring these transitions, and in general the weaker degrees of the impression of the sublime, before the eye first in examples. Those whose aesthetic receptiveness is not very great, and whose imagination is not lively, will understand only the later examples of the higher, clearer degrees of that impression. They should therefore hold to those alone and leave the first examples, of the very weak degrees of the impression, aside.

Man is at once a violent and dark pressure of willing (marked by the pole of the genitals as its focal point) and an eternal, free, serene subject of pure knowing (marked by the pole of the brain). In correspondence with this opposition, the sun is at once the source of light, the condition for the most perfect mode of knowledge and thereby the most pleasing of things, and the source of warmth, the first condition of all life, that is, of all appearance of the will on its higher levels. What warmth is for the will, light is therefore for knowledge. For this reason light is the greatest diamond in the crown of beauty, and has the most decided influence on the knowledge of every beautiful object. Its presence at all is an indispensable condition, and its favorable position raises the beauty even of the most beautiful. Above all else, though, the beautiful in architecture is raised by its favor, and through it even the most insignificant thing becomes a most beautiful object.—Now in a hard winter, when nature is all stiff, we see the rays of the low sun thrown back from masses of stone. There they illuminate without warming, and so favor only the purest mode of knowledge, not the will. The sight of the beautiful effect of light on these masses puts us, like all beauty, into the state of pure knowing. But here the faint memory that those very rays do not warm, and so lack the principle that gives life, already requires a certain rising above the interest of the will. It contains a faint call to hold on to pure knowing, turning away from all willing. For this very reason it is a transition from the feeling of the beautiful to that of the sublime. It is the faintest breath of the sublime in the beautiful, and the beautiful itself shows up here in only a slight degree. An almost equally weak example follows.

Let us put ourselves in a very lonely region, with an unbounded horizon, under a completely cloudless sky, trees and plants in quite still air, no animals, no people, no moving water, the deepest silence. Such surroundings are like a call to seriousness, to contemplation, tearing us loose from all willing and its poverty. But this alone already gives such merely lonely and deeply quiet surroundings a touch of the sublime. For they offer no objects, neither favorable nor unfavorable, to the will, which needs constant striving and attaining. So only the state of pure contemplation is left. And whoever is not capable of it is given up, with shameful humiliation, to the emptiness of the unoccupied will, the torment of boredom. To that extent the surroundings give a measure of our own intellectual worth, for which the degree of our ability to bear, or love, solitude is in general a good yardstick. So the surroundings described give an example of the sublime in a low degree. For in them a memory of the dependence and wretchedness of the will, which needs constant drive, is mixed in, as contrast, with the state of pure knowing in its calm and complete sufficiency.—This is the kind of the sublime that is praised in the sight of the endless prairies in the interior of North America.

But now let such a region also be stripped of plants and show only bare rocks. Then, by the complete absence of the organic, which is necessary for our subsistence, the will is already directly alarmed. The desolation takes on a fearful character. Our mood becomes more tragic. The rising to pure knowing takes place with a more decided tearing loose from the interest of the will, and as we stay in the state of pure knowing, the feeling of the sublime comes out clearly.

The following surroundings can cause it in a still higher degree. Nature in stormy motion; half-light from threatening black thunderclouds; huge, bare, overhanging rocks that close off the view by interlocking; rushing, foaming waters; complete desolation; the wail of the air passing through the gorges. Our dependence, our struggle with hostile nature, our will broken in it, now stands before our eyes. But so long as personal distress does not gain the upper hand and we stay in aesthetic contemplation, the pure subject of knowing looks through that struggle of nature, through that image of the broken will. Calm, unshaken, not touched (unconcerned), it grasps the Ideas in the very objects that are threatening and fearful to the will. In this very contrast lies the feeling of the sublime.

But the impression becomes still more powerful if we have the struggle of the raging forces of nature before us on a large scale. Take surroundings where a falling stream, with its roar, takes from us the possibility of hearing our own voice. Or take the wide sea, raging in a storm. Waves as high as houses rise and sink. Dashed with violence against steep cliffs on the shore, they spray the foam high into the air. The storm howls, the sea roars, lightning flashes from black clouds, and thunderclaps drown out storm and sea. Then, in the unshaken spectator of this scene, the doubleness of his consciousness reaches its highest distinctness. He feels himself at once as an individual, as a frail appearance of will, which the slightest blow of those forces can shatter, helpless against mighty nature, dependent, abandoned to chance, a vanishing nothing before enormous powers. And at the same time he feels himself as the eternal, calm subject of knowing, which, as the condition of the object, is the bearer of this whole world, and to which the fearful struggle of nature is only its own representation. He feels himself in calm grasp of the Ideas, free and foreign to all willing and all needs. This is the full impression of the sublime. Here the sight of a power that threatens the individual with destruction, and is beyond all comparison superior to him, causes it.

In a quite different way it can arise from the presence before us of mere size in space and time, whose immensity shrinks the individual to nothing. We can call the first kind the dynamically sublime and the second the mathematically sublime, keeping Kant’s names and his correct division. But in explaining the inner nature of that impression we differ from him completely, and we grant no share in it to moral reflections or to hypostases from scholastic philosophy.

We may lose ourselves in contemplating the infinite size of the world in space and time, and think over the thousands of years gone by and those to come. Or the night sky may actually put countless worlds before our eyes, so that the immensity of the world presses in on consciousness. Then we feel ourselves shrunk to nothing. We feel ourselves, as individual, as living body, as passing appearance of will, dwindling away like a drop in the ocean, dissolving into nothing. But at the same time, against this specter of our own nothingness, against this lying impossibility, there rises the immediate consciousness that all these worlds exist only in our representation. They exist only as modifications of the eternal subject of pure knowing, which we find ourselves to be as soon as we forget individuality, and which is the necessary, conditioning bearer of all worlds and all times. The size of the world, which disturbed us before, now rests in us. Our dependence on it is canceled by its dependence on us.—None of this comes at once into reflection. It shows itself as only a felt consciousness that in some sense (which philosophy alone makes clear) one is one with the world, and so is not pressed down by its immensity but lifted up. It is the felt consciousness of what the Upanishads of the Vedas express again and again in so many turns, above all in the saying already quoted above: Illae omnes creaturae in totum ego sum, et praeter me aliud ens non est. (Oupnek’hat, vol. 1, p. 122). It is elevation above one’s own individual, the feeling of the sublime.

We get this impression of the mathematically sublime in a quite direct way from a space which is small compared with the structure of the universe, but which has become wholly perceptible to us at once, and so acts on us in all three dimensions with its whole size. That size is enough to make the measure of our own body almost infinitely small. An empty space can never do this for perception, and so never an open one. It must be a space made directly perceptible in all dimensions by its boundary, that is, a very high and large vault, like that of St. Peter’s in Rome or St. Paul’s in London. The feeling of the sublime arises here from becoming aware of the vanishing nothingness of our own body before a size that, for its part, lies again only in our representation, and whose bearer we are as knowing subject. So here, as everywhere, it arises through the contrast between the insignificance and dependence of our self as individual, as appearance of will, and the consciousness of ourselves as pure subject of knowing. Even the vault of the starry sky, when it is looked at without reflection, acts only like that stone vault, and not with its true size but only its apparent one.—Some objects of our intuition arouse the impression of the sublime because we feel ourselves shrunk to nothing before them, by their size in space as well as by their great age, that is, their duration in time, and yet we revel in the enjoyment of the sight. Of this kind are very high mountains, the Egyptian pyramids, and colossal ruins of great antiquity.

Indeed our explanation of the sublime can be carried over to the ethical too, namely to what is called the sublime character. This also arises from the will not being aroused by objects that are quite suited to arouse it, because knowing keeps the upper hand even then. Such a character will therefore look at men purely objectively, not according to the relations they could have to his will. For example, he will notice their faults, even their hatred and injustice toward himself, without being aroused to hatred on his side. He will look at their good fortune without feeling envy. He will recognize their good qualities without wishing for closer ties with them. He will perceive the beauty of women without desiring them. His personal happiness or unhappiness will not affect him strongly. Rather he will be as Hamlet describes Horatio: for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man, that fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks. etc. (A. 3. sc. 2.) [25]

For in his own course of life and its misfortunes he will see less his own individual lot than the lot of mankind in general, and so will behave in them more as one who knows than as one who suffers.

40 Since opposites throw light on each other, this is the place for the remark that the true opposite of the sublime is something that at first glance one might not recognize as such: the charming. By this I mean that [26] For you were always as if, though everything struck you, you suffered nothing; the blows and the gifts of fate you took with equal thanks, etc. which arouses the will by holding grant and fulfillment directly before it.—The feeling of the sublime arose because an object directly unfavorable to the will becomes the object of pure contemplation. This contemplation is then kept up only by a constant turning away from the will and a rising above its interest, and that is just what makes up the sublimity of the mood. The charming, on the other hand, pulls the viewer down from the pure contemplation that is needed for every grasp of the beautiful. It necessarily stirs up his will through objects that directly appeal to it, and so the viewer no longer stays pure subject of knowing but becomes the needy, dependent subject of willing.—That people usually call every beautiful thing of the cheerful kind charming is a concept taken too wide, through lack of proper distinction. I must set it entirely aside, indeed disapprove of it.—In the sense stated and explained, I find in the realm of art only two kinds of the charming, and both are unworthy of it. One, quite low, is in the still life of the Dutch, when it goes astray so that the objects shown are things to eat. By their deceptive rendering they necessarily arouse the appetite for them, which is exactly an arousal of the will that ends every aesthetic contemplation of the object. Painted fruit is still allowable, since it offers itself as a further development of the flower and, by form and color, as a beautiful natural product, without our being directly forced to think of its being edible. But unfortunately we often find, with deceptive naturalness, meals set out and prepared: oysters, herrings, lobsters, bread and butter, beer, wine and so on. That is wholly objectionable.—In history painting and sculpture the charming consists in nude figures whose pose, half clothing and whole manner of treatment aim at arousing lust in the viewer. This at once cancels the purely aesthetic contemplation, and so it works against the purpose of art. This fault corresponds exactly to the one just censured in the Dutch. The ancient works, with all the beauty and complete nakedness of their figures, are almost always free of it. The artist himself made them in a purely objective spirit filled with ideal beauty, not in the spirit of subjective, base desire.—The charming is therefore to be avoided everywhere in art.

There is also a negative charming, which is even more objectionable than the positive charming just discussed. This is the disgusting. Just like the properly charming, it wakes the viewer’s will and so destroys purely aesthetic contemplation. But what it stirs up is a violent not-willing, a resistance. It wakes the will by holding before it objects of its loathing. Therefore it has always been recognized as quite inadmissible in art, where even the ugly, as long as it is not disgusting, can be tolerated in the right place, as we will see further below.

41 The course of our inquiry has made it necessary to insert the discussion of the sublime here, where the discussion of the beautiful was only half finished, complete on only one of its sides, the subjective. For it was just a particular modification of this subjective side that distinguished the sublime from the beautiful. The difference between the beautiful and the sublime is this. In the one case, the state of pure will-less knowing, which every aesthetic contemplation presupposes and requires, came about as if of itself, without resistance, by the mere vanishing of the will from consciousness, because the object invited and drew us to it. In the other case, this state was first won by a free, conscious rising above the will, to which the contemplated object itself stands in an unfavorable, hostile relation, and to dwell on which would cancel the contemplation.—In the object the two are not essentially different. For in every case the object of aesthetic contemplation is not the single thing but the Idea striving to reveal itself in it, that is, the adequate objectivity of the will at a determinate level. Its necessary correlate, which like the Idea itself is withdrawn from the principle of sufficient reason, is the pure subject of knowing. The correlate of the single thing is the knowing individual, and both of these lie in the domain of the principle of sufficient reason.

When we call an object beautiful, we are saying that it is an object of our aesthetic contemplation. This includes two things. First, that the sight of it makes us objective, that is, in contemplating it we are conscious of ourselves no longer as individuals but as pure will-less subject of knowing. Second, that in the object we know not the single thing but an Idea. This can happen only so far as our contemplation of the object is not given over to the principle of sufficient reason, does not follow its relation to anything outside it (which in the end is always connected with relations to our willing), but rests on the object itself. For the Idea and the pure subject of knowing, as necessary correlates, always enter consciousness at the same time. With this entry all difference of time vanishes at once, since both are wholly foreign to the principle of sufficient reason in all its forms and lie outside the relations it sets up. They can be compared to the rainbow and the sun, which have no part in the constant motion and succession of the falling drops. So, for example, when I look at a tree aesthetically, that is, with the eyes of an artist, and thus know not it but its Idea, it at once does not matter whether it is this tree or its ancestor that flowered a thousand years ago. It is just as indifferent whether the observer is this individual or any other, living at any time and any place. With the principle of sufficient reason the single thing and the knowing individual are canceled, and nothing is left but the Idea and the pure subject of knowing, which together make up the adequate objectivity of the will at this level. And the Idea is lifted out not only of time but also of space. For it is not the spatial shape that hovers before me. What is really the Idea is the expression, the pure meaning of that shape, its innermost nature, which opens itself to me and speaks to me. This can be quite the same despite a great difference in the spatial relations of the shape.

First, every existing thing can be looked at purely objectively and outside all relation. Second, in every thing the will appears at some level of its objectivity, so that the thing is the expression of an Idea. So every thing is also beautiful.—That even the most insignificant thing allows pure, will-less, objective contemplation, and so proves itself beautiful, is shown by the still life of the Dutch, which I mentioned above in this connection (§. 38). But one thing is more beautiful than another because it makes that purely objective contemplation easier, meets it halfway, and even, as it were, forces it. Then we call it very beautiful. This is so partly because the single thing, through the very distinct, purely determinate and thoroughly significant relation of its parts, expresses the Idea of its species purely. By the completeness, united in it, of all the expressions possible to its species, it reveals the Idea of that species perfectly. Thus it makes it very easy for the viewer to pass from the single thing to the Idea, and thereby into the state of pure contemplation. And partly the special beauty of an object lies in the fact that the Idea itself that speaks to us out of it is a high level of the objectivity of the will, and so is thoroughly significant and expressive. That is why man is beautiful above all else, and why the revelation of his nature is the highest aim of art. Human form and human expression are the most significant object of the visual arts, just as human action is the most significant object of poetry.—Yet every thing still has its own peculiar beauty: not only everything organic and presenting itself in the unity of an individuality, but also everything inorganic and formless, even every artifact. For all these reveal the Ideas through which the will objectifies itself on the lowest levels. They give out, so to speak, the deepest, fading bass notes of nature. Gravity, rigidity, fluidity, light and so on are the Ideas that express themselves in rocks, buildings, waters. Beautiful gardening and architecture can do nothing more than help them unfold those qualities clearly, many-sidedly and completely. They give them an opportunity to express themselves purely, and so invite aesthetic contemplation and make it easier. Bad buildings, and regions that nature neglected or art spoiled, do this little or not at all. Yet even in them those general basic Ideas of nature cannot wholly vanish. They speak even here to the viewer who looks for them, and even bad buildings and the like are still capable of aesthetic contemplation: the Ideas of the most general properties of their material can still be recognized in them. Only the form artificially given them is no aid, indeed rather an obstacle, that makes aesthetic contemplation harder. Artifacts too, then, serve to express Ideas. But it is not the Idea of the artifact that speaks from them, but the Idea of the material to which this artificial form was given. In the language of the scholastics this can be said very conveniently in two words: in the artifact the Idea of its forma substantialis expresses itself, not that of its forma accidentalis. The latter leads to no Idea, but only to a human concept from which it proceeded. It is understood that by artifact here no work of the visual arts is meant, expressly. For the rest, the scholastics really did understand by forma substantialis what I call the degree of objectification of the will in a thing. We will come back at once, in considering beautiful architecture, to the expression of the Idea of the material.—By our view, though, we cannot agree with Plato when he claims (De Rep., X, p. 284–285, et Parmen., p. 79, ed. Bip.) that table and chair express the Ideas table and chair. We say instead that they express the Ideas that already express themselves in their mere material as such. According to Aristotle (Metaph., XI, chap. 3), however, Plato himself established Ideas only for natural beings: ὁ Πλατων εφη, ὁτι ειδη εστιν ὁποσα φυσει. (Plato dixit, quod ideae eorum sunt, quae natura sunt) And in chapter 5 it is said that, according to the Platonists, there are no Ideas of house and ring. In any case, Plato’s nearest pupils, as Alcinous tells us (introductio in Platonicam philosophiam, chap. 9), already denied that there are Ideas of artifacts. He says: Ὁριζονται δε την ιδεαν, παραδειγμα των κατα φυσιν αἰωνιον. Ουτε γαρ τοις πλειστοις των απο Πλατωνος αρεσκει, των τεχνικων ειναι ιδεας, οἱον ασπιδος η λυρας, ουτε μην των παρα φυσιν, οἱον πυρετου και χολερας, ουτε των κατα μερος, οἱον Σωκρατους και Πλατωνος, αλλ’ ουτε των ευτελων τινος, οἱον ρυπου και καρφους, ουτε των προς τι, οἱον μειζονος και ὑπερεχοντος· ειναι γαρ τας ιδεας νοησεις θεου αιωνιους τε και αυτοτελεις.—(Definiunt autem ideam exemplar aeternum eorum, quae secundum naturam existunt. Nam plurimis ex iis, qui Platonem secuti sunt, minime placuit, arte factorum ideas esse, ut clypei atque lyrae; neque rursus eorum, quae praeter naturam, ut febris et cholerae; neque particularium, ceu Socratis et Platonis; neque etiam rerum vilium, veluti sordium et festucae; neque relationum, ut majoris et excedentis: esse namque ideas intellectiones dei aeternas, ac seipsis perfectas.)—On this occasion another point may be mentioned in which our doctrine of Ideas differs very greatly from Plato’s. He teaches (De Rep., X, p. 288) that the object that fine art aims to present, the model for painting and poetry, is not the Idea but the single thing. Our whole account so far claims exactly the opposite. And Plato’s opinion will not confuse us in this, all the less since it is the source of one of the greatest and acknowledged faults of that great man, namely his low estimate and rejection of art, especially poetry. He connects his false judgment of it directly with the passage cited.

42 I return to our account of the aesthetic impression. Knowledge of the beautiful always presupposes, at once and inseparably, a purely knowing subject and a known Idea as object. Yet the source of aesthetic enjoyment will lie sometimes more in grasping the known Idea, sometimes more in the blessedness and peace of mind of pure knowing, freed from all willing and so from all individuality and the pain that comes from it. And which of the two components of aesthetic enjoyment prevails will depend on whether the Idea grasped intuitively is a higher or lower level of the objectivity of the will. So when beautiful nature in the inorganic and vegetable realm, and works of beautiful architecture, are looked at aesthetically (in reality, or through the medium of art), the enjoyment of pure will-less knowing will predominate. For the Ideas grasped here are only low levels of the objectivity of the will, and so not appearances of deep significance and rich content. When animals and men are the object of aesthetic contemplation or presentation, on the other hand, the enjoyment will consist more in the objective grasp of these Ideas, which are the clearest revelations of the will. For these show the greatest variety of forms, richness and deep significance of appearances, and reveal to us most completely the nature of the will, whether in its violence, its terribleness, its satisfaction, or in its breaking (the last in tragic presentations), and finally even in its turning or self-cancellation, which is especially the theme of Christian painting. In general, history painting and drama have as their object the Idea of the will lit by full knowledge.—We will now go through the arts one by one, and in this way the theory of the beautiful we have set out will gain completeness and clarity.

43 Matter as such cannot be the presentation of an Idea. For, as we found in the first book, it is through and through causality: its being is pure acting. But causality is a form of the principle of sufficient reason, whereas knowledge of the Idea essentially excludes the content of that principle. We also found in the second book that matter is the common substratum of all single appearances of the Ideas, and so the link between the Idea and the appearance or single thing. For one reason as for the other, then, matter cannot present an Idea by itself. A posteriori this is confirmed by the fact that of matter as such no intuitive representation is possible, only an abstract concept. In intuition only the forms and qualities present themselves, of which matter is the bearer and in all of which Ideas are revealed. This also corresponds to the fact that causality (the whole nature of matter) cannot be presented intuitively by itself, but only a determinate causal connection.—On the other hand, every appearance of an Idea, since as such it has entered into the form of the principle of sufficient reason, or the principium individuationis, must present itself in matter, as a quality of it. To that extent, then, matter is, as I said, the link between the Idea and the principium individuationis, which is the form of the knowledge of the individual, or the principle of sufficient reason.—So Plato was quite right to set up, besides the Idea and its appearance, the single thing (which two otherwise include all things in the world), only matter as a third, different from both (Timaeus, p. 345). The individual, as appearance of the Idea, is always matter. Every quality of matter is also always an appearance of an Idea, and as such is capable of aesthetic contemplation, that is, of knowledge of the Idea that presents itself in it. This holds even for the most general qualities of matter, without which it never is, and whose Ideas are the weakest objectivity of the will. These are: gravity, cohesion, rigidity, fluidity, reaction to light, and so on.

Now consider architecture merely as a fine art, leaving aside its serving useful purposes, in which it serves the will, not pure knowledge, and so is no longer art in our sense. Then we can attribute to it no other aim than to bring some of those Ideas, which are the lowest levels of the objectivity of the will, to clear intuitiveness: namely gravity, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, these general properties of stone, these first, simplest, dullest visibilities of the will, ground-bass notes of nature; and next to them light, which in many respects is the opposite of those. Even on this low level of the objectivity of the will we already see its nature reveal itself in discord. For the struggle between gravity and rigidity is really the only aesthetic material of beautiful architecture. Its task is to make this struggle show itself perfectly clearly in many ways. It solves this by taking from those indestructible forces the shortest way to their satisfaction and holding them off by a detour. In this way the struggle is prolonged and the inexhaustible striving of both forces becomes visible in many ways.—The whole mass of the building, left to its original inclination, would be a mere lump, bound as firmly as possible to the body of the earth. Gravity, in which the will appears here, presses toward the earth without ceasing, while rigidity, likewise objectivity of the will, resists. But architecture keeps exactly this inclination, this striving, from direct satisfaction and allows it only an indirect one, by detours. So, for example, the entablature can press on the earth only by means of the column. The vault must carry itself, and only through the mediation of the piers can it satisfy its striving toward the mass of the earth, and so on. But it is exactly on these forced detours, exactly through these checks, that those forces dwelling in the rough mass of stone unfold themselves most clearly and in the most manifold way. The purely aesthetic aim of architecture can go no further. So the beauty of a building does lie in the evident fitness of each part, not for the outward, arbitrary purpose of man (to that extent the work belongs to useful architecture) but directly for the standing of the whole. The place, size and form of each part must have such a necessary relation to the whole that, if possible, were any part taken away, the whole would have to fall in. For only when each part carries as much as it properly can, and each is supported exactly where and exactly as much as it must be, does that interplay unfold in its most perfect visibility: that struggle between rigidity and gravity which makes up the life, the expressions of will, of the stone. And only then do these deepest levels of the objectivity of the will reveal themselves clearly. In the same way the shape of each part must also be determined by its purpose and its relation to the whole, not by caprice. The column is the simplest of all forms of support, determined merely by its purpose. The twisted column is in bad taste. The square pier is in fact less simple than the round column, though it happens to be easier to make. In the same way the forms of frieze, beam, arch and dome are wholly determined by their direct purpose, and in this way explain themselves. The ornaments of capitals and so on belong to sculpture, not to architecture, which merely allows them as added decoration, and which could do without them.—From what has been said it is absolutely necessary, for understanding and aesthetic enjoyment of a work of architecture, to have a direct, intuitive knowledge of its matter, in its weight, rigidity and cohesion. Our pleasure in such a work would suddenly be much reduced by the news that pumice stone was the building material, for then it would strike us as a kind of sham building. The news would work almost the same if we learned it was only wood when we had supposed stone. This is because it now changes and shifts the relation between rigidity and gravity, and with it the meaning and necessity of all the parts, since those forces of nature reveal themselves much more weakly in a wooden building. That is why a work of beautiful architecture can never really be made of wood, however much it takes on all the forms. This is explained by our theory alone. And if we were even told that the building whose sight pleases us consists of quite different materials, of very unequal weight and consistency, which the eye cannot tell apart, the whole building would become as unenjoyable to us as a poem in a language unknown to us. All this proves that architecture works not merely mathematically but dynamically, and that what speaks to us through it is not mere form and symmetry but rather those basic forces of nature, those first Ideas, those lowest levels of the objectivity of the will.—The regularity of the building and its parts is partly brought about by the direct fitness of each member for the standing of the whole. Partly it serves to make the whole easier to survey and understand. And partly the regular figures contribute to beauty by revealing the lawfulness of space as such. But all this is only of subordinate worth and necessity and by no means the main thing, since even symmetry is not absolutely required: ruins too are still beautiful.

Works of architecture also have a quite special relation to light. They gain double beauty in full sunshine, with the blue sky as background, and show again a quite different effect in moonlight. That is why, when a beautiful work of architecture is put up, special regard is always paid to the effects of light and to the points of the compass. All this has its ground largely in the fact that bright and sharp lighting first makes all parts and their relations really visible. But beyond that I am of the opinion that architecture is meant, together with gravity and rigidity, to reveal at the same time the quite opposite nature of light. For when light is caught, checked and thrown back by large, opaque, sharply bounded and variously shaped masses, it unfolds its nature and properties most purely and clearly, to the great enjoyment of the viewer. This is because light is the most pleasing of things, as the condition and the objective correlate of the most perfect mode of intuitive knowledge.

The Ideas that architecture brings to clear intuition are the lowest levels of the objectivity of the will, and so the objective significance of what architecture reveals to us is comparatively slight. So the aesthetic enjoyment at the sight of a beautiful and favorably lit building will lie not so much in grasping the Idea as in the subjective correlate that goes with that grasp. It will consist mainly in this: at that sight the viewer is torn loose from the mode of knowledge of the individual, which serves the will and follows the principle of sufficient reason, and is lifted up to that of the pure will-free subject of knowing. That is, it consists in the pure contemplation itself, freed from all the suffering of willing and of individuality.—In this respect the opposite of architecture, the other extreme in the series of the fine arts, is drama, which brings the most significant Ideas to knowledge, and in whose aesthetic enjoyment the objective side therefore clearly outweighs the other.

What distinguishes architecture from the visual arts and poetry is that it gives not a copy but the thing itself. It does not repeat the known Idea, as those do, by which the artist lends the viewer his eyes. Here the artist merely sets the object in the right position for the viewer, and makes the grasp of the Idea easier for him by bringing the real, individual object to a clear and complete expression of its nature.

Works of architecture are very seldom built, as other works of fine art are, for purely aesthetic purposes. Rather these are subordinated to other, useful purposes foreign to art itself. And so the great merit of the architect lies in nevertheless carrying through and achieving the purely aesthetic purposes, in spite of their subordination to foreign ones. He does this by skillfully adapting them in many ways to the arbitrary purpose of each case, and by judging correctly which aesthetic-architectural beauty goes with a temple, which with a palace, which with an arsenal, and so on. The more a harsh climate increases those demands of need and usefulness, fixes them more firmly and prescribes them more strictly, the less room there is for the beautiful in architecture. In the mild climate of India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, where the demands of necessity were smaller and more loosely fixed, architecture could pursue its aesthetic purposes most freely. Under northern skies these were much stunted. Here, where boxes, pointed roofs and towers were the demand, architecture was allowed to unfold its own beauty only within very narrow limits. As compensation it had to adorn itself all the more with decoration borrowed from sculpture, as can be seen in Gothic beautiful architecture.

If architecture must suffer great limits in this way from the demands of necessity and usefulness, it has on the other hand a strong support in these same demands. Given the scale and cost of its works and the narrow sphere of its aesthetic way of acting, it could not maintain itself at all as a merely fine art, if it did not at the same time have, as a useful and necessary trade, a firm and honorable place among human occupations. The lack of exactly this keeps another art from standing beside it as a sister, although in aesthetic respect it is really to be paired with it as a counterpart. I mean the art of beautiful water-works. For what architecture does for the Idea of gravity, where it appears joined with rigidity, that art does for the same Idea where fluidity is joined with it, that is, formlessness, the easiest displacement, transparency. Waterfalls foaming and roaring over rocks, cataracts quietly dissolving into spray, fountains driving up as high columns of water, and clear mirroring lakes reveal the Ideas of fluid heavy matter just as the works of architecture unfold the Ideas of rigid matter. Beautiful water-works finds no support in useful water-works, since the purposes of the latter, as a rule, cannot be combined with its own. This happens only by exception, for example in the Cascata di Trevi at Rome [27].

44 What the two arts just mentioned do for those lowest levels of the objectivity of the will, beautiful gardening does in a certain way for the higher level of vegetable nature. The scenic beauty of a spot rests largely on the variety of the natural objects found together on it, and then on their standing out purely from one another, showing clearly, and yet appearing in fitting connection and variation. These are the two conditions that beautiful gardening helps along. But it is not nearly so much master of its material as architecture is of its own, and so its effect is limited. The beauty it shows belongs almost entirely to nature, and it has done little toward it. And on the other hand it can do very little against the unfavorable side of nature, and where nature does not work for it but against it, its achievements are small.

So far, then, as the plant world, which offers itself everywhere for aesthetic enjoyment without the mediation of art, is the object of [28] On this see chapter 35 of the second volume.

art, it belongs chiefly to landscape painting. In the domain of that art lies also all the rest of nature that lacks knowledge.—In still life and in painted mere architecture, ruins, church interiors and the like, the subjective side of aesthetic enjoyment is the preponderant one. That is, our joy in them lies not mainly in the direct grasp of the Ideas presented, but more in the subjective correlate of that grasp, in pure will-less knowing. For as the painter lets us see things through his eyes, we get here at the same time a fellow-feeling and an after-feeling of the deep peace of mind and the complete silence of the will which were needed to sink knowledge so wholly into those lifeless objects and to grasp them with such love, that is, here with such a degree of objectivity.—The effect of landscape painting proper is, on the whole, still of this kind. But because the Ideas presented, as higher levels of the objectivity of the will, are already more significant and expressive, the objective side of aesthetic pleasure comes out more and balances the subjective. Pure knowing as such is no longer wholly the main thing. With equal power the known Idea works, the world as representation at a significant level of the objectification of the will.

But animal painting and animal sculpture reveal a much higher level. Of the latter we have significant ancient remains: for example horses, in Venice, on Monte cavallo, on the Elgin reliefs, also at Florence, in bronze and marble; in the same place the ancient boar and the howling wolves; further the lions at the arsenal in Venice; and also in the Vatican a whole hall full of animals, mostly ancient, and so on. In these presentations the objective side of aesthetic pleasure gets a decided predominance over the subjective. The peace of the subject that knows these Ideas, and has quieted its own will, is present, as in all aesthetic contemplation. But its effect is not felt, for the restlessness and violence of the will presented occupy us. It is that willing which also makes up our own nature that comes before our eyes here. It is in forms in which its appearance is not, as in us, ruled and softened by presence of mind, but presents itself in stronger features and with a clearness that borders on the grotesque and the monstrous. In return it is without disguise, naive and open, lying free in the light of day, and on this our interest in animals rests. The characteristic of the species already came out in the presentation of plants, but showed itself only in the forms. Here it becomes much more significant, and expresses itself not only in shape but in action, posture and gesture, though still always only as the character of the species, not of the individual.—This knowledge of Ideas of higher levels, which we receive in painting through another’s mediation, we can also share directly, by purely contemplative intuition of plants and by watching animals, in their free, natural and comfortable state. The objective contemplation of their varied, wonderful shapes and of their doings and goings is an instructive lesson from the great book of nature. It is a deciphering of the true signatura rerum [29]. In it we see the many degrees and ways of manifestation of the will, which, being one and the same in all beings, everywhere wills the same thing, namely what objectifies itself as life, as existence, in such endless variety and so many different shapes. These are all accommodations to the different outward conditions, and are like many variations on the same theme. But if we wanted to give the observer the key to their inner nature, for reflection too and in one word, we could best use [30] Jakob Böhm, in his book De Signatura rerum, chap. 1, §. 15, 16, 17, says: “And there is nothing in nature that does not also reveal its inner form outwardly; for the inward is always working toward revelation.———Every thing has its mouth for revelation.———And that is the language of nature, in which every thing speaks out of its own property and always reveals and presents itself.———For every thing reveals its mother, who thus gives the essence and the will to the form.” for this that Sanskrit formula which occurs so often in the holy books of the Hindus and is called Mahavakya, that is, the great word: “Tat twam asi,” that is, “this living being are you.”

45 Finally, to present intuitively and directly the Idea in which the will reaches the highest degree of its objectification is the great task of history painting and sculpture. The objective side of the joy in the beautiful is here clearly predominant, and the subjective has stepped into the background. It should also be noted that on the next level below this, in animal painting, the characteristic is wholly one with the beautiful: the most characteristic lion, wolf, horse, sheep, bull was always also the most beautiful. The reason is that animals have only the character of the species, no individual character. In the presentation of man, however, the character of the species separates from the character of the individual. The former is now called beauty (wholly in the objective sense), but the latter keeps the name character or expression. And the new difficulty arises of presenting both perfectly at once in the same individual.

Human beauty is an objective expression that marks the most perfect objectification of the will at the highest level of its knowability: the Idea of man in general, completely expressed in the intuited form. However much the objective side of the beautiful comes out here, the subjective remains its constant companion. No object carries us away so quickly to purely aesthetic looking as the most beautiful human face and figure. At the sight of them an inexpressible pleasure seizes us at once and lifts us above ourselves and everything that torments us. This is possible only because this clearest and purest knowability of the will puts us also most easily and quickly into the state of pure knowing. In that state our personality, our willing with its constant pain, disappears for as long as the purely aesthetic joy lasts. That is why Goethe says: “Whoever sees human beauty, no evil can touch him: he feels himself in harmony with himself and with the world.”—That nature succeeds in producing a beautiful human figure we must explain as follows. The will, in objectifying itself in an individual on this highest level, completely overcomes, through happy circumstances and its own power, all the obstacles and resistance that the appearances of the will on lower levels set against it. Such are the forces of nature, from which it must always first win and wrest the matter that belongs to all of them. Further, the appearance of the will on the upper levels always has multiplicity in its form. The tree is already only a systematic aggregate of countless repeated sprouting fibers. This composition increases more and more as one goes higher, and the human body is a highly combined system of quite different parts, each of which has a life subordinate to the whole yet also its own, vita propria. That all these parts should be subordinated to the whole in exactly the right way and coordinated with one another, should work together in harmony to present the whole, and that nothing should be excessive and nothing stunted—all these are the rare conditions whose result is beauty, the perfectly stamped character of the species.—So it is with nature. But how with art?—People think, by imitating nature.—But by what is the artist to recognize its successful work, the one to imitate, and pick it out among the failures, unless he anticipates the beautiful before experience? Besides, has nature ever produced a man perfectly beautiful in all parts?—Then people have thought that the artist must collect the beautiful parts distributed singly among many men and put together a beautiful whole from them: a perverse and thoughtless opinion. For the question again is, by what is he to recognize that exactly these forms are beautiful and those are not?—We can also see how far the old German painters got in beauty by imitating nature. Look at their nude figures.—Purely a posteriori and from mere experience, no knowledge of the beautiful is possible at all. It is always, at least in part, a priori, though of a quite different kind from the forms of the principle of sufficient reason that we are conscious of a priori.

These concern the general form of appearance as such, as it grounds the possibility of knowledge in general, the general how of appearing without exception. From this knowledge mathematics and pure natural science come. That other kind of a priori knowledge, which makes the presentation of the beautiful possible, concerns instead the content of the appearances, not the form; the what of appearing, not the how. We all recognize human beauty when we see it. But in the true artist this happens with such clearness that he shows it as he never saw it, and surpasses nature in his presentation. This is possible only because the will, whose adequate objectification at its highest level is here to be judged and found, is we ourselves. Only through this do we really have an anticipation of what nature (which is the will that makes up our own nature) is trying to present. In the true man of genius this anticipation is accompanied by such a degree of presence of mind that, in knowing the Idea in the single thing, he as it were understands nature at half a word, and now speaks out purely what she only stammers. He stamps the beauty of form, which she fails at in a thousand tries, on the hard marble. He sets it up against nature, calling out to her, as it were: “That was what you wanted to say!” And “Yes, that was it!” echoes back from the connoisseur.—Only so could the Greek of genius find the original type of the human figure and set it up as the canon of the school of sculpture. And only by virtue of such an anticipation is it possible for all of us to recognize the beautiful where nature has really succeeded in the single case. This anticipation is the ideal. It is the Idea so far as it is known, at least half a priori, and, as such, coming to meet what is given a posteriori by nature to complete it, becomes practical for art. The possibility of such an anticipation of the beautiful a priori in the artist, and of its recognition a posteriori in the connoisseur, lies in the fact that artist and connoisseur are themselves the in-itself of nature, the will objectifying itself. For only like, as Empedocles said, is known by like: only nature can understand itself, only nature will fathom itself. But also only by spirit is spirit perceived [31].

The perverse opinion that the Greeks found the ideal of human beauty they set up entirely empirically, by gathering single beautiful parts, noting a knee here and uncovering an arm there, has an exact analogue in regard to poetry. This is the assumption that Shakespeare, for example, noted in his own experience of the world the countless, many-sided characters in his dramas, so true, so consistently held, so worked out from the depths, and then reproduced them. The impossibility and absurdity of such an assumption needs no discussion. It is clear that genius produces works of poetry only through an anticipation of the characteristic, just as it produces works of the visual arts only through a divining anticipation of the beautiful. Both need experience, though, as a pattern, which alone calls forth to full clearness what is obscurely known to them a priori, and only then makes deliberate presentation possible.

Human beauty was explained above as the most perfect objectification of the will at the highest level of its knowability. It expresses itself through form. Form lies in space alone and has no necessary relation to time, as motion, for example, has. To that extent we can say: the adequate objectification of the will through a merely spatial appearance is beauty, in the objective sense. The plant is nothing other than such a merely spatial appearance of the will. No motion, and so no relation to time (apart from its development), belongs to the expression of its nature. Its mere shape expresses its whole nature and lays it open. Animal and man [32] The last sentence is the German rendering of Helvetius’s il n’y a que l’esprit qui sente l’esprit, which I did not need to note in the first edition. But since then, through the stupefying influence of Hegelian sham wisdom, the age has become so degraded and so coarse that many a person might even suppose that an allusion is made here to the contrast between “spirit and nature.” I am therefore obliged to guard myself expressly against having such vulgar philosophemes imputed to me. however need, for the complete revelation of the will appearing in them, a further series of actions, through which that appearance in them gets a direct relation to time. All this has already been discussed in the previous book. It connects to our present inquiry as follows. The merely spatial appearance of the will can objectify it on any given level perfectly or imperfectly, and that is what makes beauty or ugliness. In the same way the objectification of the will in time, that is, action, and indeed the immediate kind, so motion, can correspond purely and perfectly to the will objectified in it. It can do so without foreign admixture, without anything superfluous, without anything lacking, expressing just the particular act of will in each case. Or all this can be the other way round. In the first case the motion is done with grace; in the other, without it. So just as beauty is the corresponding presentation of the will in general through its merely spatial appearance, grace is the corresponding presentation of the will through its appearance in time. That is, it is the perfectly right and fitting expression of each act of will, through the motion and posture that objectify it. Since motion and posture already presuppose the body, Winckelmann’s expression is very right and apt when he says: “Grace is the peculiar relation of the acting person to the action.” (Works, vol. 1, p. 258.) It follows of itself that beauty can be attributed to plants, but not grace, except in a figurative sense; to animals and men both, beauty and grace. According to what has been said, grace consists in this: every motion and posture is carried out in the easiest, fittest and most comfortable way, and so is the purely corresponding expression of its aim, or of the act of will. It has nothing superfluous, which would show as purposeless, meaningless fumbling or a twisted posture, and nothing lacking, which would show as wooden stiffness. Grace presupposes as its condition a right proportion of all the limbs, a regular, harmonious build of the body. For only by this are perfect ease and evident fitness possible in all postures and motions. So grace is never without a certain degree of beauty of the body. Both, perfect and together, are the clearest appearance of the will on the highest level of its objectification.

As mentioned above, it is part of what distinguishes mankind that in it the character of the species and that of the individual come apart, so that, as said in the previous book, each man in a way presents a quite peculiar Idea. The arts whose aim is the presentation of the Idea of mankind therefore have, besides beauty as the character of the species, also the character of the individual as a task. This is mainly what is called character. Yet even this only so far as it is not to be seen as something accidental, entirely peculiar to the individual in his singleness, but as a side of the Idea of mankind that comes out especially in this individual, and whose presentation therefore serves the revelation of that Idea. So the character, though individual as such, must still be grasped and presented ideally, that is, with its significance for the Idea of mankind in general brought out (to whose objectification it contributes in its own way). Otherwise the presentation is a portrait, a repetition of the single thing as such, with all its accidents. And even the portrait should, as Winckelmann says, be the ideal of the individual.

That character, to be grasped ideally, which is the bringing out of a peculiar side of the Idea of mankind, now shows itself visibly. It does so partly through the lasting physiognomy and bodily build, partly through passing emotion and passion, the modification of knowing and willing by each other, all of which expresses itself in mien and motion. The individual always belongs to mankind, and mankind in turn always reveals itself in the individual, and even with an ideal significance peculiar to him. So neither beauty may be canceled by character, nor character by beauty. For canceling the character of the species by that of the individual would give caricature, and canceling the individual by the character of the species would give meaninglessness. Therefore a presentation aiming at beauty, which is mainly what sculpture does, will still always modify this (that is, the character of the species) somewhat by the individual character. It will always express the Idea of mankind in a determinate, individual way, bringing out a particular side of it. For the human individual as such has in a way the dignity of an Idea of his own, and it is essential to the Idea of mankind that it present itself in individuals of peculiar significance. So in the works of the ancients we find the beauty they clearly grasped expressed not through a single figure but through many, bearing different character, as if always taken from another side. Accordingly it is presented differently in Apollo, differently in Bacchus, differently in Hercules, differently in Antinous. Indeed the characteristic can limit the beautiful, and finally even come out as far as ugliness, in the drunken Silenus, in the Faun and so on. But when the characteristic goes as far as an actual canceling of the character of the species, that is, to the unnatural, it becomes caricature.—Still less than beauty may grace be impaired by the characteristic. Whatever posture and motion the expression of character requires, it must still be carried out in the way that suits the person best, is fittest and easiest. Not only the sculptor and painter will observe this, but also every good actor. Otherwise caricature arises here too, as distortion, dislocation.

In sculpture, beauty and grace remain the main thing. The real character of the spirit, coming out in emotion, passion, the interplay of knowing and willing, and presentable only through expression of the face and gesture, is chiefly the property of painting. For although eyes and color, which lie outside the domain of sculpture, contribute much to beauty, they are far more essential still for character. Further, beauty unfolds itself more completely to contemplation from several standpoints, while expression, character, can be grasped perfectly from one standpoint also.

Since beauty is evidently the main aim of sculpture, Lessing tried to explain the fact that Laocoön does not cry out by saying that crying out cannot be combined with beauty. For Lessing this subject became the theme, or at least the starting point, of a book of its own, and much has been written about it before and after him. So I may be allowed to give my opinion on it here as an aside, although so special a discussion does not really belong in the course of our inquiry, which is directed throughout at the general.

46 That Laocoön, in the famous group, does not cry out is evident. The general, ever-recurring surprise at it must come from the fact that in his situation we would all cry out. Nature also demands it. In the most violent physical pain and the greatest bodily fear suddenly come on, all reflection that might bring about a silent endurance is wholly driven out of consciousness, and nature relieves herself by crying out. In this she expresses pain and fear at once, calls the rescuer and frightens the attacker. Winckelmann already missed the expression of crying out. But in seeking to justify the artist he really made Laocoön into a Stoic, who thinks it not in keeping with his dignity to cry out secundum naturam, but puts on his pain the further useless constraint of gritting his teeth against its expression. Winckelmann therefore sees in him “the tried spirit of a great man, who wrestles with torments and seeks to suppress the expression of feeling and shut it up within himself. He does not break out into loud cries, as in Virgil, but only anxious sighs rise from him,” and so on. (Works, vol. 7, p. 98.—The same at more length in vol. 6, p. 104 ff.) Lessing criticized this opinion of Winckelmann’s in his Laocoön and improved on it in the way stated above. In place of the psychological ground he put the purely aesthetic one: that beauty, the principle of ancient art, does not allow the expression of crying out. Another argument he adds, that a wholly passing state, incapable of duration, may not be shown in the motionless work of art, has a hundred examples against it, of excellent figures held in quite fleeting motions: dancing, wrestling, catching and so on. Indeed Goethe, in the essay on Laocoön that opens the Propyläen (p. 8), holds the choice of just such a wholly passing moment to be absolutely necessary.—In our own days Hirt (Horen, 1797, tenth issue), tracing everything back to the highest truth of expression, decided the matter this way: Laocoön does not cry out because, being already about to die of choking, he can no longer cry out. Last, Fernow (Römische Studien, vol. 1, p. 426 ff.) discussed and weighed all three of those opinions, but added no new one himself, instead mediating and uniting the three.

I cannot help wondering that such thoughtful and sharp-sighted men laboriously fetch inadequate grounds from far off, and seize on psychological and even physiological arguments to explain a matter whose ground lies quite near and is at once evident to the unprejudiced. And I wonder especially that Lessing, who came so near the right explanation, still did not hit the real point.

Before any psychological or physiological inquiry whether Laocoön would cry out in his situation or not (which, for the rest, I would answer quite in the affirmative), it must be settled, in regard to the group, that crying out could not be shown in it, for the one reason that showing it lies wholly outside the domain of sculpture. One could not produce in marble a crying Laocoön, but only one tearing his mouth open and trying fruitlessly to cry out, a Laocoön whose voice has stuck in his throat, vox faucibus haesit. The nature of crying out, and so also its effect on the spectator, lies wholly in the sound, not in the gaping of the mouth. This latter phenomenon, which necessarily goes with crying out, must first be motivated and justified by the sound it produces. Then, as characteristic of the action, it is allowable, indeed necessary, even though it detracts from beauty. But in the visual arts, to which the presentation of the cry itself is wholly foreign and impossible, to present the violent means of crying out, the gaping of the mouth, which disturbs all the features and the rest of the expression, would really be foolish. For one would then bring before the eyes the means, which otherwise demands many sacrifices, while its purpose, the cry itself and its effect on the mind, would be missing. Indeed, what is more, one would produce the always ridiculous sight of an effort that has no effect. It is really comparable to the one a joker got for himself by stopping the watchman’s horn tight with wax while he slept, then waking him with a cry of fire and enjoying his fruitless efforts to blow.—Where, on the other hand, the presentation of crying out lies within the domain of the presenting art, it is quite allowable, because it serves truth, that is, the complete presentation of the Idea. So in poetry, which calls on the imagination of the reader for the intuitive presentation. That is why in Virgil Laocoön cries like a bull that has torn loose after the ax has struck him. That is why Homer (Il., XX, 48–53) lets Mars and Minerva cry out quite terribly, without harm to their divine dignity or divine beauty. So too in the actor’s art: Laocoön on the stage had to cry out. Sophocles also has Philoctetes cry out, and on the ancient stage he will really have cried out. As a quite similar case, I remember seeing in London the famous actor Kemble, in a play translated from the German, Pizarro, represent the American Rolla, a half-savage but of very noble character. Yet when he was wounded he cried out loudly and violently, which had a great and excellent effect, since, as highly characteristic, it contributed much to the truth.—A silent crier, painted or in stone, on the other hand, would be far more ridiculous than painted music, which is already censured in Goethe’s Propyläen. For crying out detracts far more from the rest of the expression and from beauty than music does. Music mostly occupies only hands and arms and is to be seen as an action characterizing the person, and so can quite properly be painted, as long as it requires no violent motion of the body or distortion of the mouth. Examples are Saint Cecilia at the organ, Raphael’s violin player in the Sciarra Gallery at Rome, and others.—Because, then, owing to the limits of art, the pain of Laocoön could not be expressed by crying out, the artist had to put every other expression of it into motion. He did this in the highest perfection, as Winckelmann (Works, vol. 6, p. 104 ff.) describes so masterfully. His excellent description therefore keeps its full worth and truth, as soon as one leaves aside the Stoic frame of mind attributed to him [33].

47 Since beauty together with grace is the main subject of sculpture, it loves the nude, and tolerates clothing only so far as it does not hide the forms. It uses drapery not as a covering but as an indirect presentation of the form. This way of presenting occupies the understanding a great deal, since it reaches the intuition of the cause, namely the form of the body, only through the effect, the fall of the folds, which alone is directly given. So in sculpture drapery is in a way what foreshortening is in painting. Both are hints, but not symbolic ones. They are hints which, when they succeed, directly force the understanding to see the thing hinted at just as if it were really given.

Let me insert here, in passing, a comparison that concerns the speaking arts. A beautiful body is most advantageously visible with the lightest clothing, or none at all. So a very beautiful person, if he also had taste and were allowed to follow it, would most gladly go almost naked, dressed only in the manner of the ancients.—In the same way every beautiful mind, rich in thoughts, will always express itself in the most natural, most unreserved and simplest way,³⁴ This episode too has received its supplement in chapter 36 of the second volume. striving, wherever it is possible, to communicate its thoughts to others, so as to ease the loneliness he must feel in a world like this. Conversely, poverty of mind, confusion and crookedness will clothe themselves in the most far-fetched expressions and the darkest phrases. In this way they wrap small, tiny, sober or everyday thoughts in difficult and pompous phrases. They are like the person who, because the majesty of beauty is lacking in him, wants to make up for this lack by clothing, and tries to hide the pettiness or ugliness of his person under barbarous finery, tinsel, feathers, ruffs, puffs and cloak. As embarrassed as such a person would be if he had to go naked, so would many an author be if he were forced to translate his so pompous, dark book into its small, clear content.

48 Besides beauty and grace, history painting has character as its main subject. By character is meant here the presentation of the will at the highest level of its objectification, where the individual, as the bringing out of a particular side of the Idea of mankind, has a peculiar significance, and makes this known not by shape alone but by action of every kind and by the modifications of knowing and willing that cause and accompany it, visible in mien and gesture. If the Idea of mankind is to be presented in this scope, the unfolding of its many-sidedness in significant individuals must be brought before the eyes. And these in turn can be made visible in their significance only through varied scenes, events and actions. History painting solves this infinite task by bringing before the eyes scenes of life of every kind, of great and slight significance. No individual and no action can be without meaning: in all of them and through all of them the Idea of mankind unfolds more and more. So no event of human life is to be excluded from painting. It is therefore a great wrong to the excellent painters of the Netherlandish school if one values only their technical skill, but otherwise looks down on them with contempt because they mostly presented objects from common life, while one holds only the incidents from world history or Bible history to be significant. One should first consider that the inner significance of an action is quite different from its outer significance, and that the two often go separately. The outer significance is the importance of an action with regard to its consequences for and in the real world, that is, according to the principle of sufficient reason. The inner significance is the depth of insight into the Idea of mankind that the action opens up, by drawing into the light the more rarely appearing sides of that Idea. It does so by letting individualities that express themselves clearly and decidedly unfold their peculiarities, by means of aptly placed circumstances. Only inner significance counts in art; outer significance counts in history. The two are wholly independent of each other. They can occur together, but each can also appear alone. An action of the highest importance for history can be, in inner significance, a very ordinary and common one. And conversely a scene from everyday life can be of great inner significance, if in it human individuals, and human doing and willing, down to the most hidden folds, appear in a bright and clear light. Also, with very different outer significance, the inner can be the same. For example, it is all one to the inner whether ministers quarrel over the map about lands and peoples, or peasants in the tavern want to prove their right to each other over playing cards and dice. It is as much the same whether one plays chess with golden figures or with wooden ones. Besides, the scenes and events that make up the life of so many millions of people, their doings and goings, their need and their joy, are already for that reason important enough to be an object of art, and by their rich variety must give material enough for the unfolding of the many-sided Idea of mankind. Even the fleetingness of the moment that art has fixed in such a picture (today called a genre picture) arouses a faint, peculiar emotion. To hold the fleeting world, which ceaselessly changes its shape, in lasting pictures of single events that still stand for the whole, is an achievement of the painter’s art. Through it painting seems to bring time itself to a standstill, by raising the single thing to the Idea of its species. Finally, the historical subjects of painting, with outward significance, often have the disadvantage that just what is significant in them cannot be presented intuitively, but has to be added in thought. In this respect the nominal meaning of the picture must in general be distinguished from the real one. The nominal one is the outer meaning, which only comes in as a concept. The real one is the side of the Idea of mankind that the picture reveals to intuition. For example, let the nominal one be Moses found by the Egyptian princess, a moment of the highest importance for history. The real meaning, on the other hand, what is actually given to intuition, is a foundling rescued from his floating cradle by a distinguished woman, an incident which may have happened often. The costume alone can make that determinate historical case recognizable to the scholar. But costume counts only for the nominal meaning and is indifferent for the real one, for the latter knows only man as such, not arbitrary forms. Subjects taken from history have no advantage over those taken from mere possibility, which therefore are to be named not individually but only generally. For what is really significant in the former is not the individual, not the single event as such, but the general in it, the side of the Idea of mankind that expresses itself through it. On the other hand, determinate historical subjects are by no means to be rejected for that reason. Only, the really artistic view of them, in the painter as in the viewer, never goes to the individually single in them, which is what really makes up the historical, but to the general that expresses itself in them, to the Idea. Also, only such historical subjects are to be chosen where the main thing can really be presented and need not merely be added in thought. Otherwise the nominal meaning gets too far from the real one: what is merely thought in the picture becomes the most important and detracts from what is seen. Even on the stage it is no good for the main thing to happen behind the scene (as in French tragedy); in a picture it is obviously a still much greater fault. Historical subjects have a decidedly harmful effect only when they limit the painter to a field chosen arbitrarily, and not by the aims of art but by others. This is worst when the field is poor in picturesque and significant objects. An example is when it is the history of a small, isolated, stubborn people of a backwater, ruled hierarchically, that is, by delusion, and despised by the great contemporary peoples of the East and West, like the Jews.—Since the migration of peoples lies between us and all ancient peoples just as the former change of the sea bed lies between the present surface of the earth and that earlier one, whose organisms show themselves to us only fossilized, it is in general to be seen as a great misfortune that the people whose past culture was supposed to serve mainly as the base of ours were not, say, the Indians, or the Greeks, or even only the Romans, but precisely these Jews. It was especially an ill star for the painters of genius in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that, in the narrow circle to which they were directed arbitrarily for the choice of subjects, they had to take up miseries of every kind. For the New Testament, in its historical part, is almost still less favorable to painting than the Old, and the history of martyrs and church teachers that follows it is quite an unlucky subject. Still, among the pictures whose subject is the historical or mythological side of Judaism and Christianity, we must distinguish greatly those in which the real, that is, the ethical spirit of Christianity is revealed to intuition by presenting men who are full of this spirit. These presentations are in fact the highest and most admirable achievements of the painter’s art. Only the greatest masters of this art have succeeded in them, especially Raphael and Correggio, the latter above all in his earlier pictures. Paintings of this kind are really not to be counted among the historical ones at all. For mostly they show no event, no action. They are mere groupings of saints, of the Redeemer himself, often still as a child, with his mother, angels and so on. In their mien, especially the eyes, we see the expression, the reflection, of the most perfect knowledge, namely that which is not directed at single things but has grasped the Ideas perfectly, and so the whole nature of the world and of life. In them this knowledge, acting back on the will, does not, like that other knowledge, supply motives for it. On the contrary it has become a quietive of all willing. From it has come perfect resignation, which is the innermost spirit of Christianity as of Indian wisdom: the giving up of all willing, the turning back, the cancellation of the will and with it of the whole nature of this world, that is, redemption. So those masters of art, forever worthy of praise, expressed the highest wisdom intuitively through their works. And here is the summit of all art. Art has followed the will, in its adequate objectivity, the Ideas, through all levels, from the lowest, where causes move it, then where stimuli move it, and finally where motives move it in such varied ways and unfold its nature. Now it ends with the presentation of its free self-cancellation through the one great quietive that dawns on it from the most perfect knowledge of its own nature [35].

49 Everything we have said so far about art rests on the truth that the object of art, whose presentation is the artist’s aim, and whose knowledge must therefore precede his work as its seed and origin, is an Idea, in Plato’s sense, and absolutely nothing else. It is not the single thing, the object of ordinary grasp. Nor is it the concept, the object of rational thinking and science. Idea and concept have something in common, in that both, as unities, stand for a multiplicity of real things. Yet the great difference between the two will have become clear and evident enough from what was said about the concept in the first book and about the Idea in the [36] This passage presupposes the following book entirely for its understanding. present one. I do not claim at all that Plato too already grasped this difference purely. Rather, many of his examples of Ideas and his discussions of them apply only to concepts. We leave this aside, however, and go our own way, glad whenever we step on the track of a great and noble mind, but following not his footsteps but our own goal.—The concept is abstract, discursive, wholly indeterminate within its sphere and determinate only in its boundary. It is reachable and graspable by anyone who has only reason, communicable by words without further mediation, and can be exhausted entirely by its definition. The Idea, on the other hand, which can at most be defined as the adequate representative of the concept, is thoroughly intuitive and, though it stands for an infinite number of single things, is nevertheless thoroughly determinate. The individual as such never knows it, but only the one who has raised himself above all willing and all individuality to the pure subject of knowing. So it is reachable only by the man of genius, and then by one who is, through a heightening of his pure power of knowledge (mostly caused by the works of genius), in a mood of genius. It is therefore not communicable absolutely, but only conditionally. For the Idea, grasped and repeated in the work of art, speaks to each person only in proportion to his own intellectual worth. That is why the most excellent works of every art, the noblest products of genius, must forever remain books closed to the dull majority of men and inaccessible to it, separated from it by a wide gulf, just as the company of princes is inaccessible to the mob. The shallowest, it is true, also let the acknowledged great works pass on authority, so as not to betray their own weakness. But in silence they stay ready to pronounce their sentence of condemnation on them, as soon as they are allowed to hope that they can do so without exposing themselves. Then their long-suppressed hatred of everything great and beautiful, which never spoke to them and so humbled them, and of its authors, joyfully vents itself. For in general, to recognize and honor another’s worth willingly and freely, one must have worth of one’s own. On this is founded the necessity of modesty in all merit, and also the disproportionately loud fame of this virtue. Alone among all its sisters, it is added to his praise every time by anyone who dares to praise a man distinguished in any way, in order to reconcile and quiet the anger of worthlessness. What else is modesty but feigned humility, by which, in a world bristling with base envy, one wants to beg from those who have none the forgiveness for one’s merits and excellences? For whoever claims none for himself, because he really has none, is not modest but only honest.

The Idea is the unity that has fallen apart into multiplicity by the form of time and space of our intuitive apprehension. The concept, on the other hand, is the unity restored out of multiplicity by the abstraction of our reason. It can be called unitas post rem, and the Idea unitas ante rem. Finally, the difference between concept and Idea can also be expressed by a comparison. The concept is like a dead container in which what one has put in really lies side by side, but from which no more can be taken out (by analytic judgments) than one has put in (by synthetic reflection). The Idea, on the other hand, develops in the one who has grasped it representations that are new in relation to the concept of the same name. It is like a living organism, developing, endowed with the power of generation, which brings forth what was not packed into it.

By all that has been said, the concept, however useful it is for life, and however usable, necessary and productive for science, is forever unfruitful for art. The Idea grasped, on the other hand, is the true and only source of every genuine work of art. In its strong originality it is drawn only from life itself, from nature, from the world, and only by the true man of genius, or by one who is for the moment inspired up to genius. Only from such direct conception do genuine works arise, which carry immortal life in them. Just because the Idea is and stays intuitive, the artist is not conscious in abstracto of the intention and aim of his work. Not a concept but an Idea hovers before him. So he cannot give an account of what he does. He works, as people put it, from mere feeling and unconsciously, even by instinct. Imitators, mannerists, imitatores, servum pecus, on the other hand, start in art from the concept. They note what pleases and works in genuine works, make it clear to themselves, grasp it in the concept, that is, abstractly, and then imitate it, openly or covertly, with clever deliberateness. Like parasitic plants they suck their nourishment from the works of others, and like polyps they take on the color of their food. Indeed, going further in comparison, one could claim that they are like machines which chop up very fine what is put into them and mix it together, but can never digest it, so that the foreign components can still be found again and picked out and separated from the mixture. The man of genius alone, by contrast, is like the organic body that assimilates, transforms and produces. For he is, indeed, trained and formed by his predecessors and their works, but he is made fruitful only by life and the world itself, directly, through the impression of the intuitive. So even the highest education never harms his originality. All imitators, all mannerists grasp the nature of the exemplary achievements of others in the concept. But concepts can never give a work inner life. The age, that is, the dull crowd of each time, itself knows only concepts and sticks to them. It therefore receives mannered works with quick and loud applause. But the same works are already unenjoyable after a few years, because the spirit of the age, that is, the ruling concepts, on which alone they could be rooted, has changed. Only the genuine works, drawn directly from nature and life, stay, like these themselves, forever young and always strongly original. For they belong to no age, but to mankind. And just as, for this very reason, they were received coolly by their own age, whose fashions they scorned to cling to, and were recognized late and unwillingly, because they uncovered indirectly and negatively that age’s particular error, so for the same reason they cannot grow old. They speak, even in the latest time, still fresh and always new. Then they are also no longer exposed to being overlooked and misjudged. They stand crowned and sanctioned by the applause of the few minds capable of judging, who appear singly and sparsely through the centuries [37] and cast their votes. The slowly growing sum of these votes founds the authority which alone is that judgment seat one means when one appeals to posterity. It is those successively appearing individuals alone. For the mass and multitude of posterity will always be as perverse and dull as the mass and multitude of contemporaries always was and always is.—Read the complaints of great minds, from every century, about their contemporaries. They always sound as if from today, because the human race is always the same. At every time and in every art, mannerism takes the place of spirit, which is always the property of individuals only. And mannerism is the old, cast-off dress of the last appearance of spirit that existed and was recognized. By all this, as a rule, the applause of posterity is won only at the cost of the applause of contemporaries, and conversely [38].

50 If the aim of all art is the communication of the Idea grasped, which, in just such mediation through the spirit of the artist, where it appears cleaned of everything foreign and isolated, now becomes comprehensible even to one who has weaker receptiveness and no productivity; and if, further, starting from the concept is objectionable in art, then we cannot approve when a work of art is deliberately and avowedly meant to express a concept. This is the case in allegory. An allegory is a work of art that means something other than what it presents. But the intuitive, and so the Idea too, speaks itself directly and wholly perfectly, and needs no mediation of something else to hint at it. What, then, in [39] Apparent rari, nantes in gurgite vasto.

40 On this see chapter 34 of the second volume. this way, by something quite different, is hinted at and represented, because it cannot itself be brought before intuition, is always a concept. By allegory, therefore, a concept is always to be designated, and so the spirit of the viewer is to be led away from the intuitive representation presented to a quite different, abstract, non-intuitive one, which lies wholly outside the work of art. Here, then, picture or statue is supposed to do what writing does, only much more perfectly. What we declare to be the aim of art, the presentation of the Idea, which can be grasped only intuitively, is not the aim here. For what is intended here no great perfection of the work of art is required at all. It is enough that one sees what the thing is meant to be, since as soon as that is found the purpose is reached, and the spirit is now led to a quite different kind of representation, an abstract concept, which was the aim set. Allegories in the visual arts are therefore nothing other than hieroglyphs. The artistic worth they may otherwise have as intuitive presentations does not come to them as allegories but from elsewhere. That the Night by Correggio, the Genius of Fame by Hannibal Caracci, the Hours by Poussin are very beautiful pictures is quite to be separated from their being allegories. As allegories they do no more than an inscription, indeed rather less. We are reminded here again of the distinction made above between the real and the nominal meaning of a picture. The nominal one here is just the allegorical as such, for example the Genius of Fame. The real is what is actually presented: here a beautiful winged youth, with beautiful boys flying around him. This expresses an Idea. But this real meaning works only as long as one forgets the nominal, allegorical one. If one thinks of this, one leaves intuition, and an abstract concept occupies the spirit. And the passage from the Idea to the concept is always a fall. Indeed that nominal meaning, that allegorical intention, often does harm to the real meaning, the intuitive truth. So, for example, the unnatural lighting in the Night by Correggio, which, however beautifully executed, is motivated merely allegorically and is impossible in reality. So if an allegorical picture also has artistic worth, this is quite separate and independent of what it does as allegory. Such a work of art serves two purposes at once, namely the expression of a concept and the expression of an Idea. Only the latter can be an aim of art. The other is a foreign aim, the playful amusement of making a picture at the same time do the service of an inscription, as a hieroglyph, invented for the sake of those whom the real nature of art can never speak to. It is the same as when a work of art is at the same time a useful tool, where it also serves two purposes: for example a statue that is at the same time a candelabrum or a caryatid, or a bas-relief that is at the same time the shield of Achilles. Pure friends of art will approve neither the one nor the other. An allegorical picture can, it is true, make a lively impression on the mind precisely in this character. But under the same circumstances an inscription would work the same. For example, suppose the wish for fame is lastingly and firmly rooted in a man’s mind, and he even looks on fame as his rightful property, which is withheld from him only so long as he has not yet produced the documents of his possession. And suppose he now steps before the Genius of Fame with his laurel crowns. Then his whole mind is stirred by it, and his strength is called to activity. But the same would happen if he suddenly saw the word “Fame” large and clear on the wall. Or suppose a man has made known a truth that is important either as a statement for practical life or as an insight for science, but has found no belief. Then an allegorical picture showing Time lifting the veil and letting naked Truth be seen will work powerfully on him. But the motto “Le tems découvre la vérité” would do the same. For what really works here is always only the abstract thought, not what is seen.

If, then, as said, allegory in the visual arts is a faulty effort, serving a purpose wholly foreign to art, it becomes quite intolerable when it leads so far that the presentation falls into silliness through forced and violently dragged-in interpretations. Examples are a tortoise to hint at feminine reserve; Nemesis looking down into the bosom of her garment, hinting that she also sees into what is hidden; and Bellori’s interpretation that Hannibal Caracci clothed Voluptuousness in a yellow garment because he meant to hint that her joys soon wither and turn yellow as straw.—Now when there is no connection at all, founded on subsumption under the concept or on association of ideas, between what is presented and the concept hinted at, but sign and thing signified are linked wholly by convention, by a positive rule that arose by chance, then I call this variety of allegory symbol. So the rose is a symbol of secrecy, the laurel a symbol of fame, the palm a symbol of victory, the shell a symbol of pilgrimage, the cross a symbol of the Christian religion. To this belong also all hints directly by mere colors, such as yellow as the color of falseness and blue as the color of fidelity. Such symbols may often be useful in life, but their worth is foreign to art. They are to be regarded quite as hieroglyphs, or even as Chinese writing by words, and really stand in one class with coats of arms, with the bush that indicates an inn, with the key by which one recognizes chamberlains, or the leather by which one recognizes miners.—Finally, when certain historical or mythical persons, or personified concepts, are made recognizable by symbols fixed once for all, these would properly be called emblems. Such are the animals of the Evangelists, the owl of Minerva, the apple of Paris, the anchor of hope and so on. Meanwhile by emblems people mostly mean those pictorial, simple presentations explained by a motto, which are supposed to illustrate a moral truth, and of which there are large collections by J. Camerarius, Alciatus and others. They make the transition to poetic allegory, which will be discussed further below.—Greek sculpture appeals to intuition, therefore it is aesthetic. Hindostanee sculpture appeals to the concept, therefore it is merely symbolic.

This judgment on allegory, founded on our considerations so far about the inner nature of art and closely connected with them, is directly opposed to the view of Winckelmann. Far from declaring allegory, as we do, to be something wholly foreign to the aim of art and often disturbing it, he speaks for it everywhere. He even (Works, vol. 1, p. 55 ff.) puts the highest aim of art in the “presentation of general concepts and non-sensory things.” It may be left to everyone to join one view or the other. Only, in these and similar views of Winckelmann’s, touching the real metaphysics of the beautiful, the truth became very clear to me that one can have the greatest receptiveness and the most correct judgment about the beauty of art, and yet not be able to give an abstract and properly philosophical account of the nature of the beautiful and of art. In just the same way one can be very noble and virtuous, and have a very delicate conscience that decides single cases with the accuracy of a gold balance, and yet not be able for that reason to fathom philosophically the ethical significance of actions and set it out in abstracto.

Allegory has quite a different relation to poetry than to the visual arts. Though objectionable in the latter, in poetry it is quite allowable and serves its purpose. For in the visual arts it leads from the given intuitive, the real object of all art, to abstract thoughts. In poetry the relation is the other way round. Here what is directly given in words is the concept, and the nearest aim is always to lead from this to the intuitive, whose presentation the imagination of the hearer must take over. If in the visual arts one is led from what is directly given to something else, this must always be a concept, because here only the abstract cannot be directly given. But a concept may never be the origin of a work of art, nor its communication the aim. In poetry, on the other hand, the concept is the material, what is directly given, which can therefore very well be left in order to call up a wholly different intuitive thing in which the goal is reached. In the context of a poem some concept or abstract thought may be indispensable which nevertheless in itself and directly is capable of no intuitiveness. It is then often brought to intuitiveness by some example to be subsumed under it. This already happens in every figurative expression, and in every metaphor, simile, parable and allegory, which differ only in the length and fullness of their presentation. In the speaking arts, similes and allegories are therefore of excellent effect. How beautifully Cervantes says of sleep, to express that it withdraws us from all mental and bodily suffering, “it is a cloak that covers the whole man.” How beautifully Kleist expresses allegorically the thought that philosophers and researchers enlighten the human race, in the verse:

“Those whose nightly lamp lights up the whole globe.” How strongly and vividly Homer describes Ate, the bringer of ruin, when he says: “She has tender feet, for she does not step on the hard ground, but only walks on the heads of men” (Il., XIX, 91). How powerfully the fable of Menenius Agrippa about the stomach and the limbs worked on the Roman people who had walked out of the city. How beautifully Plato’s allegory of the cave, which I mentioned earlier, at the beginning of the seventh book of the Republic, expresses a highly abstract philosophical doctrine. The fable of Persephone should likewise be seen as a profound allegory with a philosophical point: by tasting a pomegranate in the underworld she falls into its power. This becomes especially clear in the treatment of the fable that Goethe worked into the Triumph of Sensibility as an episode, a treatment beyond all praise. I know of three extended allegorical works. One is open and avowed: the incomparable Criticon of Balthasar Gracian, a large, rich web of linked and highly ingenious allegories. Here they serve as a cheerful dress for moral truths, and by that very means he gives those truths the greatest intuitiveness, and the richness of his inventions amazes us. The other two are hidden: Don Quixote and Gulliver in Lilliput. Don Quixote is an allegory of the life of every person who does not, like others, care only about his personal welfare, but pursues an objective, ideal aim that has taken hold of his thinking and willing. Of course this makes him look odd in this world. With Gulliver you only need to take everything physical as spiritual, and you will see what the satirical rogue, as Hamlet would call him, meant by it.—In poetic allegory, then, the concept is always what is given, and the allegory wants to make it intuitive by means of a picture. Sometimes a painted picture may express it or support it. Even so, that picture is not regarded as a work of the visual arts, but only as a meaningful hieroglyph. It makes no claim to pictorial value, only to poetic value. Lavater’s fine allegorical vignette is of this kind, and it must hearten every noble champion of truth: a hand holding a light is stung by a wasp, while above, gnats burn themselves in the flame. Underneath is the motto:

“And though it singes the gnat’s wing, and bursts its skull and all its little brain, light stays light; and even if the fiercest wasp stings me, I still will not let it go.”

The gravestone with the snuffed-out, smoking candle and the inscription also belongs here:

“When it’s all over, it will show whether it was a tallow candle or a wax candle.”—

Finally, an old German family tree is of this kind. On it, the last offshoot of a family with a long line of ancestors expressed his decision to end his life in complete abstinence and chastity, and so let his line die out. He did it by having himself drawn at the root of the many-branched tree, cutting off the tree above him with a pair of scissors. In general, the symbolic pictures I mentioned above, usually called emblems, belong here. One could also describe them as short painted fables with the moral stated.—Allegories of this kind always count as poetic, not pictorial, and that is exactly what justifies them. Here too the execution of the picture always stays secondary, and nothing more is asked of it than that it show the subject recognizably. But in poetry, just as in the visual arts, allegory turns into symbol when the only link between what is shown to the senses and the abstract thing it stands for is an arbitrary one. Basically everything symbolic rests on agreement. So the symbol has this drawback, among others: its meaning is forgotten over time, and then it falls completely silent. Who would guess, if he did not know it, why the fish is a symbol of Christianity? Only a Champollion could, because it is a phonetic hieroglyph through and through. So today the Revelation of John, as a poetic allegory, stands about where the reliefs with magnus Deus sol Mithra stand, which people still go on interpreting [41].

51 Now, in our study of art in general, we turn from the visual arts to poetry. We cannot doubt that poetry too aims to reveal the Ideas, the grades of the objectification of the will, and to pass them on to the listener with the clearness and liveliness with which the poet’s mind grasped them. Ideas are essentially intuitive. In poetry, what words pass on directly is only abstract concepts. But the aim is plainly that the listener should perceive the Ideas of life in the representatives of these concepts, and this can happen only with the help of his own imagination. To set the imagination moving as this aim requires, the abstract concepts, which are the direct material of poetry as well as of the driest prose, must be put together so that their spheres cut across one another. Then none of them can stay in its abstract universality. Instead, an intuitive representative appears before the imagination, and the poet’s words keep modifying it further, as he intends. A chemist mixes perfectly clear and transparent liquids and gets solid precipitates. In the same way the poet knows how to precipitate, so to speak, the concrete, the individual, the intuitive representation, out of the abstract, transparent universality of concepts,⁴² See Chap. 36 of the second volume. by the way he combines them. For the Idea is known only intuitively, and knowledge of the Idea is the aim of all art. Mastery in poetry, as in chemistry, makes one able to get exactly the precipitate one intends, every time. The many epithets in poetry serve this purpose. They narrow the universality of each concept more and more, until it becomes intuitive. Homer adds an adjective to almost every noun. The concept of the adjective cuts across the sphere of the first concept and at once makes it considerably smaller, so that it comes much closer to intuition. For example:

Εν δ’ επεσ’ Ωκεανῳ λαμπρον φαος ἠελιοιο, Ἑλκον νυκτα μελαιναν επι ζειδωρον αρουραν.

(Occidit vero in Oceanum splendidum lumen solis, Trahens noctem nigram super almam terram.)

And the lines “A gentle wind blows from the blue sky, the myrtle stands quiet and the laurel tall,” precipitate the whole delight of the southern climate before the imagination out of a few concepts.

Rhythm and rhyme are a quite special aid of poetry. I can give no other explanation of their incredibly strong effect than this: our powers of imagination are essentially bound to time, and this has given us a peculiarity by which we inwardly follow every regularly repeating sound and, as it were, join in with it. So rhythm and rhyme do two things. First, they bind our attention, since we follow the recital more willingly. Second, they produce in us a blind agreement with what is recited, which comes before any judgment. This gives the recited material a certain emphatic power of conviction, independent of any reasons.

Poetry uses concepts to pass on the Ideas, and concepts are general. Because its material is so general, the field of poetry is very large. The whole of nature, the Ideas of every grade, can be presented through it. It proceeds according to the Idea to be passed on: sometimes by describing, sometimes by narrating, sometimes by presenting directly as drama. In presenting the lower grades of the objectivity of the will, the visual arts mostly do better than poetry, because nature without knowledge, and even merely animal nature, shows almost its whole being in a single well-chosen moment. Man is different. He expresses himself not just through his bare shape and the look on his face, but through a chain of actions and the thoughts and emotions that go with them. In this respect man is the main subject of poetry, and no other art equals poetry there, because it has the advantage of progression, which the visual arts lack.

So the great subject of poetry is to reveal the Idea that is the highest grade of the objectivity of the will, and to present man in the connected series of his strivings and actions.—It is true that experience and history also teach us to know man. But they more often teach us to know men than man. That is, they give more empirical information about how people behave toward one another, from which rules for one’s own conduct follow, than they give deep looks into the inner being of man. Still, this deeper insight is by no means shut out from them. But whenever it is the being of humanity itself that opens up to us in history or in our own experience, then we, in the one case, and the historian, in the other, have already grasped it with an artist’s eyes, already poetically—that is, according to the Idea, not the appearance, according to the inner being, not the relations. Our own experience is an unavoidable condition for understanding poetry, and history as well. For it is, so to speak, the dictionary of the language that both speak. History stands to poetry as portrait painting stands to history painting. History gives what is true in the particular, poetry what is true in the universal. History has the truth of the appearance, and can document it from the appearance itself. Poetry has the truth of the Idea, which is found in no single appearance and yet speaks out of all of them. The poet chooses, and purposely presents, significant characters in significant situations. The historian takes both as they come. Indeed, he must not look at events and persons, or choose them, by their inner, genuine significance, which expresses the Idea. He must go by their outer, apparent, relative significance, the importance they have for the connection of events and for their consequences. He may consider nothing in and for itself, by its essential character and expression. He has to consider everything by its relation, in the chain of events, in its influence on what follows, and above all on his own age. So he will not pass over an action of a king that is of little significance, even common in itself, because it has consequences and influence. On the other hand, actions of individuals that are in themselves highly significant, and even very distinguished individuals, are not for him to mention if they have no consequences and no influence. For his way of looking follows the principle of sufficient reason, and takes hold of the appearance, whose form this principle is. But the poet grasps the Idea, the being of humanity, outside all relation and outside all time: the adequate objectivity of the thing in itself at its highest grade. Now, even in the way of looking that the historian needs, the inner being, the significance of the appearances, the kernel of all those shells, can never be wholly lost. At least someone who looks for it can still find and recognize it. Still, what is significant in itself and not in relation, the real unfolding of the Idea, will be found far more correctly and clearly in poetry than in history. So, paradoxical as it sounds, we must credit poetry with much more real, genuine, inner truth than history. For the historian is supposed to follow the individual event exactly as it is in life, as it develops in time along the many tangled chains of grounds and consequences. But he cannot possibly have all the data for this, or have seen everything or found out everything. Every moment the original of his picture leaves him, or a false one is slipped in for it. This happens so often that I think I may assume there is more falsehood than truth in all history. The poet, on the other hand, has grasped the Idea of humanity from some particular side, the one he is just about to present. What objectifies itself to him in that Idea is the being of his own self. His knowledge, as I explained above when discussing sculpture, is half a priori. His model stands before his mind, firm, clear, brightly lit, and cannot leave him. So in the mirror of his mind he shows us the Idea pure and clear, and his portrayal is true to life itself, down to the smallest detail [43]. The great historians of antiquity are therefore poets in particular points where the data leave them, for example in the speeches of their heroes. Indeed, their whole way of handling the material comes close to the epic. This gives their accounts unity, and lets them keep inner truth even where outer truth was not open to them or was even falsified. A moment ago we compared history to portrait painting, as opposed to poetry, which would correspond to history painting. In that comparison we find that the ancient historians also follow Winckelmann’s saying that a portrait should be the ideal of the individual. They present the particular in such a way that the side of the Idea of humanity that speaks in it comes forward. The modern historians, with few exceptions, mostly give only “a rubbish barrel and a lumber room, and at most a grand drama of state”.—So whoever wants to know [44] It goes without saying that throughout I speak only of the rare, great, genuine poet, and that I mean nobody less than that stale crowd of mediocre poets, rhyme-smiths and inventors of fairy tales, which flourishes so rankly, especially in Germany today, and into whose ears people should shout without ceasing from every side:

Mediocribus esse poëtis Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.

It deserves serious thought how much of their own and other people’s time and paper this swarm of mediocre poets wastes, and how harmful their influence is. The public always grabs for what is new, and it also has a natural liking for what is perverse and flat, because that is more like itself. So the works of the mediocre pull the public away from the genuine masterpieces and from its own education through them, and hold it back. They thus work directly against the good influence of men of genius, spoil taste more and more, and so slow the progress of the age. So criticism and satire should whip the mediocre poets without any indulgence or pity, until, for their own good, they are brought to spend their leisure reading good things rather than writing bad ones.—For if the botching of the unqualified could throw even the gentle god of the Muses into such a rage that he could flay Marsyas, I do not see what mediocre poetry can base its claim to toleration on.

humanity, its inner being, which is the same in all appearances and developments, according to its Idea, will find that the works of the great, immortal poets hold up a much truer and clearer picture than historians ever can. Even the best historians are far from being the first as poets, and they do not have a free hand either. The relation between the two in this respect can also be shown by the following comparison. The mere, pure historian, who works from the data alone, is like a man with no knowledge of mathematics who comes across some figures by chance and finds out the proportions in them by measuring. What he finds out empirically is therefore burdened with all the flaws of the drawn figure. The poet, by contrast, is like the mathematician, who constructs those proportions a priori, in pure intuition, and states them not as the drawn figure actually has them, but as they are in the Idea that the drawing is supposed to make perceptible.—That is why Schiller says:

“What never and nowhere happened, that alone never grows old.” When it comes to knowing the nature of humanity, I must even grant greater value to biographies, above all autobiographies, than to history proper, at least as history is usually written. For one thing, the data can be gathered more accurately and completely for biographies than for history. For another, in history proper it is not so much individual people who act as nations and armies. The few individuals who do appear are seen from such a distance, with so much around them and such a large retinue, and wrapped besides in stiff state robes or heavy, unbending armor, that it is truly hard to make out the human movement through all this. By contrast, a faithfully told life of one person, in a narrow circle, shows how people act in all their shades and forms: the excellence, virtue and even holiness of some individuals, the perversity, wretchedness and malice of most, the wickedness of a few. And in the respect we are looking at here, namely the inner meaning of what appears, it does not matter at all whether the things the action turns on, viewed relatively, are trifles or matters of weight, farms or kingdoms. All these things are without meaning in themselves, and they get meaning only through the fact, and only to the extent, that the will is moved by them. A motive has significance only through its relation to the will. The relation it has as a thing to other such things does not count at all. A circle one inch across and a circle 40 million miles across have exactly the same geometrical properties. In the same way the events and history of a village and those of a kingdom are essentially the same, and we can study humanity and come to know it in the one as in the other. It is also a mistake to think that autobiographies are full of deceit and pretense. Quite the opposite: lying (though possible anywhere) is perhaps harder there than anywhere. Pretense is easiest in mere conversation. Indeed, paradoxical as it sounds, it is already harder in a letter. There the person is left to himself, looks inward and not outward, finds it hard to bring what is foreign and far away close, and does not have before his eyes the measure of the impression he makes on the other. The other person, on the other hand, calm and in a mood different from the writer’s, looks the letter over, reads it several times at different times, and so easily finds the hidden intention. We also come to know an author as a person most easily from his book, because all those conditions work even more strongly and lastingly there. And pretending in an autobiography is so hard that there is perhaps not a single one that is not, on the whole, truer than any other written history. A man who writes down his life surveys it as a whole and in its large lines. The particular becomes small, what was near moves away, what was far comes near again, and his regard for other considerations shrinks. He is sitting at confession with himself, and sat down to it of his own free will. The spirit of lying does not grip him so easily here. For in every person there is also a leaning toward truth, which has to be overcome first with every lie, and here it has taken up an unusually strong position. The relation between biography and the history of nations can be made clear by the following comparison. History shows us humanity as a view from a high mountain shows us nature: we see much at once, wide stretches, great masses, but nothing becomes distinct, or recognizable in its whole real nature. A life of one person, told, shows us man as we know nature when we walk among its trees, plants, rocks and waters. Now landscape painting, in which the artist lets us look at nature through his eyes, makes it much easier for us to know nature’s Ideas and to reach the state of pure, will-less knowing that this requires. In the same way, for presenting the Ideas that we can look for in history and biography, poetry has a great deal in its favor over both. For here too the man of genius holds up to us a clarifying mirror, in which everything essential and significant is brought together and set in the brightest light, while the accidental and foreign is left out [45].

The poet’s task is to present the Idea of humanity. He can do this in one of two ways. In the first, the person presented is also the person presenting. This happens in lyric poetry, in the song proper, where the poet vividly perceives and describes only his own state. Because of its subject, a certain subjectivity is therefore essential to this kind of poetry.—In the other way, the person presented is quite different from the one presenting, as in all other kinds, where the presenter hides more or less behind what is presented and finally disappears entirely. In the romance, the presenter still expresses his own state somewhat through the tone and bearing of the whole. So the romance, though much more objective than the song, still has something subjective. This fades further in the idyll, much further in the novel, almost entirely in the epic proper, and in the drama it is gone down to the last trace. The drama is the most objective kind of poetry, in more than one respect the most perfect, and also the most difficult. For that very reason the lyric kind is the easiest. Art otherwise belongs only to the rare, genuine man of genius. But even a person who is not eminent on the whole can write a beautiful song, if, in fact, through [46] See Chap. 38 of the second volume. strong stimulation from outside, some enthusiasm raises his mental powers. For all it takes is a vivid perception of his own state in an excited moment. Many single songs, by individuals who otherwise stayed unknown, prove this. The German folk songs prove it especially, and in the “Wunderhorn” we have an excellent collection of them. So do the countless love songs and other songs of the people in all languages. For catching the mood of the moment and embodying it in a song is the whole achievement of this kind of poetry. Even so, in the lyric poetry of genuine poets the inner life of all humanity is mirrored. Everything that millions of people, past, present and future, have felt and will feel in the same situations, because those situations keep recurring, finds its fitting expression there. Because those situations, by constant recurrence, stand there as lasting, just like humanity itself, and always call forth the same feelings, the lyric works of genuine poets stay true, effective and fresh through thousands of years. In general, the poet is the universal man. Everything that has ever moved any person’s heart, everything that human nature, in any situation, brings forth out of itself, everything that dwells and broods somewhere in a human breast—that is his theme and his material, and so is all the rest of nature as well. So the poet can sing of sensual pleasure as well as of mysticism. He can be Anacreon or Angelus Silesius, write tragedies or comedies, portray the sublime or the base attitude, as his mood and calling lead him. So nobody may prescribe to the poet that he should be noble and sublime, moral, pious, Christian, or this or that, still less reproach him for being this and not that. He is the mirror of humanity, and he brings to its consciousness what it feels and does.

Let us now look more closely at the nature of the song proper. Let us take excellent and at the same time pure models as examples, not ones that already approach another kind in some way, such as the romance, elegy, hymn, epigram and so on. Then we will find that the particular nature of the song, in the narrowest sense, is this.—It is the subject of willing, that is, one’s own willing, that fills the consciousness of the singer: often as a released, satisfied willing (joy), probably even more often as a held-back willing (sorrow), always as an emotion, a passion, a stirred state of mind. Alongside this, however, and at the same time, the sight of the surrounding nature makes the singer conscious of himself as the subject of pure, will-less knowing. The unshakable, blessed calm of this subject now stands in contrast to the pressure of willing, which is always restricted, always still needy. The feeling of this contrast, this interplay, is really what the song as a whole expresses, and what makes up the lyric state in general. In this state, pure knowing comes toward us, as it were, to free us from willing and its pressure. We follow, but only for moments. Again and again willing, the memory of our personal aims, tears us away from calm contemplation. But again and again the next beautiful surrounding, in which pure will-less knowledge offers itself to us, draws us out of willing. So in the song and in the lyric mood, willing (the personal interest in aims) and the pure perception of the surroundings that present themselves are mixed together in a strange way. Connections between the two are sought and imagined. The subjective mood, the affection of the will, gives its color to the surroundings we perceive, and they in turn give theirs back to it as a reflection. The genuine song is the imprint of this whole state of mind, mixed and divided in this way.—To make this abstract analysis of a state very far from all abstraction easier to grasp through examples, one can take up any of Goethe’s immortal songs. As especially clear for this purpose I will recommend only a few: “Shepherd’s Lament,” “Welcome and Farewell,” “To the Moon,” “On the Lake,” “Autumn Feeling.” The songs proper in the “Wunderhorn” are also excellent examples, quite especially the one that begins: “O Bremen, I must leave you now.”—A comic and accurately aimed parody of the lyric character is a song by Voss that I find remarkable. In it he describes the feelings of a drunken lead roofer falling from a tower. As he falls past, he makes a remark that is quite foreign to his state, and so belongs to will-free knowledge: that the tower clock shows half past eleven.—Anyone who shares with me the view of the lyric state set out here will also grant that it is really the intuitive and poetic knowledge of the proposition I put forward in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, and already mentioned in this work: that the identity of the subject of knowing with the subject of willing can be called the miracle κατ’ ἐξοχην. So the poetic effect of the song in the end really rests on the truth of that proposition. As life goes on, those two subjects, or, to put it popularly, head and heart, move further and further apart. People increasingly separate their subjective feeling from their objective knowledge. In the child, both are still completely fused. It can hardly tell itself apart from its surroundings, and blurs into them. In the youth, all perception first produces feeling and mood, and even mixes with it, as Byron puts it very beautifully:

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling [47].

That is precisely why the youth clings so much to the intuitive outer side of things. That is why he is fit only for lyric poetry, and only the man for dramatic. The old man can at most be imagined as an epic poet, like Ossian and Homer, because telling stories belongs to the character of old age.

In the more objective kinds of poetry, especially the novel, epic and drama, the aim, the revelation of the Idea of humanity, is reached mainly by two means: by a true and deeply conceived presentation of significant characters, and by inventing significant situations in which they unfold. For just as a chemist’s job is not only to present the simple substances and their main compounds pure and genuine, but also to expose them to the influence of such reagents that make their peculiarities clearly and strikingly visible; [48] I do not live in myself alone; I become a part of what surrounds me, and to me high mountains are a feeling. in the same way the poet’s job is not only to put significant characters before us, true and faithful as nature itself, but he must, so that we can recognize them, bring them into situations in which their peculiarities unfold completely and they present themselves distinctly, in sharp outlines. Such situations are therefore called significant situations. In real life and in history, chance only rarely brings about situations of this quality, and there they stand alone, lost and covered up by the mass of what is insignificant. What should set the novel, epic and drama apart from real life is the significance of the situations throughout, just as much as the grouping and choice of significant characters. In both, the strictest truth is an indispensable condition of their effect. A lack of unity in the characters, a contradiction in them with themselves or with the nature of humanity in general, and also impossibility, or improbability close to it, in the events, even if only in side circumstances, offend in poetry just as much as badly drawn figures, false perspective or faulty lighting do in painting. For there as here we demand the faithful mirror of life, of humanity, of the world, only made clearer by the presentation and made significant by the grouping. The aim of all the arts is one: the presentation of the Ideas. Their essential difference lies only in which grade of the objectification of the will the Idea to be presented is, and this in turn decides the material of the presentation. So even the arts that are furthest apart can be explained by comparing them with each other. For example, to grasp fully the Ideas that express themselves in water, it is not enough to see it in a calm pond or an evenly flowing stream. Those Ideas unfold completely only when the water appears under all the circumstances and obstacles that act on it and make it show all its properties fully. That is why we find it beautiful when it plunges down, roars, foams, leaps up again, or breaks into spray as it falls, or finally, forced by artifice, shoots up as a jet. Showing itself differently under different circumstances, it still always faithfully keeps its character. It is just as natural for it to spurt upward as to lie at rest, mirroring. It is equally ready for the one as for the other, as soon as the circumstances occur. What the fountain-maker achieves with fluid matter, the architect achieves with rigid matter, and the epic or dramatic poet achieves exactly the same with the Idea of humanity. To unfold and make clear the Idea that expresses itself in the object of each art, the will objectifying itself at each grade, is the common aim of all the arts. The life of man, as it mostly shows itself in reality, is like water as it mostly shows itself, in pond and river. But in the epic, novel and tragedy, chosen characters are placed in circumstances in which all their peculiarities unfold, the depths of the human mind open up, and become visible in extraordinary and significant actions. This is how poetry objectifies the Idea of man, whose peculiarity is to present itself in highly individual characters.

Tragedy is to be seen as the peak of poetry, both for the greatness of its effect and for the difficulty of the achievement, and it is recognized as such. It is very significant for our whole inquiry, and well worth noting, that the aim of this highest poetic achievement is to present the terrible side of life. The nameless pain, the misery of humanity, the triumph of wickedness, the mocking rule of chance, and the hopeless fall of the just and the innocent are all put before us here. For in this lies a significant hint about the nature of the world and of existence. It is the conflict of the will with itself, which here, at the highest grade of its objectivity, unfolds most completely and comes forward terribly. It becomes visible in the suffering of humanity. This suffering is brought about partly by chance and error. They appear as rulers of the world, and because of a malice that goes as far as the look of intention, they are personified as fate. Partly it comes from humanity itself, through the crossing of individuals’ strivings of will, through the wickedness and perversity of most. It is one and the same will that lives and appears in all of them, but its appearances fight against each other and tear each other to pieces. In one individual it comes forward powerfully, in another more weakly. Here it is brought to reflection more, there less, and softened by the light of knowledge. At last, in an individual, this knowledge, purified and raised by suffering itself, reaches the point where the appearance, the veil of Maya, no longer deceives him. He sees through the form of appearance, the principium individuationis. The egoism that rests on it dies away in that very act. Then the motives, so powerful until now, lose their power. In their place, the perfect knowledge of the nature of the world, acting as a quietive of the will, brings about resignation: giving up not just life, but the whole will to life itself. So in tragedy we see in the end the noblest, after long struggle and suffering, give up forever the aims they pursued so violently until then, and all the pleasures of life. Or they give up life itself, willingly and joyfully. The Constant Prince of Calderon is one; Gretchen in “Faust” is another; so is Hamlet, whom his Horatio would gladly follow, but who tells Horatio to stay and to draw breath, in pain, a while longer in this rough world, to clear up Hamlet’s fate and to cleanse his memory. So too the Maid of Orleans and the Bride of Messina. They all die purified by suffering, that is, after the will to live in them has already died. In Voltaire’s “Mohammed” this is even said in so many words in the closing words that the dying Palmira calls out to Mohammed: “The world is for tyrants: live, you!”—On the other hand, the demand for so-called poetic justice rests on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of tragedy, indeed of the nature of the world itself. It appears with boldness in all its flatness in the critiques that Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote on Shakespeare’s individual plays, where he complains quite naively about the constant neglect of it. Neglect there is, certainly. For what have the Ophelias, the Desdemonas, the Cordelias done to deserve their fates?—But only the flat, optimistic, Protestant-rationalist, or really Jewish view of the world will make the demand for poetic justice and find its own satisfaction in having it met. The true meaning of tragedy is the deeper insight that what the hero atones for is not his own particular sins, but original sin, that is, the guilt of existence itself:

Pues el delito mayor Del hombre es haber nacido.

(For the greatest guilt of man is that he was born.)

As Calderon puts it directly.

On the way tragedy is handled, I will allow myself only one remark. Presenting a great misfortune is the only thing essential to tragedy. But the many different ways in which the poet brings it about can be put under three kinds. It can happen through the extraordinary wickedness of a character, a wickedness that touches the farthest limits of what is possible, and this character becomes the author of the misfortune. Examples of this kind are Richard III, Iago in “Othello,” Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Franz Moor, Euripides’ Phaedra, Creon in “Antigone,” and the like. It can also happen through blind fate, that is, chance and error. A true model of this kind is Sophocles’ King Oedipus, and also the Women of Trachis, and in general most of the tragedies of the ancients belong here. Among the moderns, examples are “Romeo and Juliet,” Voltaire’s “Tancred,” and “The Bride of Messina.” Finally, the misfortune can also be brought about by the mere position of the persons toward one another, by their relationships. Then there is no need for a monstrous error, or an unheard-of accident, or a character that reaches the limits of humanity in wickedness. Instead, characters of the usual kind in moral terms, in circumstances that often occur, are set against each other so that their situation forces them, knowing and seeing, to cause each other the greatest harm, without the wrong lying wholly on any one side. This last kind seems to me far preferable to the other two. For it shows us the greatest misfortune not as an exception, not as something brought about by rare circumstances or monstrous characters, but as something that comes easily and of itself, almost as something essential, out of what people do and what they are like. In this way it brings the misfortune terribly close to us. In the other two kinds we see monstrous fate and horrible wickedness as terrible powers, but ones that threaten us only from a great distance, and which we might well escape without taking refuge in renunciation. The last kind shows us those powers that destroy happiness and life as ones whose road to us too is open at every moment. It shows the greatest suffering brought about by entanglements whose essentials our own fate could also take on, and by actions that we too might perhaps be capable of committing, and so could not complain of injustice. Then we feel with a shudder that we are already in the middle of hell. Carrying out a play of this last kind also has the greatest difficulty. In it you have to produce the greatest effect with the smallest outlay of means and moving causes, merely through their position and distribution. So in many of the best tragedies this difficulty is avoided. A perfect model of this kind is a play that in other respects is far surpassed by several others of the same great master: it is “Clavigo.” “Hamlet” belongs here to some extent, if one looks only at his relation to Laertes and Ophelia. “Wallenstein” has this advantage too. “Faust” is wholly of this kind if one takes only the affair with Gretchen and her brother as the main action. So is Corneille’s “Cid,” except that it lacks the tragic ending, which the analogous relation of Max to Thekla does have [49].

52 We have now looked at all the fine arts, in the generality that suits our standpoint. We began with fine architecture, whose aim as such is to make clear the objectification of the will at the lowest grade of its visibility, where it shows itself as [50] See Chap. 37 of the second volume. a dull, knowledge-less, law-governed striving of mass, and yet already reveals self-division and conflict, namely between gravity and rigidity.—And we end our inquiry with tragedy, which at the highest grade of the objectification of the will brings before our eyes that very division of the will against itself, in terrible greatness and clarity.—Even so, we find that one fine art has remained outside our inquiry, and had to, since in the systematic order of our presentation there was no fitting place for it: it is music. It stands entirely apart from all the others. We do not recognize in it the copying, the repetition, of any Idea of the beings of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly glorious art, it works so powerfully on the innermost part of man, and it is understood there so completely and so deeply, as a quite universal language, whose clarity even surpasses that of the perceptual world itself, that we surely have more to look for in it than an exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi, which is what Leibniz declared it to be [51]. And yet he was quite right, as far as he looked only at its immediate and outer meaning, its shell. But if it were nothing more, then the satisfaction it gives would have to be like what we feel when a sum comes out right, and it could not be that deep joy with which we see the innermost part of our being brought to speech. So on our standpoint, where the aesthetic effect is what we are watching, we must grant music a much more serious and deeper meaning, one that relates to the innermost nature of the world and of our own self. In the light of this meaning, the numerical relations into which music can be resolved do not stand as what is signified, but themselves first as the sign. That music must stand to the world, in some sense, as a presentation to what is presented, as a copy to its model, we can conclude from the analogy with the other arts. All of them have this character, and the effect of music on us is on the whole of the same kind as theirs, only stronger, quicker, more necessary, more infallible.

52 Leibnitii epistolae, collectio Kortholti: ep. 154.

Also, the relation that music has to the world as a copy of it must be a very intimate one, infinitely true and accurately aimed, because everyone understands it at once, and it shows a certain infallibility in that its form can be traced back to quite definite rules, expressible in numbers, from which it cannot depart at all without ceasing to be music altogether.—Even so, the point of comparison between music and the world, the respect in which music stands to the world in a relation of imitation or repetition, lies very deeply hidden. People have practiced music in all ages without being able to give an account of this. Content to understand it immediately, they give up on understanding this immediate understanding itself in the abstract.

I gave my mind completely to the impression of music in its many forms. Then I came back to reflection and to the course of my thoughts as set out in this work. An insight came to me into music’s inner nature, and into the kind of copy-relation to the world that, by analogy, we must necessarily presuppose for it. This insight is entirely sufficient for me myself and satisfies my inquiry. It will probably be just as clear to anyone who has followed me so far and agreed with my view of the world. But I recognize that proving it is essentially impossible. For it assumes and sets up a relation of music, as a representation, to what can essentially never be a representation, and it wants music to be regarded as a copy of a model that itself can never be directly represented. So all I can do is set out here, at the end of this third book, which is devoted mainly to the study of the arts, that insight into the wonderful art of tones which satisfies me. I must leave agreement or rejection of my view to the effect that music, on the one hand, and the whole single thought I have set out in this work, on the other, have on each reader. Besides, in order to give approval with real conviction to the account of the meaning of music that is to be given here, I think it necessary to listen to music often, with sustained reflection on it. And for this it is again required that one already be very familiar with the whole thought I have set out.

The adequate objectification of the will is the (Platonic) Ideas. The aim of all the other arts is to stir up the knowledge of these Ideas by presenting individual things (for works of art themselves are always such), which is possible only with a corresponding change in the knowing subject. So all of them objectify the will only indirectly, namely by means of the Ideas. And our world is nothing but the appearance of the Ideas in plurality, by entering into the principium individuationis (the form of the knowledge possible to the individual as such). Music, since it passes over the Ideas, is also quite independent of the appearing world, simply ignores it, and could in a way exist even if the world did not exist at all. That cannot be said of the other arts. For music is as direct an objectification and image of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are, whose multiplied appearance makes up the world of individual things. So music is by no means, like the other arts, the image of the Ideas, but an image of the will itself, whose objectivity the Ideas are too. That is precisely why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts: they speak only of shadows, but music speaks of the essence. Since it is the same will that objectifies itself both in the Ideas and in music, only in each of the two in a quite different way, there must be, though by no means any direct likeness, still a parallelism, an analogy, between music and the Ideas, whose appearance in plurality and imperfection is the visible world. Pointing out this analogy will serve as an illustration and make this explanation easier to understand, since the obscurity of the subject makes it difficult.

In the deepest notes of harmony, in the bass, I recognize again the lowest grades of the objectification of the will: inorganic nature, the mass of the planet. As is well known, all the high notes, which move easily and die away faster, are to be seen as arising from the side vibrations of the deep fundamental tone. When it sounds, they always ring softly along with it. It is a law of harmony that only those high notes may go with a bass note which really already sound together with it of themselves (its sons harmoniques) through the side vibrations. This is analogous to the fact that all bodies and organisms of nature must be seen as arising by gradual development out of the mass of the planet. This mass is their support and also their source, and the high notes stand in the same relation to the bass.—Depth has a limit, beyond which no tone can be heard any more. This corresponds to the fact that no matter can be perceived without form and quality, that is, without showing a force that cannot be explained any further, in which an Idea expresses itself. More generally, it corresponds to the fact that no matter can be wholly without will. So, just as a certain degree of pitch is inseparable from a tone as such, a certain degree of expression of will is inseparable from matter.—So for us the bass in harmony is what inorganic nature is in the world: the crudest mass, on which everything rests and out of which everything rises and develops.—Then, in all the supporting voices that produce the harmony, between the bass and the leading voice that sings the melody, I recognize the whole series of grades of the Ideas in which the will objectifies itself. The voices closer to the bass are the lower of those grades, the bodies that are still inorganic but already show themselves in many ways. The higher ones represent to me the plant and animal worlds.—The definite intervals of the scale are parallel to the definite grades of the objectification of the will, to the definite species in nature. A departure from the arithmetical correctness of the intervals, by some temperament, or brought about by the chosen key, is analogous to the departure of the individual from the type of the species. Indeed, the impure discords that give no definite interval can be compared to monstrous freaks of birth between two animal species, or between man and animal.—Now all these bass and supporting voices that make up the harmony lack the coherence in progression that only the upper voice, the one singing the melody, has. It alone also moves quickly and lightly in modulations and runs, while all the others have only a slower motion, without a coherence existing in each of them on its own. The deep bass, the representative of the crudest mass, moves most heavily. Its rising and falling goes only in large steps, in thirds, fourths and fifths, never by one tone, unless it is a bass transposed by double counterpoint. This slow motion is also physically essential to it: a quick run or trill in the depths cannot even be imagined. The higher supporting voices, which run parallel to the animal world, move faster, but still without melodic coherence or meaningful progression. The disconnected course and the law-bound determination of all the supporting voices is analogous to the fact that in the whole unreasoning world, from the crystal to the most perfect animal, no being has a really connected consciousness that would make its life a meaningful whole. None experiences a succession of mental developments, none perfects itself through education. Everything stands there equally at every time as it is by its kind, determined by fixed law.—Finally, in the melody, in the high, singing main voice that leads the whole and, with unbound freedom, advances in an unbroken, meaningful coherence of one thought from beginning to end, presenting a whole, I recognize the highest grade of the objectification of the will: the deliberate life and striving of man. He alone, because he is gifted with reason, always looks forward and backward, at the path of his actuality and of the countless possibilities, and so completes a deliberate course of life that holds together as a whole. Corresponding to this, the melody alone has meaningful, purposeful coherence from beginning to end. So it tells the history of the will lit by deliberation, whose imprint in actuality is the series of its deeds. But it says more: it tells the will’s most secret history. It paints every stirring, every striving, every movement of the will, everything that reason gathers under the wide and negative concept of feeling and cannot take any further into its abstractions. That is why it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and passion, as words are the language of reason. Plato already defines it as ἡ των μελων κινησις μεμιμημενη, εν τοις παθημασιν ὁταν ψυχη γινηται (melodiarum motus, animi affectus imitans), De leg. VII, and Aristotle also says: δια τι οἱ ρυθμοι και τα μελη, φωνη ουσα, ηθεσιν εοικε; (cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces sunt, moribus similes sese exhibent?), Probl. c. 19.

The nature of man consists in this: his will strives, is satisfied, and strives anew, and so on without end. Indeed his happiness and well-being are only this: that the passage from wish to satisfaction, and from that to a new wish, goes forward quickly. For the failure of satisfaction is suffering, and the failure of a new wish is empty longing, languor, boredom. Corresponding to this, the nature of melody is a constant departure, a straying from the fundamental tone, by a thousand ways. It goes not only to the harmonic steps, to the third and the dominant, but to every tone, to the dissonant seventh and to the augmented intervals. But a final return to the fundamental tone always follows. On all those ways melody expresses the many-formed striving of the will, but also always, by finally finding a harmonic step again, and still more the fundamental tone, it expresses satisfaction. Inventing melody, and uncovering in it all the deepest secrets of human willing and feeling, is the work of the man of genius. His working here lies, more evidently than anywhere, far from all reflection and conscious intention, and could be called an inspiration. The concept is unfruitful here, as everywhere in art. The composer reveals the innermost being of the world and says the deepest wisdom, in a language that his reason does not understand. In the same way a magnetic somnambulist gives disclosures about things of which she has no concept when awake. So in a composer, more than in any other artist, the man is wholly separate from and different from the artist. Even in explaining this wonderful art the concept shows its poverty and its limits. Still, I will try to carry through our analogy.—Quick passage from wish to satisfaction, and from that to a new wish, is happiness and well-being. So quick melodies, without large departures, are cheerful. Slow ones that fall into painful dissonances and find their way back to the fundamental tone only after many measures are sad, as analogous to delayed, hindered satisfaction. A delay of a new stirring of will, the languor, could have no other expression than the held fundamental tone, whose effect would soon be unbearable. Very monotonous, empty melodies already approach this. The short, easily grasped phrases of quick dance music seem to speak only of easily reached, common happiness. The Allegro maestoso, on the other hand, with its large phrases, long passages and wide departures, signifies a greater, nobler striving toward a distant goal, and its final attainment. The Adagio speaks of the suffering of a great and noble striving that scorns all petty happiness. But how wonderful is the effect of minor and major! How astonishing that the change of a half tone, the entry of the minor third in place of the major, at once and inevitably forces on us an anxious, painful feeling, from which the major then frees us just as instantly. In the minor the Adagio reaches the expression of the highest pain and becomes the most shattering lament. Dance music in the minor seems to signify missing a petty happiness that one should rather scorn, and seems to speak of reaching a low aim through toil and drudgery.—The inexhaustibility of possible melodies corresponds to the inexhaustibility of nature in the variety of individuals, faces and courses of life. The passage from one key into a quite different one, since it wholly cancels the connection with what went before, is like death, in that the individual ends in it. But the will that appeared in that individual lives on as before, appearing in other individuals, whose consciousness, however, has no connection with that of the first.

Yet in pointing out all these analogies we must never forget that music has no direct relation to them, only an indirect one. For it never expresses the appearance, but only the inner essence, the in-itself of all appearance, the will itself. So it does not express this or that single, definite joy, this or that sorrow, pain, horror, jubilation, merriment or peace of mind. It expresses joy, sorrow, pain, horror, jubilation, merriment, peace of mind themselves, in a way in the abstract, their essential part, without any extras, and so without the motives for them too. Even so, we understand them completely in this extracted quintessence. This is why our imagination is so easily stirred by music, and tries to shape that invisible and yet so vividly moved spirit world which speaks to us quite directly, and to clothe it with flesh and bone, that is, to embody it in an analogous example. This is the origin of song with words and finally of opera.—For that very reason song with words and opera should never leave this subordinate place, to make themselves the main thing and music the mere means of their expression. That is a great mistake and a bad perversity. For everywhere music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves, whose differences therefore do not always enter into music. Just this universality, which belongs to it alone, together with the most exact definiteness, gives it the high value it has as the panacea of all our sufferings. So when music tries too much to tie itself to the words and to shape itself after the events, it is trying to speak a language that is not its own. No one has kept so clear of this fault as Rossini. That is why his music speaks its own language so clearly and purely that it does not need the words at all, and has its full effect even when played by instruments alone.

From all this we can see the appearing world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing. That thing is therefore the sole mediator of the analogy between the two, and we need to know it in order to see that analogy. So music, regarded as an expression of the world, is a language of the highest degree of generality. It even stands to the generality of concepts about as these stand to individual things. But its generality is by no means that empty generality of abstraction. It is of a quite different kind, and it is joined with a thoroughgoing, clear definiteness. In this it is like geometrical figures and numbers. These are the general forms of all possible objects of experience, applicable to all of them a priori, and yet they are not abstract but intuitive and thoroughly definite. All possible strivings, stirrings and expressions of the will, all those processes within man that reason throws into the wide negative concept of feeling, can be expressed by the infinitely many possible melodies. But always in the generality of mere form, without the content, always only according to the in-itself, not according to the appearance, as it were their innermost soul, without body. From this intimate relation that music has to the true nature of all things we can also explain this: when fitting music sounds with any scene, action, event or surroundings, it seems to open up their most secret meaning to us and to appear as the most correct and clearest commentary on it. We can also explain why, for someone who gives himself up completely to the impression of a symphony, it is as if he saw all possible events of life and the world pass by him. Yet if he reflects, he can name no likeness between that play of tones and the things that hover before him. For music, as I said, differs from all the other arts in that it is not an image of the appearance, or more correctly of the adequate objectivity of the will, but directly an image of the will itself. So it presents the metaphysical to everything physical in the world, and the thing in itself to every appearance. One could therefore call the world embodied music just as well as embodied will. That explains why music makes every painting, indeed every scene of real life and of the world, at once stand out with heightened significance—the more so, of course, the more closely its melody is analogous to the inner spirit of the given appearance. On this rests the fact that a poem can be set to music as a song, or a perceptual presentation as a pantomime, or both as an opera. Such single pictures of human life, set under the general language of music, are never joined to it or matched with it by thoroughgoing necessity. They stand to it only in the relation of an arbitrary example to a general concept. In the definiteness of actuality they present what music says in the generality of mere form. For melodies are in a way, like general concepts, an abstraction from actuality. Actuality, that is, the world of individual things, supplies what is perceptual, the particular and individual, the single case, both to the generality of concepts and to the generality of melodies. But these two generalities are in a certain respect opposed to each other. Concepts contain only the forms first abstracted from intuition, the drawn-off outer shell of things, as it were, so they are really abstracts. Music, on the other hand, gives the innermost kernel that comes before all shaping, the heart of things. This relation could be put very well in the language of the Scholastics by saying: concepts are the universalia post rem, music gives the universalia ante rem, and actuality the universalia in re. Other examples, chosen just as arbitrarily, of the general thing expressed in it could match the general meaning of a melody that goes with a poem to the same degree. That is why the same composition suits many verses, and also why there is the vaudeville. But that a relation between a composition and a perceptual presentation is possible at all rests, as I said, on the fact that both are only quite different expressions of the same inner nature of the world. When such a relation really is present in the single case, that is, when the composer has known how to say the stirrings of will that make up the kernel of an event in the general language of music, then the melody of the song, the music of the opera, is expressive. But the analogy the composer has found between those two must have come out of his direct knowledge of the nature of the world, unknown to his reason. It must not be an imitation mediated by concepts, made with conscious intention. Otherwise music does not express the inner nature, the will itself, but only imitates its appearance inadequately. All music that really imitates does this, for example Haydn’s “The Seasons,” and his “Creation” too in many places where appearances of the perceptual world are directly imitated. So do all battle pieces, which are to be wholly rejected.

The inexpressible inwardness of all music, which makes it pass before us as a paradise so utterly familiar and yet forever far away, so completely understandable and yet so inexplicable, rests on this: it reproduces all the stirrings of our innermost being, but entirely without the reality and far from its torment. In the same way, the seriousness that is essential to music, and that shuts the ridiculous out entirely from its own immediate territory, is to be explained by the fact that its object is not the representation, with regard to which deception and ridiculousness alone are possible. Its object is directly the will, and the will is essentially the most serious thing of all, since everything depends on it.—How rich in content and meaning its language is shows even in the repeat signs, together with the Da capo. In works in word-language these would be unbearable, but in music they are very fitting and pleasant. For to take it in fully, one must hear it twice.

In this whole account of music I have worked to make clear that in a language of the highest generality, in a uniform material, namely mere tones, and with the greatest definiteness and truth, music expresses the inner essence, the in-itself of the world, which, at its clearest expression, we think under the concept of will. Further, by my view and my aim, philosophy is nothing other than a complete and correct repetition and statement of the essence of the world, in very general concepts, since only in such concepts is an overview of that whole essence possible that is sufficient and applicable everywhere. So anyone who has followed me and entered into my way of thinking will not find it so very paradoxical when I say the following. Suppose one succeeded in giving a perfectly correct, complete explanation of music that went into the details, that is, a full repetition in concepts of what it expresses. That would at once also be a sufficient repetition and explanation of the world in concepts, or one exactly equivalent to it, and so would be true philosophy. And so we can parody the saying of Leibniz quoted above, which is quite correct from a lower standpoint, in the sense of our higher view of music, as follows: Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi. For scire, to know, everywhere means to have set down in abstract concepts. Now, by the many-times confirmed truth of Leibniz’s saying, music, apart from its aesthetic or inner meaning, and considered merely outwardly and purely empirically, is nothing other than the means of grasping directly and in concreto larger numbers and more complex numerical relations that we can otherwise know only indirectly, by grasping them in concepts. So by uniting those two views of music, so different and yet both right, we can form a concept of the possibility of a philosophy of numbers, such as that of Pythagoras and also that of the Chinese in the Y-king. And then, in this sense, we can interpret that saying of the Pythagoreans which Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math., L. VII) quotes: τῳ αριθμῳ δε τα παντ’ επεοικεν (numero cuncta assimilantur). And if we finally bring this view to our interpretation of harmony and melody above, we will find a mere moral philosophy without an explanation of nature, as Socrates wanted to introduce it, quite analogous to a melody without harmony, which Rousseau wanted exclusively. By contrast, a mere physics and metaphysics without ethics will correspond to a mere harmony without melody.—Let me be allowed to attach to these incidental thoughts a few more remarks on the analogy of music with the appearing world. In the previous book we found that the highest grade of the objectification of the will, man, could not appear alone and torn away, but that the grades below him, and these in turn the lower ones, were presupposed. In the same way music, which objectifies the will directly just as the world does, is complete only in full harmony. To make its whole impression, the high, leading voice of the melody needs the accompaniment of all the other voices, down to the deepest bass, which is to be seen as the origin of them all. The melody itself enters into the harmony as an integral part, as the harmony does into it. And just as only in this way, in the full-voiced whole, music says what it aims to say, so the one will outside time finds its perfect objectification only in the full union of all the grades, which reveal its essence in countless degrees of heightened clarity.—The following analogy is also very remarkable. We saw in the previous book that, in spite of how all appearances of will adapt to each other with regard to the species, which gives rise to the teleological way of looking, there still remains between those appearances, as individuals, a conflict that cannot be canceled. It is visible at all grades of them, and makes the world a constant battlefield of all those appearances of the one and same will, whose inner contradiction with itself becomes visible in this way. Even for this there is something corresponding in music. A perfectly pure harmonic system of tones is impossible, not just physically but already arithmetically. The numbers themselves, by which the tones can be expressed, have irrationalities that cannot be resolved. No scale can even be worked out within which every fifth would stand to the fundamental tone as 2 to 3, every major third as 4 to 5, every minor third as 5 to 6, and so on. For if the tones are right to the fundamental tone, they are no longer right to each other. For example, the fifth would have to be the minor third of the third, and so on. The tones of the scale are like actors who have to play now this role, now that. So a perfectly correct music cannot even be thought, let alone carried out. Because of this, every possible music departs from perfect purity. It can only hide the dissonances that are essential to it, by distributing them over all the tones, that is, by temperament. On this see Chladni’s “Acoustics,” § 30, and his “Short Survey of the Theory of Sound and Tone,” p. 12 [53].

I could add much more about the way music is perceived: namely solely and entirely in and through time, with space wholly excluded, and also without the influence of knowledge of causality, that is, of the understanding. For [54] See Chap. 39 of the second volume. tones make the aesthetic impression already as an effect, without our going back to their cause, as we do in intuition.—I will not lengthen these considerations any further, though, since perhaps I have already been too detailed for some readers in this third book, or have gone too far into particulars. My aim, though, made it necessary, and people will disapprove of it all the less if they keep in mind the importance and high value of art, which is seldom recognized enough. Consider this. By our view, the whole visible world is only the objectification, the mirror of the will, accompanying it to its self-knowledge, and indeed, as we will soon see, to the possibility of its redemption. At the same time, the world as representation, when one considers it separately, tearing oneself loose from willing and letting it alone fill consciousness, is the most delightful and the only innocent side of life. So we have to see art as the higher heightening, the more perfect development, of all this. For art does essentially the very same thing as the visible world itself, only more concentrated, more completed, with intention and deliberation, and so it may, in the full sense of the word, be called the flower of life. If the whole world as representation is only the visibility of the will, then art is the making clear of this visibility. It is the camera obscura, which shows objects more purely and lets one see them and take them together better. It is the play within the play, the stage on the stage in “Hamlet.”

The enjoyment of everything beautiful, the comfort that art gives, the enthusiasm of the artist that lets him forget the troubles of life, this one advantage of the man of genius over others, which alone makes up to him for the suffering that grows in equal measure with clarity of consciousness, and for the bleak loneliness among a race unlike himself—all this rests on the following, as will show itself further on: the in-itself of life, the will, existence itself, is a constant suffering, and is partly wretched, partly terrible. The same thing, however, as representation alone, looked at purely, or repeated by art, free of torment, offers a significant spectacle. This purely knowable side of the world, and its repetition in some art, is the artist’s element. He is held fast by the contemplation of the spectacle of the objectification of the will. He stays with it, does not tire of looking at it and repeating it in his work, and meanwhile pays the costs of staging this spectacle himself. That is, he himself is the will that objectifies itself in this way and remains in constant suffering. That pure, true and deep knowledge of the nature of the world now becomes an end in itself for him: he stays with it. So it does not become for him, as we will see in the next book with the saint who has reached resignation, a quietive of the will. It does not redeem him forever from life, but only for moments, and so is not yet for him the way out of life, but for now only a comfort in it—until his strength, heightened by it, grows tired of the play at last and takes hold of seriousness. As a symbol of this transition one can look at Raphael’s St. Cecilia. So let us too turn to seriousness in the next book.

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Book III is part of The World as Will and Representation, Volume I by Arthur Schopenhauer. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is book 6 of 8 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.

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