The Beautiful and the Sublime: An Analysis of These Emotions and a Determination of the Objectivity of Beauty

It is by no means a common fault that the very deliberation with which a book is prepared should be carried to the extent of actually lessening the effectiveness of the work as a whole. And yet we can scarcely doubt that such is the case with the book before us. The author seems to have so long entertained and so frequently revolved in his own mind the thought here presented, that its very familiarity to him has led him to presume too far upon the ease with which it is to be seized by other minds. We believe this to be the explanation of the extreme condensation of statement bordering more than once upon obscurity, for which the work is remarkable. Nevertheless, few books of the time contain thought that will so well compensate the earnest student for the trouble of overcoming such difficulties of style as are here found. We will attempt to indicate as briefly as possible the fundamental conceptions of the work. The author recognizes the necessity of setting out from presuppositions. And yet he plainly indicates that he considers it possible to set forth in complete form a philosophy of the world as a whole, which philosophy shall account for all its presuppositions. We believe, also, from the general tone of his work, that the author looks to the absolutely Rational or Spiritual as the ultimate substance and cause of the world. The ultimate philosophy is, then, a universal Logic which presents the fundamental forms or modes of the infinite, divine Thought or Reason that forms the world and is the world. For in that Thought and through that Thought all things move and have their being. - * We need not, therefore, be startled when the author tells us that "physical perfection " is included as an element in "every ideal of the perfect life." For the physical is after all only a mode — and that the lowest, though an essential mode — of the spiritual. The total universe is a totality only by including all — the lowest as well as the highest-of its phases. But again thought, emotion, and will are also essential elements in every ideal of the perfect life; and such ideal can only be realized through the harmonious union and blending of these elements. But the author includes emotion and will under the one designation of the moral element. Thus "the three elements of our humanity" are: the physical, the intellectual, and the moral. Now it is the destiny of spirit (as Hegel has finely said) to struggle upward out of nature into spirituality. But this is not to announce an essential antagonism between nature and spirit. On the contrary, "nature" is but the unconscious mode of spirit; and, in struggling up out of nature, spirit only arises out of its state of unconsciousness, wherein it has been dominated by physical forces, into the state of complete consciousness, wherein it, in turn, dominates the forces of nature and puts them to its own uses. The higher the grade of consciousness, the more perfect the power to wield the forces pertaining to the realm of the unconscious. But again, this intensified consciousness involves the heightening of all the qualities or modes of the spirit. Increase in the vigor and subtlety of thought (at least in the ideally unfolding spirit) must go hand in hand with growing refinement of the emotional nature and with continuously added strength of will. In other words, there will be ever greater capacity to form lofty ideals, greater delight in contemplating them, and greater power to realize them. Thus, through the evolution of its own powers, the spirit approximates more and more nearly to the character of a creator—becomes more and more like the universal, divine Mind. –The Western, Vol. 7 [1881]