some obstacle.

We are now in a position to point out in what way the super-sensuous
element, the moral and independent force of man, his Ego in short, can be
represented in the phenomena of the affections. I understand that this
is possible if the parts which only obey physical nature, those where
will either disposes nothing at all, or only under certain circumstances,
betray the presence of suffering; and if those, on the contrary, that
escape the blind sway of instinct, that only obey physical nature, show
no trace, or only a very feeble trace, of suffering, and consequently
appear to have a certain degree of freedom. Now this want of harmony
between the features imprinted on animal nature in virtue of the laws of
physical necessity, and those determined with the spiritual and
independent faculty of man, is precisely the point by which that
super-sensuous principle is discovered in man capable of placing limits
to the effects produced by physical nature, and therefore distinct from
the latter. The purely animal part of man obeys the physical law, and
consequently may show itself oppressed by the affection. It is,
therefore, in this part that all the strength of passion shows itself,
and it answers in some degree as a measure to estimate the resistance--
that is to say, of the energy of the moral faculty in man--which can only
be judged according to the force of the attack. Thus in proportion as
the affection manifests itself with decision and violence in the field of
animal nature, without being able to exercise the same power in the field
of human nature, so in proportion the latter makes itself manifestly
known--in the same proportion the moral independence of man shows itself
gloriously: the portraiture becomes pathetic and the pathetic sublime.

The statues of the ancients make this principle of aesthetics sensible to
us; but it is difficult to reduce to conceptions and express in words
what the very inspection of ancient statues makes the senses feel in so
lively a manner. The group of Laocoon and his children can give to a
great extent the measure of what the plastic art of the ancients was
capable of producing in the matter of pathos. Winckelmann, in his
"History of Art,", says: "Laocoon is nature seized in the highest degree
of suffering, under the features of a man who seeks to gather up against
pain all the strength of which the mind is conscious. Hence while his
suffering swells his muscles and stretches