ves, but mutually destructive in the way in which they
are generally conceived. The first is, that "poetry serves as a means of
amusement and recreation," and we have previously observed that this
maxim is highly favorable to aridity and platitudes in poetical actions.
The other maxim, that "poetry is conducive to the moral progress of
humanity," takes under its shelter theories and views of the most wild
and extravagant character. It may be profitable to examine more
attentively these two maxims, of which so much is heard, and which are so
often imperfectly understood and falsely applied.

We say that a thing amuses us when it makes us pass from a forced state
to the state that is natural to us. The whole question here is to know
in what our natural state ought to consist, and what a forced state
means. If our natural state is made to consist merely in the free
development of all our physical powers, in emancipation from all
constraint, it follows that every act of reason by resisting what is
sensuous, is a violence we undergo, and rest of mind combined with
physical movement will be a recreation par excellence. But if we make
our natural state consist in a limitless power of human expression and of
freely disposing of all our strength, all that divides these forces will
be a forced state, and recreation will be what brings all our nature to
harmony. Thus, the first of these ideal recreations is simply determined
by the wants of our sensuous nature; the second, by the autonomous
activity of human nature. Which of these two kinds of recreation can be
demanded of the poet? Theoretically, the question is inadmissible, as no
one would put the human ideal beneath the brutal. But in practice the
requirements of a poet have been especially directed to the sensuous
ideal, and for the most part favor, though not the esteem, for these
sorts of works is regulated thereby. Men's minds are mostly engaged in a
labor that exhausts them, or an enjoyment that sets them asleep. Now
labor makes rest a sensible want, much more imperious than that of the
moral nature; for physical nature must be satisfied before the mind can
show its requirements. On the other hand, enjoyment paralyzes the moral
instinct. Hence these two dispositions common in men are very injurious
to the feeling for true beauty, and thus very few even of the best judge
soundly in aesthetics. Beauty results from the harmony between spirit
and sense; it addresses all the fa