time that a strong will towards good becomes
the principle of an action, we are really in presence of a moral action.
I have therefore no scruple in advancing this proposition--that all which
neutralizes the resistance offered to the law of duty really favors
morality.

Morality has within us a natural enemy, the sensuous instinct; this, as
soon as some object solicits its desires, aspires at once to gratify it,
and, as soon as reason requires from it anything repugnant, it does not
fail to rebel against its precepts. This sensuous instinct is constantly
occupied in gaining the will on its side. The will is nevertheless under
the jurisdiction of the moral law, and it is under an obligation never to
be in contradiction with that which reason demands.

But the sensuous instinct does not recognize the moral law; it wishes to
enjoy its object and to induce the will to realize it also,
notwithstanding what the reason may advance. This tendency of the
faculty of our appetites, of immediately directing the will without
troubling itself about superior laws, is perpetually in conflict with our
moral destination, and it is the most powerful adversary that man has to
combat in his moral conduct. The coarse soul, without either moral or
aesthetic education, receives directly the law of appetite, and acts only
according to the good pleasure of the senses. The moral soul, but which
wants aesthetic culture, receives in a direct manner the law of reason,
and it is only out of respect for duty that it triumphs over temptation.
In the purified aesthetic soul, there is moreover another motive, another
force, which frequently takes the place of virtue when virtue is absent,
and which renders it easier when it is present--that is, taste.

Taste demands of us moderation and dignity; it has a horror of everything
sharp, hard and violent; it likes all that shapes itself with ease and
harmony. To listen to the voice of reason amidst the tempest of the
senses, and to know where to place a limit to nature in its most
brutified explosions, is, as we are aware, required by good breeding,
which is no other than an aesthetic law; this is required of every
civilized man. Well, then, this constraint imposed upon civilized man in
the expression of his feelings, confers upon him already a certain degree
of authority over them, or at least develops in him a certain aptitude to
rise above the purely passive state of the soul, to interrupt this state
by