vilization shall have
consummated its work (if we can realize this term in the mind) there will
no longer be any question of this. But, on the other side, taste can
become of possible utility to true virtue, in all cases when, the first
instigations issuing from reason, its voice incurs the risk of being
stifled by the more powerful solicitations of natural instinct. Thus,
taste determines our feelings to take the part of duty, and in this
manner renders a mediocre moral force of will sufficient for the practice
of virtue.

In this light, if the taste never injures true morality, and if in many
cases it is of evident use--and this circumstance is very important--then
it is supremely favorable to the legality of our conduct. Suppose that
aesthetic education contributes in no degree to the improvement of our
feelings, at least it renders us better able to act, although without
true moral disposition, as we should have acted if our soul had been
truly moral. Therefore, it is quite true that, before the tribunal of
the conscience, our acts have absolutely no importance but as the
expression of our feelings: but it is precisely the contrary in the
physical order and in the plan of nature: there it is no longer our
sentiments that are of importance; they are only important so far as they
give occasion to acts which conduce to the aims of nature. But the
physical order which is governed by forces, and the moral order which
governs itself by laws, are so exactly made one for the other, and are so
intimately blended, that the actions which are by their form morally
suitable, necessarily contain also a physical suitability; and as the
entire edifice of nature seems to exist only to render possible the
highest of all aims, which is the good, in the same manner the good can
in its turn be employed as the means of preserving the edifice. Thus,
the natural order has been rendered dependent upon the morality of our
souls, and we cannot go against the moral laws of the world without at
the same time provoking a perturbation in the physical world.

If, then, it is impossible to expect that human nature, as long as it is
only human nature, should act without interruption or feebleness,
uniformly and constantly as pure reason, and that it never offend the
laws of moral order; if fully persuaded, as we are, both of the necessity
and the possibility of pure virtue, we are forced to avow how subject to
accident is the exercise of it, and ho