it in the subject has
its reason in the understanding itself, and thus it is consequently
universal and necessary. I call it an anterior obligation because the
senses, in the matter of beauty, have given their judgment before the
understanding commences to perform its office.

Thus it is now free arbitration which rules the beautiful. If nature has
furnished the architectonic beauty, the soul in its turn determines the
beauty of the play, and now also we know what we must understand by charm
and grace. Grace is the beauty of the form under the influence of free
will; it is the beauty of this kind of phenomena that the person himself
determines. The architectonic beauty does honor to the author of nature;
grace does honor to him who possesses it. That is a gift, this is a
personal merit.

Grace can be found only in movement, for a modification which takes place
in the soul can only be manifested in the sensuous world as movement.
But this does not prevent features fixed and in repose also from
possessing grace. There immobility is, in its origin, movement which,
from being frequently repeated, at length becomes habitual, leaving
durable traces.

But all the movements of man are not capable of grace. Grace is never
otherwise than beauty of form animated into movement by free will; and
the movements which belong only to physical nature could not merit the
name. It is true that an intellectual man, if he be keen, ends by
rendering himself master of almost all the movements of the body; but
when the chain which links a fine lineament to a moral sentiment
lengthens much, this lineament becomes the property of the structure, and
can no longer be counted as a grace. It happens, ultimately, that the
mind moulds the body, and that the structure is forced to modify itself
according to the play that the soul imprints upon the organs, so
entirely, that grace finally is transformed--and the examples are not
rare--into architectonic beauty. As at one time an antagonistic mind
which is ill at ease with itself alters and destroys the most perfect
beauty of structure, until at last it becomes impossible to recognize
this magnificent chef-d'oeuvre of nature in the state to which it is
reduced under the unworthy hands of free will, so at other times the
serenity and perfect harmony of the soul come to the aid of the hampered
technique, unloose nature and develop with divine splendor the beauty of
form, enveloped until then, and oppress