Art can make use of a proper solemnity. Its
object is only to prepare the mind for something important. When the
poet is anxious to produce a great impression he tunes the mind to
receive it.]

ON THE NECESSARY LIMITATIONS IN THE USE OF BEAUTY OF FORM.

The abuse of the beautiful and the encroachments of imagination, when,
having only the casting vote, it seeks to grasp the law-giving sceptre,
has done great injury alike in life and in science. It is therefore
highly expedient to examine very closely the bounds that have been
assigned to the use of beautiful forms. These limits are embodied in the
very nature of the beautiful, and we have only to call to mind how taste
expresses its influence to be able to determine how far it ought to
extend it.

The following are the principal operations of taste; to bring the
sensuous and spiritual powers of man into harmony, and to unite them in a
close alliance. Consequently, whenever such an intimate alliance between
reason and the senses is suitable and legitimate, taste may be allowed
influence. But taste reaches the bounds which it is not permitted to
pass without defeating its end or removing us from our duty, in all cases
where the bond between mind and matter is given up for a time, where we
must act for the time as purely creatures of reason, whether it be to
attain an end or to perform a duty. Cases of this kind do really occur,
and they are even incumbent on us in carrying out our destiny.

For we are destined to obtain knowledge and to act from knowledge. In
both cases a certain readiness is required to exclude the senses from
that which the spirit does, because feelings must be abstracted from
knowledge, and passion or desire from every moral act of the will.

When we know, we take up an active attitude, and our attention is
directed to an object, to a relation between different representations.
When we feel, we have a passive attitude, and our attention--if we may
call that so, which is no conscious operation of the mind--is only
directed to our own condition, as far as it is modified by the impression
received. Now, as we only feel and do not know the beautiful, we do not
distinguish any relation between it and other objects, we do not refer
its representation to other representations, but to ourselves who have
experienced the impression. We learn or experience nothing in the
beautiful object, but we perceive a change occasioned by it in our own
condition