mplicity as a
feeling, nature must always have the upper hand, and art succumb to her.

Until we have established this distinction we can only form an incomplete
idea of simplicity. The affections are also something natural, and the
rules of decency are artificial; yet the triumph of the affections over
decency is anything but simple. But when affection triumphs over
artifice, over false decency, over dissimulation, we shall have no
difficulty in applying the word simple to this. Nature must therefore
triumph over art, not by its blind and brutal force as a dynamical power,
but in virtue of its form as a moral magnitude; in a word, not as a want,
but as an internal necessity. It must not be insufficiency, but the
inopportune character of the latter that gives nature her victory; for
insufficiency is only a want and a defect, and nothing that results from
a want or defect could produce esteem. No doubt in the simplicity
resulting from surprise, it is always the predominance of affection and a
want of reflection that causes us to appear natural. But this want and
this predominance do not by any means suffice to constitute simplicity;
they merely give occasion to nature to obey without let or hinderance her
moral constitution, that is, the law of harmony.

The simplicity resulting from surprise can only be encountered in man and
that only in as far as at the moment he ceases to be a pure and innocent
nature. This sort of simplicity implies a will that is not in harmony
with that which nature does of her own accord. A person simple after
this fashion, when recalled to himself, will be the first to be alarmed
at what he is; on the other hand, a person in whom simplicity is found as
a feeling, will only wonder at one thing, that is, at the way in which
men feel astonishment. As it is not the moral subject as a person, but
only his natural character set free by affection, that confesses the
truth, it follows from this that we shall not attribute this sincerity to
man as a merit, and that we shall be entitled to laugh at it, our
raillery not being held in check by any personal esteem for his
character. Nevertheless, as it is still the sincerity of nature which,
even in the simplicity caused by surprise, pierces suddenly through the
veil of dissimulation, a satisfaction of a superior order is mixed with
the mischievous joy we feel in having caught any one in the act. This is
because nature, opposed to affectation, and truth, opp