complete the great affair--the moral work. It
cannot have a salutary influence upon the morals but in exercising its
highest aesthetic action, and it can only produce the aesthetic effect in
its highest degree in fully exercising its liberty.

It is certain, besides, that all pleasure, the moment it flows from a
moral source, renders man morally better, and then the effect in its turn
becomes cause. The pleasure we find in what is beautiful, or touching,
or sublime, strengthens our moral sentiments, as the pleasure we find in
kindness, in love, etc., strengthens these inclinations. And just as
contentment of the mind is the sure lot of the morally excellent man, so
moral excellence willingly accompanies satisfaction of heart. Thus the
moral efficacy of art is, not only because it employs moral means in
order to charm us, but also because even the pleasure which it procures
us is a means of morality.

There are as many means by which art can attain its aim as there are in
general sources from which a free pleasure for the mind can flow. I call
a free pleasure that which brings into play the spiritual forces--reason
and imagination--and which awakens in us a sentiment by the
representation of an idea, in contradistinction to physical or sensuous
pleasure, which places our soul under the dependence of the blind forces
of nature, and where sensation is immediately awakened in us by a
physical cause. Sensual pleasure is the only one excluded from the
domain of the fine arts; and the talent of exciting this kind of pleasure
could never raise itself to the dignity of an art, except in the case
where the sensual impressions are ordered, reinforced or moderated, after
a plan which is the production of art, and which is recognized by
representation. But, in this case even, that alone here can merit the
name of art which is the object of a free pleasure--I mean good taste in
the regulation, which pleases our understanding, and not physical charms
themselves, which alone flatter our sensibility.

The general source of all pleasure, even of sensual pleasure, is
propriety, the conformity with the aim. Pleasure is sensual when this
propriety is manifested by means of some necessary law of nature which
has for physical result the sensation of pleasure. Thus the movement of
the blood, and of the animal life, when in conformity with the aim of
nature, produces in certain organs, or in the entire organism, corporeal
pleasure with all it