and as the trials
of an innocent victim by a cruel tyrant are severe. It is a pleasure to
see the craft of a seducer foiled by the omnipotence of the moral sense.
On the other hand, we reckon as a sort of merit the victory of a
malefactor over his moral sense, because it is the proof of a certain
strength of mind and intellectual propriety.

Yet this propriety in vice can never be the source of a perfect pleasure,
except when it is humiliated by morality. In that case it is an
essential part of our pleasure, because it brings moral sense into
stronger relief. The last impression left on us by the author of
Clarissa is a proof of this. The intellectual propriety in the plan of
Lovelace is greatly surpassed by the rational propriety of Clarissa.
This allows us to feel in full the satisfaction caused by both.

When the tragic poet has for object to awaken in us the feeling of moral
propriety, and chooses his means skilfully for that end, he is sure to
charm doubly the connoisseur, by moral and by natural propriety. The
first satisfies the heart, the second the mind. The crowd is impressed
through the heart without knowing the cause of the magic impression.
But, on the other hand, there is a class of connoisseurs on whom that
which affects the heart is entirely lost, and who can only be gained by
the appropriateness of the means; a strange contradiction resulting from
over-refined taste, especially when moral culture remains behind
intellectual. This class of connoisseurs seek only the intellectual
side in touching and sublime themes. They appreciate this in the
justest manner, but you must beware how you appeal to their heart! The
over-culture of the age leads to this shoal, and nothing becomes the
cultivated man so much as to escape by a happy victory this twofold and
pernicious influence. Of all other European nations, our neighbors, the
French, lean most to this extreme, and we, as in all things, strain every
nerve to imitate this model.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Aesthetical Essays, by Frederich Schiller

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