Place yourself before an object of nature, wherein men recognize beauty, and observe what takes place within you at the sight of this object. Is it not certain that, at the same time that you judge that it is beautiful, you also feel its beauty, that is to say, that you experience at the sight of it a delightful emotion, and that you are attracted towards this object by a sentiment of sympathy and love? In other cases you judge otherwise, and feel an opposite sentiment. Aversion accompanies the judgment of the ugly, as love accompanies the judgment of the beautiful. And this sentiment is awakened not only in presence of the objects of nature: all objects, whatever they may be, that we judge to be ugly or beautiful, have the power to excite in us this sentiment. Vary the circumstances as much as you please, place me before an admirable edifice or before a beautiful landscape; represent to my mind the great discoveries of Descartes and Newton, the exploits of the great Condé, the virtue of St. Vincent de Paul; elevate me still higher; awaken in me the obscure and too much forgotten idea of the infinite being; whatever you do, as often as you give birth within me to the idea of the beautiful, you give me an internal and exquisite joy, always followed by a sentiment of love for the object that caused it.
The more beautiful the object is, the more lively is the joy which it gives the soul, and the more profound is the love without being passionate. In admiration judgment rules, but animated by sentiment. Is admiration increased to the degree of impressing upon the soul an emotion, an ardor that seems to exceed the limits of human nature? this state of the soul is called enthusiasm:
"Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
The philosophy of sensation explains sentiment, as well as the idea of the beautiful, only by changing its nature. It confounds it with agreeable sensation, and, consequently, for it the love of beauty can be nothing but desire. There is no theory more contradicted by facts.
What is desire? It is an emotion of the soul which has, for its avowed or secret end, possession. Admiration is in its nature respectful, whilst desire tends to profane its object.
Desire is the offspring of need. It supposes, then, in him who experiences it, a want, a defect, and, to a certain point, suffering. The sentiment of the beautiful is to itself its own satisfaction.
Desire is burning, impetuous, sad. The sentiment of the beautiful, free from all desire, and always without fear, elevates and warms the soul, and may transport it even to enthusiasm, without making it know the troubles of passion. The artist sees only the beautiful where the sensual man sees only the alluring and the frightful. On a vessel tossed by a tempest, while the passengers tremble at the sight of the threatening waves, and at the sound of the thunder that breaks over their heads, the artist remains absorbed in the contemplation of the sublime spectacle. Vernet has himself lashed to the mast in order to contemplate for a longer time the storm in its majestic and terrible beauty. When he knows fear, when he participates in the common feeling, the artist vanishes, there no more remains any thing but the man.
The sentiment of the beautiful is so far from being desire, that each excludes the other. Let me take a common example. Before a table loaded with meats and delicious wines, the desire of enjoyment is awakened, but not the sentiment of the beautiful. Suppose that if, instead of thinking of the pleasures which all these things spread before my eyes promise me, I only take notice of the manner in which they are arranged and set upon the table, and the order of the feast, the sentiment of the beautiful might in some degree be produced; but surely this will be neither the need nor the desire of appropriating this symmetry, this order.
It is the property of beauty not to irritate and inflame desire, but to purify and ennoble it. The more beautiful a woman is,—I do not mean that common and gross beauty which Reubens in vain animates with his brilliant coloring, but that ideal beauty which antiquity and Raphael understood so well,—the more, at the sight of this noble creature is desire tempered by an exquisite and delicate sentiment, and is sometimes even replaced by a disinterested worship. If the Venus of the Capitol, or the Saint Cecilia, excites in you sensual desires, you are not made to feel the beautiful. So the true artist addresses himself less to the senses than to the soul; in painting beauty he only seeks to awaken in us sentiment; and when he has carried this sentiment as far as enthusiasm, he has obtained the last triumph of art.
The sentiment of the beautiful is, therefore, a special sentiment, as the idea of the beautiful is a simple idea. But is this sentiment, one in itself, manifested only in a single way, and applied only to a single kind of beauty? Here again—here, as always—let us interrogate experience.