Part IV

., Sect. xix. “Beauty acts by relaxing the solids of the whole system. There are all the appearances of such a relaxation; and a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me to be the cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that manner of expression so common in all times and in all countries, of being softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure?”]

[63] [Reading _Gebot_; Kirchmann has _Gesetz_.]

[64] [Second Edition.]

[65] [Second Edition.]

[66] [Cf. _Critique of Pure Reason_, Methodology, c. 1, § 1. “The construction of a concept is the _a priori_ presentation of the corresponding intuition.”]

[67] [Charles Batteux (1713-1780), author of _Les Beaux Arts reduits à un même principe_.]

[68] [Essay XVIII, _The Sceptic_. “Critics can reason and dispute more plausibly than cooks or perfumers. We may observe, however, that this uniformity among human kind, hinders not, but that there is a considerable diversity in the sentiments of beauty and worth, and that education, custom, prejudice, caprice, and humour, frequently vary our taste of this kind.... Beauty and worth are merely of a relative nature, and consist in an agreeable sentiment, produced by an object in a particular mind, according to the peculiar structure and constitution of that mind.”]

[69] [For the distinction, an important one in Kant, between judgements of experience and judgements of perception, see his _Prolegomena_, § 18. Cf. _Kant’s Critical Philosophy for English Readers_, vol. i. p. 116.]

[70] [First Edition has “limited.”]

[71] In order to be justified in claiming universal assent for an aesthetical judgement that rests merely on subjective grounds, it is sufficient to assume, (1) that the subjective conditions of the Judgement, as regards the relation of the cognitive powers thus put into activity to a cognition in general, are the same in all men. This must be true, because otherwise men would not be able to communicate their representations or even their knowledge. (2) The judgement must merely have reference to this relation (consequently to the _formal condition_ of the Judgement) and be pure, _i.e._ not mingled either with concepts of the Object or with sensations, as determining grounds. If there has been any mistake as regards this latter condition, then there is only an inaccurate application of the privilege, which a law gives us, to a particular case; but that does not destroy the privilege itself in general.

[72] [Kant lays down these three maxims in his _Introduction to Logic_, § vii., as “general rules and conditions of the avoidance of error.”]

[73] We soon see that although enlightenment is easy _in thesi_, yet _in hypothesi_ it is difficult and slow of accomplishment. For not to be passive as regards Reason, but to be always self-legislative, is indeed quite easy for the man who wishes only to be in accordance with his essential purpose, and does not desire to know what is beyond his Understanding. But since we can hardly avoid seeking this, and there are never wanting others who promise with much confidence that they are able to satisfy our curiosity, it must be very hard to maintain in or restore to the mind (especially the mind of the public) that bare negative which properly constitutes enlightenment.

[74] We may designate Taste as _sensus communis aestheticus_, common Understanding as _sensus communis logicus_.

[75] [Peter Camper (1722-1789), a celebrated naturalist and comparative anatomist; for some years professor at Groningen.]

[76] In my country a common man, if you propose to him such a problem as that of Columbus with his egg, says, _that is not art, it is only science_. _I.e._ if we _know_ how, we can _do_ it; and he says the same of all the pretended arts of jugglers. On the other hand, he will not refuse to apply the term art to the performance of a rope-dancer.

[77] [Kant was accustomed to say that the talk at a dinner table should always pass through these three stages--narrative, discussion, and jest; and punctilious in this, as in all else, he is said to have directed the conversation at his own table accordingly (Wallace’s _Kant_, p. 39).]

[78] [Second Edition.]

[79] [Cf. Aristotle’s _Poetics_, c. iv. p. 1448 b: ἃ γὰρ αὐτὰ λυπηρῶς ὁρῶμεν, τούτων τὰς εἰκόνας τὰς μάλιστα ἠκριβωμένας χαίρομεν θεωροῦντες οἷον θηρίων τε μορφὰς τῶν ἀτιμοτάτων καὶ νεκρῶν. Cf. also _Rhetoric_, I. 11, p. 1371 b; and Burke on the _Sublime and Beautiful_,