e.

LETTER XVI.

From the antagonism of the two impulsions, and from the association of
two opposite principles, we have seen beauty to result, of which the
highest ideal must therefore be sought in the most perfect union and
equilibrium possible of the reality and of the form. But this
equilibrium remains always an idea that reality can never completely
reach. In reality, there will always remain a preponderance of one of
these elements over the other, and the highest point to which experience
can reach will consist in an oscillation between two principles, when
sometimes reality and at others form will have the advantage. Ideal
beauty is therefore eternally one and indivisible, because there can only
be one single equilibrium; on the contrary, experimental beauty will be
eternally double, because in the oscillation the equilibrium may be
destroyed in two ways--this side and that.

I have called attention in the foregoing letters to a fact that can also
be rigorously deduced from the considerations that have engaged our
attention to the present point; this fact is that an exciting and also a
moderating action may be expected from the beautiful. The tempering
action is directed to keep within proper limits the sensuous and the
formal impulsions; the exciting, to maintain both of them in their full
force. But these two modes of action of beauty ought to be completely
identified in the idea. The beautiful ought to temper while uniformly
exciting the two natures, and it ought also to excite while uniformly
moderating them. This result flows at once from the idea of a
correlation, in virtue of which the two terms mutually imply each other,
and are the reciprocal condition one of the other, a correlation of which
the purest product is beauty. But experience does not offer an example
of so perfect a correlation. In the field of experience it will always
happen more or less that excess on the one side will give rise to
deficiency on the other, and deficiency will give birth to excess. It
results from this that what in the beau-ideal is only distinct in the
idea is different in reality in empirical beauty. The beau-ideal, though
simple and indivisible, discloses, when viewed in two different aspects,
on the one hand, a property of gentleness and grace, and on the other, an
energetic property; in experience there is a gentle and graceful beauty
and there is an energetic beauty. It is so, and it will be always so, so
l