far as we attend to the absence of
all limits and the sum of powers which are commonly active in it.
Accordingly we cannot pronounce them, again, to be wrong who describe the
aesthetic state to be the most productive in relation to knowledge and
morality. They are perfectly right, for a state of mind which comprises
the whole of humanity in itself must of necessity include in itself also
--necessarily and potentially--every separate expression of it. Again, a
disposition of mind that removes all limitation from the totality of
human nature must also remove it from every special expression of the
same. Exactly because its "aesthetic disposition" does not exclusively
shelter any separate function of humanity, it is favorable to all without
distinction; nor does it favor any particular functions, precisely
because it is the foundation of the possibility of all. All other
exercises give to the mind some special aptitude, but for that very
reason give it some definite limits; only the aesthetical leads him to
the unlimited. Every other condition in which we can live refers us to a
previous condition, and requires for its solution a following condition;
only the aesthetic is a complete whole in itself, for it unites in itself
all conditions of its source and of its duration. Here alone we feel
ourselves swept out of time, and our humanity expresses itself with
purity and integrity as if it had not yet received any impression or
interruption from the operation of external powers.

That which flatters our senses in immediate sensation opens our weak and
volatile spirit to every impression, but makes us in the same degree less
apt for exertion. That which stretches our thinking power and invites to
abstract conceptions strengthens our mind for every kind of resistance,
but hardens it also in the same proportion, and deprives us of
susceptibility in the same ratio that it helps us to greater mental
activity. For this very reason, one as well as the other brings us at
length to exhaustion, because matter cannot long do without the shaping,
constructive force, and the force cannot do without the constructible
material. But on the other hand, if we have resigned ourselves to the
enjoyment of genuine beauty, we are at such a moment of our passive and
active powers in the same degree master, and we shall turn with ease from
grave to gay, from rest to movement, from submission to resistance, to
abstract thinking and intuition.

This h