y
life because we feel it. In a word, it is at once our state and our act.
And precisely because it is at the same time both a state and an act, it
triumphantly proves to us that the passive does not exclude the active,
neither matter nor form, neither the finite nor the infinite; and that
consequently the physical dependence to which man is necessarily devoted
does not in any way destroy his moral liberty. This is the proof of
beauty, and I ought to add that this alone can prove it. In fact, as in
the possession of truth or of logical unity, feeling is not necessarily
one with the thought, but follows it accidentally; it is a fact which
only proves that a sensitive nature can succeed a rational nature, and
vice versa; not that they co-exist, that they exercise a reciprocal
action one over the other; and, lastly, that they ought to be united in
an absolute and necessary manner. From this exclusion of feeling as long
as there is thought, and of thought so long as there is feeling, we
should on the contrary conclude that the two natures are incompatible, so
that in order to demonstrate that pure reason is to be realized in
humanity, the best proof given by the analysis is that this realization
is demanded. But, as in the realization of beauty or of aesthetic unity,
there is a real union, mutual substitution of matter and of form, of
passive and of active, by this alone is proved the compatibility of the
two natures, the possible realization of the infinite in the finite, and
consequently also the possibility of the most sublime humanity.

Henceforth we need no longer be embarrassed to find a transition from
dependent feeling to moral liberty, because beauty reveals to us the fact
that they can perfectly coexist, and that to show himself a spirit, man
need not escape from matter. But if on one side he is free, even in his
relation with a visible world, as the fact of beauty teaches, and if on
the other side freedom is something absolute and supersensuous, as its
idea necessarily implies, the question is no longer how man succeeds in
raising himself from the finite to the absolute, and opposing himself in
his thought and will to sensuality, as this has already been produced in
the fact of beauty. In a word, we have no longer to ask how he passes
from virtue to truth which is already included in the former, but how he
opens a way for himself from vulgar reality to aesthetic reality, and
from the ordinary feelings of life to t