ination could not find its interest. But a moral
obligation imposed on the will cannot be conceived, except by supposing
this same will absolutely independent of the moral instincts and from
their constraint. Accordingly the possibility of the moral act requires
liberty, and therefore agrees here in the most perfect manner with the
interest of imagination. But as imagination, through the medium of its
wants, cannot give orders to the will of the individual, as reason does
by its imperative character, it follows that the faculty of freedom, in
relation to imagination, is something accidental, and consequently that
the agreement between the accidental and the necessary (conditionally
necessary) must excite pleasure. Therefore, if we bring to bear a moral
judgment on this act of Leonidas, we shall consider it from a point of
view where its accidental character strikes the eye less than its
necessary side. If, on the other hand, we apply the aesthetical judgment
to it, this is another point of view, where its character of necessity
strikes us less forcibly than its accidental character. It is a duty for
every will to act thus, directly it is a free will; but the fact that
there is a free will that makes this act possible is a favor of nature in
regard to this faculty, to which freedom is a necessity. Thus an act of
virtue judged by the moral sense--by reason--will give us as its only
satisfaction the feeling of approbation, because reason can never find
more, and seldom finds as much as it requires. This same act, judged, on
the contrary, by the aesthetic sense--by imagination--will give us a
positive pleasure, because the imagination, never requiring the end to
agree with the demand, must be surprised, enraptured, at the real
satisfaction of this demand as at a happy chance. Our reason will merely
approve, and only approve, of Leonidas actually taking this heroic
resolution; but that he could take this resolution is what delights and
enraptures us.

This distinction between the two sorts of judgments becomes more evident
still, if we take an example where the moral sense and the aesthetic
sense pronounce a different verdict. Suppose we take the act of
Perigrinus Proteus burning himself at Olympia. Judging this act morally,
I cannot give it my approbation, inasmuch as I see it determined by
impure motives, to which Proteus sacrifices the duty of respecting his
own existence. But in the aesthetic judgment this same act deligh