ersistently as to
do good. If a proof be required that in our aesthetic judgments we
attend more to the force than to its direction, to its freedom than to
its lawfulness, this is sufficient for our evidence. We prefer to see
force and freedom manifest themselves at the cost of moral regularity,
rather than regularity at the cost of freedom and strength. For directly
one of those cases offers itself, in which the general law agrees with
the instincts which by their strength threaten to carry away the will,
the aesthetic value of the character is increased, if he be capable of
resisting these instincts. A vicious person begins to interest us as
soon as he must risk his happiness and life to carry out his perverse
designs; on the contrary, a virtuous person loses in proportion as he
finds it useful to be virtuous. Vengeance, for instance, is certainly an
ignoble and a vile affection, but this does not prevent it from becoming
aesthetical, if to satisfy it we must endure painful sacrifice. Medea
slaying her children aims at the heart of Jason, but at the same time she
strikes a heavy blow at her own heart, and her vengeance aesthetically
becomes sublime directly we see in her a tender mother.

In this sense the aesthetic judgment has more of truth than is ordinarily
believed. The vices which show a great force of will evidently announce
a greater aptitude for real moral liberty than do virtues which borrow
support from inclination; seeing that it only requires of the man who
persistently does evil to gain a single victory over himself, one simple
upset of his maxims, to gain ever after to the service of virtue his
whole plan of life, and all the force of will which he lavished on evil.
And why is it we receive with dislike medium characters, whilst we at
times follow with trembling admiration one which is altogether wicked?
It is evident, that with regard to the former, we renounce all hope, we
cannot even conceive the possibility of finding absolute liberty of the
will; whilst with the other, on the contrary, each time he displays his
faculties, we feel that one single act of the will would suffice to raise
him up to the fullest height of human dignity.

Thus, in the aesthetic judgment, that which excites our interest is not
morality itself, but liberty alone; and moral purity can only please our
imagination when it places in relief the forces of the will. It is then
manifestly to confound two very distinct orders of idea