sense.

As soon, then, as in man the person, the moral and free agent, takes upon
himself to determine the play of phenomena, and by his intervention takes
from nature the power to protect the beauty of her work, he then, as it
were, substitutes himself for nature, and assumes in a certain measure,
with the rights of nature, a part of the obligations incumbent on her.
When the mind, taking possession of the sensuous matter subservient to
it, implicates it in his destiny and makes it depend on its own
modifications, it transforms itself to a certain point into a sensuous
phenomenon, and, as such, is obliged to recognize the law which regulates
in general all the phenomena. In its own interest it engages to permit
that nature in its service, placed under its dependence, shall still
preserve its character of nature, and never act in a manner contrary to
its anterior obligations. I call the beautiful an obligation of
phenomena, because the want which corresponds to it in the subject has
its reason in the understanding itself, and thus it is consequently
universal and necessary. I call it an anterior obligation because the
senses, in the matter of beauty, have given their judgment before the
understanding commences to perform its office.

Thus it is now free arbitration which rules the beautiful. If nature has
furnished the architectonic beauty, the soul in its turn determines the
beauty of the play, and now also we know what we must understand by charm
and grace. Grace is the beauty of the form under the influence of free
will; it is the beauty of this kind of phenomena that the person himself
determines. The architectonic beauty does honor to the author of nature;
grace does honor to him who possesses it. That is a gift, this is a
personal merit.

Grace can be found only in movement, for a modification which takes place
in the soul can only be manifested in the sensuous world as movement.
But this does not prevent features fixed and in repose also from
possessing grace. There immobility is, in its origin, movement which,
from being frequently repeated, at length becomes habitual, leaving
durable traces.

But all the movements of man are not capable of grace. Grace is never
otherwise than beauty of form animated into movement by free will; and
the movements which belong only to physical nature could not merit the
name. It is true that an intellectual man, if he be keen, ends by
rendering himself master of almost all the