estined to obtain knowledge and to act from knowledge. In
both cases a certain readiness is required to exclude the senses from
that which the spirit does, because feelings must be abstracted from
knowledge, and passion or desire from every moral act of the will.

When we know, we take up an active attitude, and our attention is
directed to an object, to a relation between different representations.
When we feel, we have a passive attitude, and our attention--if we may
call that so, which is no conscious operation of the mind--is only
directed to our own condition, as far as it is modified by the impression
received. Now, as we only feel and do not know the beautiful, we do not
distinguish any relation between it and other objects, we do not refer
its representation to other representations, but to ourselves who have
experienced the impression. We learn or experience nothing in the
beautiful object, but we perceive a change occasioned by it in our own
condition, of which the impression produced is the expression.
Accordingly our knowledge is not enlarged by judgments of taste, and no
knowledge, not even that of beauty, is obtained by the feeling of beauty.
Therefore, when knowledge is the object, taste can give us no help, at
least directly and immediately; on the contrary, knowledge is shut out as
long as we are occupied with beauty.

But it may be objected, What is the use then of a graceful embodiment of
conceptions, if the object of the discussion or treatise, which is simply
and solely to produce knowledge, is rather hindered than benefited by
ornament? To convince the understanding this gracefulness of clothing
can certainly avail as little as the tasteful arrangement of a banquet
can satisfy the appetite of the guests, or the outward elegance of a
person can give a clue to his intrinsic worth. But just as the appetite
is excited by the beautiful arrangement of the table, and attention is
directed to the elegant person in question, by the attractiveness of the
exterior, so also we are placed in a favorable attitude to receive truth
by the charming representation given of it; we are led to open our souls
to its reception, and the obstacles are removed from our minds which
would have otherwise opposed the difficult pursuit of a long and strict
concatenation of thought. It is never the contents, the substance, that
gains by the beauty of form; nor is it the understanding that is helped
by taste in the act of knowing.