pires to use this dignity she owes to reason against
reason itself.

These are the dangers that threaten the morality of the character when
too intimate an association is attempted between sensuous instincts and
moral instincts, which can never perfectly agree in real life, but only
in the ideal. I admit that the sensuous risks nothing in this
association, because it possesses nothing except what it must give up
directly duty speaks and reason demands the sacrifice. But reason, as
the arbiter of the moral law, will run the more risk from this union if
it receives as a gift from inclination what it might enforce; for, under
the appearance of freedom, the feeling of obligation may be easily lost,
and what reason accepts as a favor may quite well be refused it when the
sensuous finds it painful to grant it. It is, therefore, infinitely
safer for the morality of the character to suspend, at least for a time,
this misrepresentation of the moral sense by the sense of the beautiful.
It is best of all that reason should command by itself without mediation,
and that it should show to the will its true master. The remark is,
therefore, quite justified, that true morality only knows itself in the
school of adversity, and that a continual prosperity becomes easily a
rock of offence to virtue. I mean here by prosperity the state of a man
who, to enjoy the goods of life, need not commit injustice, and who to
conform to justice need not renounce any of the goods of life. The man
who enjoys a continual prosperity never sees moral duty face to face,
because his inclinations, naturally regular and moderate, always
anticipate the mandate of reason, and because no temptation to violate
the law recalls to his mind the idea of law. Entirely guided by the
sense of the beautiful, which represents reason in the world of sense, he
will reach the tomb without having known by experience the dignity of his
destiny. On the other hand, the unfortunate man, if he be at the same
time a virtuous man, enjoys the sublime privilege of being in immediate
intercourse with the divine majesty of the moral law; and as his virtue
is not seconded by any inclination, he bears witness in this lower world,
and as a human being, of the freedom of pure spirits!

REFLECTIONS ON THE USE OF THE VULGAR AND LOW ELEMENTS IN WORKS OF ART.

I call vulgar (common) all that does not speak to the mind, of which all
the interest is addressed only to the senses. There are