ion, and will set man free physically and morally.
When we welcome with effusion some one who deserves our contempt, we feel
painfully that nature is constrained. When we have a hostile feeling
against a person who commands our esteem, we feel painfully the
constraint of reason. But if this person inspires us with interest, and
also wins our esteem, the constraint of feeling vanishes together with
the constraint of reason, and we begin to love him, that is to say, to
play, to take recreation, at once with our inclination and our esteem.

Moreover, as the sensuous impulsion controls us physically, and the
formal impulsion morally, the former makes our formal constitution
contingent, and the latter makes our material constitution contingent,
that is to say, there is contingence in the agreement of our happiness
with our perfection, and reciprocally. The instinct of play, in which
both act in concert, will render both our formal and our material
constitution contingent; accordingly, our perfection and our happiness in
like manner. And on the other hand, exactly because it makes both of
them contingent, and because the contingent disappears with necessity, it
will suppress this contingence in both, and will thus give form to matter
and reality to form. In proportion that it will lessen the dynamic
influence of feeling and passion, it will place them in harmony with
rational ideas, and by taking from the laws of reason their moral
constraint, it will reconcile them with the interest of the senses.

LETTER XV.

I approach continually nearer to the end to which I lead you, by a path
offering few attractions. Be pleased to follow me a few steps further,
and a large horizon will open up to you, and a delightful prospect will
reward you for the labor of the way.

The object of the sensuous instinct, expressed in a universal conception,
is named Life in the widest acceptation; a conception that expresses all
material existence and all that is immediately present in the senses.
The object of the formal instinct, expressed in a universal conception,
is called shape or form, as well in an exact as in an inexact
acceptation; a conception that embraces all formal qualities of things
and all relations of the same to the thinking powers. The object of the
play instinct, represented in a general statement, may therefore bear the
name of living form; a term that serves to describe all aesthetic
qualities of phenomena, and what p