ts, he requires
nothing more than important occasions: to obtain the same thing from the
sensuous man, his nature must at first be changed. To make of the former
a hero, a sage, it is often only necessary to meet with a sublime
situation, which exercises upon the faculty of the will the more
immediate action; for the second, it must first be transplanted under
another sky.

One of the most important tasks of culture, then, is to submit man to
form, even in a purely physical life, and to render it aesthetic as far
as the domain of the beautiful can be extended, for it is alone in the
aesthetic state, and not in the physical state, that the moral state can
be developed. If in each particular case man ought to possess the power
to make his judgment and his will the judgment of the entire species; if
he ought to find in each limited existence the transition to an infinite
existence; if, lastly, he ought from every dependent situation to take
his flight to rise to autonomy and to liberty, it must be observed that
at no moment he is only individual and solely obeys the laws of nature.
To be apt and ready to raise himself from the narrow circle of the ends
of nature, to rational ends, in the sphere of the former he must already
have exercised himself in the second; he must already have realized his
physical destiny with a certain liberty that belongs only to spiritual
nature, that is to say according to the laws of the beautiful.

And that he can effect without thwarting in the least degree his physical
aim. The exigencies of nature with regard to him turn only upon what he
does--upon the substance of his acts; but the ends of nature in no degree
determine the way in which he acts, the form of his actions. On the
contrary, the exigencies of reason have rigorously the form of his
activity for its object. Thus, so much as it is necessary for the moral
destination of man, that he be purely moral, that he shows an absolute
personal activity, so much is he indifferent that his physical
destination be entirely physical, that he acts in a manner entirely
passive. Henceforth with regard to this last destination, it entirely
depends on him to fulfil it solely as a sensuous being and natural force
(as a force which acts only as it diminishes) or, at the same time, as
absolute force, as a rational being. To which of these does his dignity
best respond? Of this there can be no question. It is as disgraceful
and contemptible for him to do