an initiative act, and to stop by reflection the petulance of the
feelings, ever ready to pass from affections to acts. Therefore
everything that interrupts the blind impetuosity of these movements of
the affections does not as yet, however, produce, I own, a virtue (for
virtue ought never to have any other active principle than itself), but
that at least opens the road to the will, in order to turn it on the side
of virtue. Still, this victory of taste over brutish affections is by no
means a moral action, and the freedom which the will acquires by the
intervention of taste is as yet in no way a moral liberty. Taste
delivers the soul from the yoke of instinct, only to impose upon it
chains of its own; and in discerning the first enemy, the declared enemy
of moral liberty, it remains itself, too often, as a second enemy,
perhaps even the more dangerous as it assumes the aspect of a friend.
Taste effectively governs the soul itself only by the attraction of
pleasure; it is true of a nobler type, because its principle is reason,
but still as long as the will is determined by pleasure there is not yet
morality.

Notwithstanding this, a great point is gained already by the intervention
of taste in the operations of the will. All those material inclinations
and brutal appetites, which oppose with so much obstinacy and vehemence
the practice of good, the soul is freed from through the aesthetic taste;
and in their place, it implants in us nobler and gentler inclinations,
which draw nearer to order, to harmony, and to perfection; and although
these inclinations are not by themselves virtues, they have at least
something in common with virtue; it is their object. Thenceforth, if it
is the appetite that speaks, it will have to undergo a rigorous control
before the sense of the beautiful; if it is the reason which speaks, and
which commands in its acts conformity with order, harmony, and
perfection, not only will it no longer meet with an adversary on the side
of inclination, but it will find the most active competition. If we
survey all the forms under which morality can be produced, we shall see
that all these forms can be reduced to two; either it is sensuous nature
which moves the soul either to do this thing or not to do the other, and
the will finally decides after the law of the reason; or it is the reason
itself which impels the motion, and the will obeys it without seeking
counsel of the senses.

The Greek princess, Ann