A History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. 2
From the Renaissance Present
Description:... Excerpt from A History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. 2: From the Renaissance Present
Philosophy. - Truth, according to Schiller, is the harmony of sense and reason. Esthetically this harmony consists in grace rather than dignity, which latter is due to the over-preponderance of the rational or spiritual in its union with the sensible. Grace in the human countenance, for example, is a golden mean between that complete characterlessness of expression which betokens the absence of influence of the spiritual over the physical in man, and that rigidity of feature which is the result of an overpowering will or spiritual nature in man. Likewise, inward grace, or grace of soul, is a certain blending of the sensuous feelings and the moral sentiments. This grace of soul is the true nobility of soul, true character, true culture; for the very fact that the spiritual and sensible are found together in man is a postulate of their necessary relation and inner harmony. If this be so, then ideal human nature cannot be merely that "intelligible nature" of which Kant speaks, and before which he would have the sensible nature completely humiliated; morality is spiritual beauty, not merely spiritual dignity or sublimity. Kant, led by a practical necessity, the necessity laid upon a moral reformer in an immoral age, "proposed the idea of duty with harshness enough to ruffle the Graces, and one which could easily tempt a feeble mind to seek for moral perfection in the sombre paths of an ascetic and monastic life;" but the principles of the Kantian philosophy, however expressed ordinarily by him and by others, are unshakable: moral perfection is mans ideal destiny.
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