Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Aesthetical Essays of Frederich Schiller by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
page 46 of 445 (10%)
when, with every difference of form, the matter of man's volition remains
the same, when all his impulses agreeing with his reason are sufficient
to have the value of a universal legislation.

It may be urged that every individual man carries within himself, at
least in his adaptation and destination, a purely ideal man. The great
problem of his existence is to bring all the incessant changes of his
outer life into conformity with the unchanging unity of this ideal. This
pure ideal man, which makes itself known more or less clearly in every
subject, is represented by the state, which is the objective, and, so to
speak, canonical form in which the manifold differences of the subjects
strive to unite. Now two ways present themselves to the thought in which
the man of time can agree with the man of idea, and there are also two
ways in which the state can maintain itself in individuals. One of these
ways is when the pure ideal man subdues the empirical man, and the state
suppresses the individual, or again when the individual becomes the
state, and the man of time is ennobled to the man of idea.

I admit that in a one-sided estimate from the point of view of morality
this difference vanishes, for the reason is satisfied if her law prevails
unconditionally. But when the survey taken is complete and embraces the
whole man (anthropology), where the form is considered together with the
substance, and a living feeling has a voice, the difference will become
far more evident. No doubt the reason demands unity, and nature variety,
and both legislations take man in hand. The law of the former is stamped
upon him by an incorruptible consciousness, that of the latter by an
ineradicable feeling. Consequently education will always appear
deficient when the moral feeling can only be maintained with the
sacrifice of what is natural; and a political administration will always
be very imperfect when it is only able to bring about unity by
DigitalOcean Referral Badge