... Our second business, then, is to make this combination perfect,
to accomplish it so purely and completely that both conditions
entirely disappear in a third, and no trace of the division remains
behind in the whole; otherwise we are isolating and not uniting
them. All the disputes that have ever prevailed in the philosophical
world, and still prevail to some extent nowadays, about the conception
of Beauty, have the single origin that people either began the enquiry
without the requisite strictness of discrimination, or else did not carry
it through to a completely pure combination. Those philosophers who
blindly trust the guidance of their feelings in considering the subject
can arrive at no concept of Beauty, because they distinguish nothing
individual in the totality of the sensuous impression. The others, who take the intellect as their exclusive guide, can never arrive at a
concept of Beauty, because they never see in its totality anything
but the parts, and spirit and matter remain, even in completest union,
for ever separate to them.
Eighteenth Letter
On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Friedrich Schiller
(Translated by Reginald Snell)
Sculpture in progress
