The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

harmony or melody. Touch, as one with the feeling of the whole body, is still more subordinated to this direct influence upon the will ; and yet there is such a, thing,, as, a sensation of touch which is neither painful nor pleasant. BuT^^ps are always either agreeable or. disagreeable, find tastes still more so.

Thus the last two senses are mosf closely related to the will, and therefore they are. always the most ignoble, and have been called by Kant fhe subjective senses.

The pleasure which we experience from light is in fact only the pleasure which arises from the objective possibility of the purest and fullest perceptive knowledge, and as such it may be traced to the fact that pure knowledge, freed and delivered from all will, is in the highest degree pleasant, and of itself constitutes a large part of aesthetic enjoyment.

Again, we must refer to this view of light the incredible beau^ which we associate with the reflection of objects in waiter.

That lightest, quickest, finest species of the action of bodies upon each other, that to which we owe by far the completest and purest of our perceptions, the action of reflected rays of light, is here brought cl^rly before our eyes, distinct and perfect, in cause and in effect, and indeed in its entirety, hence the aesthetic delight it gives us, "which, in the most important aspect, is entirely based on the subjective ground of aesthetic pleaisure, and is delight in pure knowing and its method.

§ 39. All these reflections are intended to bring out the subjective part of aesthetic pleasure ; that is to say, that pleasure so far as it consists simply of delight in perceptive knowledge as such, in opposition to will. And as directly connected with this, there naturally follows the explanation of that disposition or frame of mind which has been called the sense of the sublime.

We have already remarked above that the transition to the state of pure perception takes place most easily when the objects bend themselves to it, that is, when by their manifold and yet definite and distinct form they easily a6o

THE WORLD AS IDEA.

BK. III.

become representatives of their Ideas, in which beauty, in the objective sense, consists.

This quality belongs preeminently to natural beauty, which thus afl'ords even to the most insensible at least a fleeting aesthetic satisfaction : indeed it is so remarkable how especially the vegetable world invites aesthetic observation, and, as it were, presses itself upon it, that one might say, that these advances are connected with the fact that these organisms, unlike the bodies of animals, are not themselves immediate objects of knowledge, and therefore require the assistance of a foreign intelligent individual in order to rise out of the world of blind will and enter the world of idea, and that thus they long, as it were, for this entrance, that they may attain at least indirectly what is denied them directly.

But I leave this suggestion which I have hazarded, and which borders perhaps upon extravagance, entirely undecided, for only a veiy intimate and devoted consideration of nature can raise or justify it.^ As long as that which raises us from the knowledge of mere relations subject to the will, to aisthetic contemplation, and thereby exalts us to the position of the subject of knowledge free from will, is this fittingness of nature, this significance and distinctness of its forms, on account of which the Ideas individualised in them readily present themselves to us ; so long is it merely beauty that affects us and the •sense of the beautiful that is excited.

But if these very objects whose significant forms invite us to pure contemplation, have a hostile relation to the human will in general, as it exhibits itself in its objectivity, the human body, if they are opposed to it, so that it is menaced by the irresistible predominance of their power, or sinks into insignificance before their immeasurable