TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY J. H. BERNARD, D.D., D.C.L.
BISHOP OF OSSORY SOMETIME FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, AND ARCHBISHOP KING’S PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
SECOND EDITION, REVISED
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTI N’S STREET, LONDON 1914

CONTENTS
Editor’s Introduction
Preface
Introduction
I. Of the division of Philosophy
II. Of the realm of Philosophy in general
III. Of the Critique of Judgement as a means of combining the two parts of Philosophy into a whole
IV. Of Judgement as a faculty legislating a priori 17
V. The principle of the formal purposiveness of nature is a transcendental principle of Judgement 20
VI. Of the combination of the feeling of pleasure with the concept of the purposiveness of nature 27
VII. Of the aesthetical representation of the purposiveness of nature 30
VIII. Of the logical representation of the purposiveness of nature 35
IX. Of the connexion of the legislation of Understanding with that of Reason by means of the Judgement
First Part.—Critique of the Aesthetical Judgement
First Division.—Analytic of the Aesthetical Judgement
First Book.—Analytic of the Beautiful
First Moment of the judgement of taste, according to quality
§  1. The judgement of taste is aesthetical
§  2. The satisfaction which determines the judgement of taste is disinterested 46

§  3. The satisfaction in the pleasant is bound up with interest 48

§  4. The satisfaction in the good is bound up with interest 50

§  5. Comparison of the three specifically different kinds of satisfaction 53

Second Moment of the judgement of taste, viz. according to quantity 55

§  6. The Beautiful is that which apart from concepts is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction 55

§  7. Comparison of the Beautiful with the Pleasant and the Good by means of the above characteristic 57

§  8. The universality of the satisfaction is represented in a judgement of Taste only as subjective 59

§  9. Investigation of the question whether in a judgement of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes or follows the judging of the object 63

Third Moment of judgements of taste according to the relation of the purposes which are brought into consideration therein 67

§ 10. Of purposiveness in general 67

§ 11. The judgement of taste has nothing at its basis but the form of the purposiveness of an object (or of its mode of representation) 69

§ 12. The judgement of taste rests on a priori grounds 70

§ 13. The pure judgement of taste is independent of charm and emotion 72

§ 14. Elucidation by means of examples 73

§ 15. The judgement of taste is quite independent of the concept of perfection 77

§ 16. The judgement of taste, by which an object is declared to be beautiful under the condition of a definite concept, is not pure 81

§ 17. Of the Ideal of Beauty 84

Fourth Moment of the judgement of taste, according to the modality of the satisfaction in the object 91

§ 18. What the modality in a judgement of taste is 91

§ 19. The subjective necessity which we ascribe to the judgement of taste is conditioned 92

§ 20. The condition of necessity which a judgement of taste asserts is the Idea of a common sense 92

§ 21. Have we ground for presupposing a common sense? 93

§ 22. The necessity of the universal agreement that is thought in a judgement of taste is a subjective necessity, which is represented as objective under the presupposition of a common sense 94

General remark on the first section of the Analytic 96

Second Book.—Analytic of the Sublime 101

§ 23. Transition from the faculty which judges of the Beautiful to that which judges of the Sublime 101

§ 24. Of the divisions of an investigation into the feeling of the Sublime 105

A.—Of the Mathematically Sublime 106

§ 25. Explanation of the term “Sublime” 106

§ 26. Of that estimation of the magnitude of natural things which is requisite for the Idea of the Sublime 110

§ 27. Of the quality of the satisfaction in our judgements upon the Sublime 119

B.—Of the Dynamically Sublime in Nature 123

§ 28. Of Nature regarded as Might 123

§ 29. Of the modality of the judgement upon the sublime in nature 130

General remark upon the exposition of the aesthetical reflective Judgement 132

Deduction of [pure] aesthetical judgements 150

§ 30. The Deduction of aesthetical judgements on the objects of nature must not be directed to what we call Sublime in nature, but only to the Beautiful 150

§ 31. Of the method of deduction of judgements of taste 152

§ 32. First peculiarity of the judgement of taste 154

§ 33. Second peculiarity of the judgement of taste 157

§ 34. There is no objective principle of taste possible 159

§ 35. The principle of Taste is the subjective principle of Judgement in general 161

§ 36. Of the problem of a Deduction of judgements of Taste 162

§ 37. What is properly asserted a priori of an object in a judgement of taste 164

§ 38. Deduction of judgements of taste 165

§ 39. Of the communicability of a sensation 167

§ 40. Of taste as a kind of sensus communis 169

§ 41. Of the empirical interest in the Beautiful 173

§ 42. Of the intellectual interest in the Beautiful 176

§ 43. Of Art in general 183

§ 44. Of beautiful Art 185

§ 45. Beautiful art is an art in so far as it seems like nature 187

§ 46. Beautiful art is the art of genius 188

§ 47. Elucidation and confirmation of the above explanation of Genius 190

§ 48. Of the relation of Genius to Taste 193

§ 49. Of the faculties of the mind that constitute Genius 197

§ 50. Of the combination of Taste with Genius in the products of beautiful Art 205

§ 51. Of the division of the beautiful arts 206

§ 52. Of the combination of beautiful arts in one and the same product 214

§ 53. Comparison of the respective aesthetical worth of the beautiful arts 215

§ 54. Remark 220

Second Division.—Dialectic of the Aesthetical Judgement 229

§ 55. 229

§ 56. Representation of the antinomy of Taste 230

§ 57. Solution of the antinomy of Taste 231

§ 58. Of the Idealism of the purposiveness of both Nature and Art as the unique principle of the aesthetical Judgement 241

§ 59. Of Beauty as the symbol of Morality 248

§ 60. Appendix:—Of the method of Taste 253

Second Part.—Critique of the Teleological Judgement 257

§ 61. Of the objective purposiveness of Nature 259

First Division.—Analytic of the Teleological Judgement 262

§ 62. Of the objective purposiveness which is merely formal as distinguished from that which is material 262

§ 63. Of the relative, as distinguished from the inner, purposiveness of nature 268

§ 64. Of the peculiar character of things as natural purposes 272

§ 65. Things regarded as natural purposes are organised beings 275

§ 66. Of the principle of judging of internal purposiveness in organised beings 280

§ 67. Of the principle of the teleological judging of nature in general as a system of purposes 282

§ 68. Of the principle of Teleology as internal principle of natural science 287

Second Division.—Dialectic of the Teleological Judgement 292

§ 69. What is an antinomy of the Judgement? 292

§ 70. Representation of this antinomy 293

§ 71. Preliminary to the solution of the above antinomy 296

§ 72. Of the different systems which deal with the purposiveness of Nature 298

§ 73. None of the above systems give what they pretend 302

§ 74. The reason that we cannot treat the concept of a Technic of nature dogmatically is the fact that a natural purpose is inexplicable 306

§ 75. The concept of an objective purposiveness of nature is a critical principle of Reason for the reflective Judgement 309

§ 76. Remark 313

§ 77. Of the peculiarity of the human Understanding, by means of which the concept of a natural purpose is possible 319

§ 78. Of the union of the principle of the universal mechanism of matter with the teleological principle in the Technic of nature 326

Appendix.—Methodology of the Teleological Judgement
§ 79. Whether Teleology must be treated as if it belonged to the doctrine of nature
§ 80. Of the necessary subordination of the mechanical to the teleological principle in the explanation of a thing as a natural purpose
§ 81. Of the association of mechanism with the teleological principle in the explanation of a natural purpose as a natural product
§ 82. Of the teleological system in the external relations of organised beings
§ 83. Of the ultimate purpose of nature as a teleological system 352

§ 84. Of the final purpose of the existence of a world, i.e. of creation itself 359

§ 85. Of Physico-theology 362

§ 86. Of Ethico-theology 370

§ 87. Of the moral proof of the Being of God 377

§ 88. Limitation of the validity of the moral proof 384

§ 89. Of the use of the moral argument 392

§ 90. Of the kind of belief in a teleological proof of the Being of God
§ 91. Of the kind of belief produced by a practical faith
General remark on Teleology

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

There are not wanting indications that public interest in the Critical Philosophy has been quickened of recent days in these countries, as well as in America. To lighten the toil of penetrating through the wilderness of Kant’s long sentences, the English student has now many aids, which those who began their studies fifteen or twenty years ago did not enjoy. Translations, paraphrases, criticisms, have been published in considerable numbers; so that if it is not yet true that “he who runs may read,” it may at least be said that a patient student of ordinary industry and intelligence has his way made plain before him. And yet the very number of aids is dangerous. Whatever may be the value of short and easy handbooks in other departments of science, it is certain that no man will become a philosopher, no man will even acquire a satisfactory knowledge of the history of philosophy, without personal and prolonged study of the ipsissima verba of the great masters of human thought. “Above all,” said Schopenhauer, “my truth-seeking young friends, beware of letting our professors tell you what is contained in the Critique of the Pure Reason”; and the advice has not become less wholesome with the lapse of years. The fact, however, that many persons have not sufficient familiarity with German to enable them to study German Philosophy in the original with ease, makes translations an educational necessity; and this translation of Kant’s Critique of the faculty of Judgement has been undertaken in the hope that it may promote a more general study of that masterpiece. If any reader wishes to follow Schopenhauer’s advice, he has only to omit the whole of this prefatory matter and proceed at once to the Author’s laborious Introduction.

It is somewhat surprising that the Critique of Judgement has never yet been made accessible to the English reader. Dr. Watson has indeed translated a few selected passages, so also has Dr. Caird in his valuable account of the Kantian philosophy, and I have found their renderings of considerable service; but the space devoted by both writers to the Critique of Judgement is very small in comparison with that given to the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason. And yet the work is not an unimportant one. Kant himself regarded it as the coping-stone of his critical edifice; it even formed the point of departure for his successors, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, in the construction of their respective systems. Possibly the reason of its comparative neglect lies in its repulsive style. Kant was never careful of style, and in his later years he became more and more enthralled by those technicalities and refined distinctions which deter so many from the Critical Philosophy even in its earlier sections. These “symmetrical architectonic amusements,” as Schopenhauer called them, encumber every page of Kant’s later writings, and they are a constant source of embarrassment to his unhappy translator. For, as every translator knows, no single word in one language exactly covers any single word in another; and yet if Kant’s distinctions are to be preserved it is necessary to select with more or less arbitrariness English equivalents for German technical terms, and retain them all through. Instances of this will be given later on; I only remark here on the fact that Kant’s besetting sin of over-technicality is especially conspicuous in this treatise.

Another fault—an old fault of Kant—apparent after reading even a few pages, is that repetitions are very frequent of the same thought in but slightly varied language. Arguments are repeated over and over again until they become quite wearisome; and then when the reader’s attention has flagged, and he is glancing cursorily down the page, some important new point is introduced without emphasis, as if the author were really anxious to keep his meaning to himself at all hazards. A book written in such fashion rarely attracts a wide circle of readers. And yet, not only did Goethe think highly of it, but it received a large measure of attention in France as well as in Germany on its first appearance. Originally published at Berlin in 1790, a Second Edition was called for in 1793; and a French translation was made by Imhoff in 1796. Other French versions are those by Keratry and Weyland in 1823, and by Barni in 1846. This last I have had before me while performing my task, but I have not found it of much service; the older French translations I have not seen. The existence of these French versions, when taken in connexion with the absence until very recently of any systematic account of the Critique of Judgement in English, may be perhaps explained by the lively interest that was taken on the Continent in the Philosophy of Art in the early part of the century; whereas scientific studies on this subject received little attention in England during the same period.

The student of the Critique of Pure Reason will remember how closely, in his Transcendental Logic, Kant follows the lines of the ordinary logic of the schools. He finds his whole plan ready made for him, as it were; and he proceeds to work out the metaphysical principles which underlie the process of syllogistic reasoning. And as there are three propositions in every syllogism, he points out that, in correspondence with this triplicity, the higher faculties of the soul may be regarded as threefold. The Understanding or the faculty of concepts gives us our major premise, as it supplies us in the first instance with a general notion. By means of the Judgement we see that a particular case comes under the general rule, and by the Reason we draw our conclusion. These, as three distinct movements in the process of reasoning, are regarded by Kant as indicating three distinct faculties, with which the Analytic of Concepts, the Analytic of Principles, and the Dialectic are respectively concerned. The full significance of this important classification does not seem, however, to have occurred to Kant at the time, as we may see from the order in which he wrote his great books.1 The first problem which arrests the attention of all modern philosophers is, of course, the problem of knowledge, its conditions and its proper objects. And in the Critique of Pure Reason this is discussed, and the conclusion is reached that nature as phenomenon is the only object of which we can hope to acquire any exact knowledge. But it is apparent that there are other problems which merit consideration; a complete philosophy includes practice as well as theory; it has to do not only with logic, but with life. And thus the Critique of Practical Reason was written, in which is unfolded the doctrine of man’s freedom standing in sharp contrast with the necessity of natural law. Here, then, it seems at first sight as if we had covered the whole field of human activity. For we have investigated the sources of knowledge, and at the same time have pointed out the conditions of practical life, and have seen that the laws of freedom are just as true in their own sphere as are the laws of nature.

But as we reflect on our mental states we find that here no proper account has been given of the phenomena of feeling, which play so large a part in experience. And this Kant saw before he had proceeded very far with the Critique of Practical Reason; and in consequence he adopted a threefold classification of the higher mental faculties based on that given by previous psychologists. Knowledge, feeling, desire, these are the three ultimate modes of consciousness, of which the second has not yet been described. And when we compare this with the former triple division which we took up from the Aristotelian logic, we see that the parallelism is significant. Understanding is par excellence the faculty of knowledge, and Reason the faculty of desire (these points are developed in Kant’s first two Critiques). And this suggests that the Judgement corresponds to the feeling of pleasure and pain; it occupies a position intermediate between Understanding and Reason, just as, roughly speaking, the feeling of pleasure is intermediate between our perception of an object and our desire to possess it.

And so the Critique of Judgement completes the whole undertaking of criticism; its endeavour is to show that there are a priori principles at the basis of Judgement just as there are in the case of Understanding and of Reason; that these principles, like the principles of Reason, are not constitutive but only regulative of experience, i.e. that they do not teach us anything positive about the characteristics of objects, but only indicate the conditions under which we find it necessary to view them; and lastly, that we are thus furnished with an a priori philosophy of pleasure.

The fundamental principle underlying the procedure of the Judgement is seen to be that of the purposiveness of Nature; nature is everywhere adapted to ends or purposes, and thus constitutes a κόσμος, a well-ordered whole. By this means, nature is regarded by us as if its particular empirical laws were not isolated and disparate, but connected and in relation, deriving their unity in seeming diversity from an intelligence which is at the source of nature. It is only by the assumption of such a principle that we can construe nature to ourselves; and the principle is then said to be a transcendental condition of the exercise of our judging faculty, but valid only for the reflective, not for the determinant Judgement. It gives us pleasure to view nature in this way; just as the contemplation of chaos would be painful.

But this purposiveness may be only formal and subjective, or real and objective. In some cases the purposiveness resides in the felt harmony and accordance of the form of the object with the cognitive faculties; in others the form of the object is judged to harmonise with the purpose in view in its existence. That is to say, in the one case we judge the form of the object to be purposive, as in the case of a flower, but could not explain any purpose served by it; in the other case we have a definite notion of what it is adapted for. In the former case the aesthetical Judgement is brought to bear, in the latter the teleological; and it thus appears that the Critique of Judgement has two main divisions; it treats first of the philosophy of Taste, the Beautiful and the Sublime in Nature; and secondly, of the Teleology of nature’s working. It is a curious literary parallel that St. Augustine hints (Confessions iv. 15) that he had written a book, De Pulchro et Ápto, in which these apparently distinct topics were combined; “pulchrum esse, quod per se ipsum; aptum, autem, quod ad aliquid accommodatum deceret.” A beautiful object has no purpose external to itself and the observer; but a useful object serves further ends. Both, however, may be brought under the higher category of things that are reckoned purposive by the Judgement.

We have here then, in the first place, a basis for an a priori Philosophy of Taste; and Kant works out its details with great elaboration. He borrowed little from the writings of his predecessors, but struck out, as was ever his plan, a line of his own. He quotes with approval from Burke’s Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, which was accessible to him in a German translation; but is careful to remark that it is as psychology, not as philosophy, that Burke’s work has value. He may have read in addition Hutcheson’s Inquiry which had also been translated into German; and he was complete master of Hume’s opinions. Of other writers on Beauty, he only names Batteux and Lessing. Batteux was a French writer of repute who had attempted a twofold arrangement of the Arts as they may be brought under Space and under Time respectively, a mode of classification which would naturally appeal to Kant. He does not seem, however, to have read the ancient text-book on the subject, Aristotle’s Poetics, the principles of which Lessing declared to be as certain as Euclid.

Following the guiding thread of the categories, he declares that the aesthetical judgement about Beauty is according to quality disinterested; a point which had been laid down by such different writers as Hutcheson and Moses Mendelssohn. As to quantity, the judgement about beauty gives universal satisfaction, although it is based on no definite concept. The universality is only subjective; but still it is there. The maxim Trahit sua quemque voluptas does not apply to the pleasure afforded by a pure judgement about beauty. As to relation, the characteristic of the object called beautiful is that it betrays a purposiveness without definite purpose. The pleasure is a priori, independent on the one hand of the charms of sense or the emotions of mere feeling, as Winckelmann had already declared; and on the other hand is a pleasure quite distinct from that taken which we feel when viewing perfection, with which Wolff and Baumgarten had identified it. By his distinction between free and dependent beauty, which we also find in the pages of Hutcheson, Kant further develops his doctrine of the freedom of the pure judgement of taste from the thraldom of concepts.

Finally, the satisfaction afforded by the contemplation of a beautiful object is a necessary satisfaction. This necessity is not, to be sure, theoretical like the necessity attaching to the Law of Causality; nor is it a practical necessity as is the need to assume the Moral Law as the guiding principle of conduct. But it may be called exemplary; that is, we may set up our satisfaction in a beautiful picture as setting an example to be followed by others. It is plain, however, that this can only be assumed under certain presuppositions. We must presuppose the idea of a sensus communis or common sense in which all men share. As knowledge admits of being communicated to others, so also does the feeling for beauty. For the relation between the cognitive faculties requisite for Taste is also requisite for Intelligence or sound Understanding, and as we always presuppose the latter to be the same in others as in ourselves, so may we presuppose the former.

The analysis of the Sublime which follows that of the Beautiful is interesting and profound; indeed Schopenhauer regarded it as the best part of the Critique of the Aesthetical Judgement. The general characteristics of our judgements about the Sublime are similar to those already laid down in the case of the Beautiful; but there are marked differences in the two cases. If the pleasure taken in beauty arises from a feeling of the purposiveness of the object in its relation to the subject, that in sublimity rather expresses a purposiveness of the subject in respect of the object. Nothing in nature is sublime; and the sublimity really resides in the mind and there alone. Indeed, as true Beauty is found, properly speaking, only in beauty of form, the idea of sublimity is excited rather by those objects which are formless and exhibit a violation of purpose.

A distinction not needed in the case of the Beautiful becomes necessary when we proceed to further analyse the Sublime. For in aesthetical judgements about the Beautiful the mind is in restful contemplation; but in the case of the Sublime a mental movement is excited (pp. 105 and 120). This movement, as it is pleasing, must involve a purposiveness in the harmony of the mental powers; and the purposiveness may be either in reference to the faculty of cognition or to that of desire. In the former case the sublime is called the Mathematically Sublime—the sublime of mere magnitude—the absolutely great; in the latter it is the sublime of power, the Dynamically Sublime. Gioberti, an Italian writer on the philosophy of Taste, has pushed this distinction so far as to find in it an explanation of the relation between Beauty and Sublimity. “The dynamical Sublime,” he says, “creates the Beautiful; the mathematical Sublime contains it,” a remark with which probably Kant would have no quarrel.

In both cases, however, we find that the feeling of the Sublime awakens in us a feeling of the supersensible destination of man. “The very capacity of conceiving the sublime,” he tells us, “indicates a mental faculty that far surpasses every standard of sense.” And to explain the necessity belonging to our judgements about the sublime, Kant points out that as we find ourselves compelled to postulate a sensus communis to account for the agreement of men in their appreciation of beautiful objects, so the principle underlying their consent in judging of the sublime is “the presupposition of the moral feeling in man.” The feeling of the sublimity of our own moral destination is the necessary prerequisite for forming such judgements. The connexion between Beauty and Goodness involved to a Greek in the double sense of the word καλόν is developed by Kant with keen insight. To feel interest in the beauty of Nature he regards as a mark of a moral disposition, though he will not admit that the same inference may be drawn as to the character of the art connoisseur (§ 42). But it is specially with reference to the connexion between the capacity for appreciating the Sublime, and the moral feeling, that the originality of Kant’s treatment becomes apparent.

The objects of nature, he continues, which we call sublime, inspire us with a feeling of pain rather than of pleasure; as Lucretius has it—
Me quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit atque horror.

But this “horror” must not inspire actual fear. As no extraneous charm must mingle with the satisfaction felt in a beautiful object, if the judgement about beauty is to remain pure; so in the case of the sublime we must not be afraid of the object which yet in certain aspects is fearful.

This conception of the feelings of sublimity excited by the loneliness of an Alpine peak or the grandeur of an earthquake is now a familiar one; but it was not so in Kant’s day. Switzerland had not then become the recreation-ground of Europe; and though natural beauty was a familiar topic with poets and painters it was not generally recognised that taste has also to do with the sublime. De Saussure’s Travels, Haller’s poem Die Alpen, and this work of Kant’s mark the beginning of a new epoch in our ways of looking at the sublime and terrible aspects of Nature. And it is not a little remarkable that the man who could write thus feelingly about the emotions inspired by grand and savage scenery, had never seen a mountain in his life. The power and the insight of his observations here are in marked contrast to the poverty of some of his remarks about the characteristics of beauty. For instance, he puts forward the curious doctrine that colour in a picture is only an extraneous charm, and does not really add to the beauty of the form delineated, nay rather distracts the mind from it. His criticisms on this point, if sound, would make Flaxman a truer artist than Titian or Paolo Veronese. But indeed his discussion of Painting or Music is not very appreciative; he was, to the end, a creature of pure Reason.

Upon the analysis he gives of the Arts, little need be said here. Fine Art is regarded as the Art of Genius, “that innate mental disposition through which Nature gives the rule to Art” (§ 46). Art differs from Science in the absence of definite concepts in the mind of the artist. It thus happens that the great artist can rarely communicate his methods; indeed he cannot explain them even to himself. Poeta nascitur, non fit; and the same is true in every form of fine art. Genius is, in short, the faculty of presenting aesthetical Ideas; an aesthetical Idea being an intuition of the Imagination, to which no concept is adequate. And it is by the excitation of such ineffable Ideas that a great work of art affects us. As Bacon tells us, “that is the best part of Beauty which a picture cannot express; no, nor the first sight of the eye.” This characteristic of the artistic genius has been noted by all who have thought upon art; more is present in its productions than can be perfectly expressed in language. As Pliny said of Timanthus the painter of Iphigenia, “In omnibus ejus operibus intelligitur plus super quam pingitur.” But this genius requires to be kept in check by taste; quite in the spirit of the σωφροσύνη of the best Greek art, Kant remarks that if in a work of art some feature must be sacrificed, it is better to lose something of genius than to violate the canons of taste. It is in this self-mastery that “the sanity of true genius” expresses itself.

The main question with which the Critique of Judgement is concerned is, of course, the question as to the purposiveness, the Zweckmässigkeit, exhibited by nature. That nature appears to be full of purpose is mere matter of fact. It displays purposiveness in respect of our faculties of cognition, in those of its phenomena which we designate beautiful. And also in its organic products we observe methods of operation which we can only explain by describing them as processes in which means are used to accomplish certain ends, as processes that are purposive. In our observation of natural phenomena, as Kuno Fischer puts it, we judge their forms aesthetically, and their life teleologically.

As regards the first kind of Zweckmässigkeit, that which is ohne Zweck—the purposiveness of a beautiful object which does not seem to be directed to any external end—there are two ways in which we may account for it. We may either say that it was actually designed to be beautiful by the Supreme Force behind Nature, or we may say that purposiveness is not really resident in nature, but that our perception of it is due to the subjective needs of our judging faculty. We have to contemplate beautiful objects as if they were purposive, but they may not be so in reality. And this latter idealistic doctrine is what Kant falls back upon. He appeals in support of it, to the phenomena of crystallisation (pp. 243 sqq.), in which many very beautiful forms seem to be produced by merely mechanical processes. The beauty of a rock crystal is apparently produced without any forethought on the part of nature, and he urges that we are not justified in asserting dogmatically that any laws distinct from those of mechanism are needed to account for beauty in other cases. Mechanism can do so much; may it not do all? And he brings forward as a consideration which ought to settle the question, the fact that in judging of beauty “we invariably seek its gauge in ourselves a priori”; we do not learn from nature, but from ourselves, what we are to find beautiful. Mr. Kennedy in his Donnellan Lectures has here pointed out several weak spots in Kant’s armour. In the first place, the fact that we seek the gauge of beauty in our own mind “may be shown from his own definition to be a necessary result of the very nature of beauty.”2 For Kant tells us that the aesthetical judgement about beauty always involves “a reference of the representation to the subject”; and this applies equally to judgements about the beautiful in Art and the beautiful in Nature. But no one could maintain that from this definition it follows that we are not compelled to postulate design in the mind of the artist who paints a beautiful picture. And thus as the fact that “we always seek the gauge of beauty” in ourselves does not do away with the belief in a designing mind when we are contemplating works of art, it cannot be said to exclude the belief in a Master Hand which moulded the forms of Nature. As Cicero has it, nature is “non artificiosa solum, sed plane artifex.” But the cogency of this reasoning, for the details of which I must refer the reader to Mr. Kennedy’s pages, becomes more apparent when we reflect on that second form of purposiveness, viz. adaptation to definite ends, with which we meet in the phenomena of organic life.

If we watch, e.g. the growth of a tree we perceive that its various parts are not isolated and unconnected, but that on the contrary they are only possible by reference to the idea of the whole. Each limb affects every other, and is reciprocally affected by it; in short “in such a product of nature every part not only exists by means of the other parts, but is thought as existing for the sake of the others and the whole” (p. 277). The operations of nature in organised bodies seem to be of an entirely different character from mere mechanical processes; we cannot construe them to ourselves except under the hypothesis that nature in them is working towards a designed end. The distinction between nature’s “Technic” or purposive operation, and nature’s Mechanism is fundamental for the explanation of natural law. The language of biology eloquently shows the impossibility of eliminating at least the idea of purpose from our investigations into the phenomena of life, growth, and reproduction. And Kant dismisses with scant respect that cheap and easy philosophy which would fain deny the distinctiveness of nature’s purposive operation. A doctrine, like that of Epicurus, in which every natural phenomenon is regarded as the result of the blind drifting of atoms in accordance with purely mechanical laws, really explains nothing, and least of all explains that illusion in our teleological judgements which leads us to assume purpose where really there is none.

It has been urged by Kirchmann and others that this distinction between Technic and Mechanism, on which Kant lays so much stress, has been disproved by the progress of modern science. The doctrines, usually associated with the name of Darwin, of Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest, quite sufficiently explain, it is said, on mechanical principles the semblance of purpose with which nature mocks us. The presence of order is not due to any purpose behind the natural operation, but to the inevitable disappearance of the disorderly. It would be absurd, of course, to claim for Kant that he anticipated the Darwinian doctrines of development; and yet passages are not wanting in his writings in which he takes a view of the continuity of species with which modern science would have little fault to find. “Nature organises itself and its organised products in every species, no doubt after one general pattern but yet with suitable deviations, which self-preservation demands according to circumstances” (p. 279). “The analogy of forms, which with all their differences seem to have been produced according to a common original type, strengthens our suspicions of an actual relationship between them in their production from a common parent, through the gradual approximation of one animal genus to another—from those in which the principle of purposes seems to be best authenticated, i.e. from man, down to the polype and again from this down to mosses and lichens, and finally to crude matter. And so the whole Technic of nature, which is so incomprehensible to us in organised beings that we believe ourselves compelled to think a different principle for it, seems to be derived from matter and its powers according to mechanical laws (like those by which it works in the formation of crystals)” (p. 337). Such a theory he calls “a daring venture of reason,” and its coincidences with modern science are real and striking. But he is careful to add that such a theory, even if established, would not eliminate purpose from the universe; it would indeed suggest that certain special processes having the semblance of purpose may be elucidated on mechanical principles, but on the whole, purposive operation on the part of Mother Nature it would still be needful to assume (p. 338). “No finite Reason can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes” (p. 326). “It is absurd to hope that another Newton will arise in the future who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered” (p. 312).

Crude materialism thus affording no explanation of the purposiveness in nature, we go on to ask what other theories are logically possible. We may dismiss at once the doctrine of Hylozoism, according to which the purposes in nature are explained in reference to a world-soul, which is the inner principle of the material universe and constitutes its life. For such a doctrine is self-contradictory, inasmuch as lifelessness, inertia, is the essential characteristic of matter, and to talk of living matter is absurd (p. 304). A much more plausible system is that of Spinoza, who aimed at establishing the ideality of the principle of natural purposes. He regarded the world whole as a complex of manifold determinations inhering in a single simple substance; and thus reduced our concepts of the purposive in nature to our own consciousness of existing in an all-embracing Being. But on reflection we see that this does not so much explain as explain away the purposiveness of nature; it gives us an unity of inherence in one Substance, but not an unity of causal dependence on one Substance (p. 303). And this latter would be necessary in order to explain the unity of purpose which nature exhibits in its phenomenal working. Spinozism, therefore, does not give what it pretends to give; it puts us off with a vague and unfruitful unity of ground, when what we seek is a unity that shall itself contain the causes of the differences manifest in nature.

We have left then as the only remaining possible doctrine, Theism, which represents natural purposes as produced in accordance with the Will and Design of an Intelligent Author and Governor of Nature. This theory is, in the first place, “superior to all other grounds of explanation” (p. 305), for it gives a full solution of the problem before us and enables us to maintain the reality of the Zweckmässigkeit of nature. “Teleology finds the consummation of its investigations only in Theology” (p. 311). To represent the world and the natural purposes therein as produced by an intelligent Cause is “completely satisfactory from every human point of view for both the speculative and practical use of our Reason” (p. 312). Thus the contemplation of natural purposes, i.e. the common Argument from Design, enables us to reach a highest Understanding as Cause of the world “in accordance with the principles of the reflective Judgement, i.e. in accordance with the constitution of our human faculty of cognition” (p. 416).

It is in this qualifying clause that Kant’s negative attitude in respect of Theism betrays itself. He regards it as a necessary assumption for the guidance of scientific investigation, no less than for the practical needs of morals; but he does not admit that we can claim for it objective validity. In the language of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Idea of God furnishes a regulative, not a constitutive principle of Reason; or as he prefers to put it in the present work, it is valid only for the reflective, not for the determinant Judgement. We are not justified, Kant maintains, in asserting dogmatically that God exists; there is only permitted to us the limited formula “We cannot otherwise conceive the purposiveness which must lie at the basis of our cognition of the internal possibility of many natural things, than by representing it and the world in general as produced by an intelligent cause, i.e. a God” (p. 312).

We ask then, whence arises this impossibility of objective statement? It is in the true Kantian spirit to assert that no synthetical proposition can be made with reference to what lies above and behind the world of sense; but there is a difficulty in carrying out this principle into details. Kant’s refusal to infer a designing Hand behind the apparent order of nature is based, he tells us, on the fact that the concept of a “natural purpose” is one that cannot be justified to the speculative Reason. For all we know it may only indicate our way of looking at things, and may point to no corresponding objective reality. That we are forced by the limited nature of our faculties to view nature as working towards ends, as purposive, does not prove that it is really so. We cannot justify such pretended insight into what is behind the veil.

It is to be observed, however, that precisely similar arguments might be urged against our affirmation of purpose, design, will, as the spring of the actions of other human beings.3 For let us consider why it is that, mind being assumed as the basis of our own individual consciousness, we go on to attribute minds of like character to other men. We see that the external behaviour of other men is similar to our own, and that the most reasonable way of accounting for such behaviour is to suppose that they have minds like ourselves, that they are possessed of an active and spontaneously energising faculty, which is the seat of their personality. But it is instructive to observe that neither on Kantian principles nor on any other can we demonstrate this; to cross the chasm which separates one man’s personality from another’s requires a venture of faith just as emphatically as any theological formula. I can by no means prove to the determinant Judgement that the complex of sensations which I constantly experience, and which I call the Prime Minister, is anything more than a well-ordered machine. It is improbable that this is the case—highly improbable; but the falsity of such an hypothesis cannot be proved in the same way that we would prove the falsity of the assertion that two and two make five. But then though the hypothesis cannot be thus ruled out of court by demonstration of its absurdity, it is not the simplest hypothesis, nor is it that one which best accounts for the facts. The assumption, on the other hand, that the men whom I meet every day have minds like my own, perfectly accounts for all the facts, and is a very simple assumption. It merely extends by induction the sphere of a force which I already know to exist. Or in other words, crude materialism not giving me an intelligent account of my own individual consciousness, I recognise mind, νοῦς, as a vera causa, as something which really does produce effects in the field of experience, and which therefore I may legitimately put forward as the cause of those actions of other men which externally so much resemble my own. But, as has been said before, this argument, though entirely convincing to any sane person, is not demonstrative; in Kantian language and on Kantian principles the reasoning here used would seem to be valid only for the reflective and not for the determinant Judgement. If the principle of design or conscious adaptation of means to ends be not a constitutive principle of experience, but only a regulative principle introduced to account for the facts, what right have we to put it forward dogmatically as affording an explanation of the actions of other human beings?

It cannot be said that Kant’s attempted answer to such a defence of the Design Argument is quite conclusive. In § 90 of the Methodology (p. 399) he pleads that though it is perfectly legitimate to argue by analogy from our own minds to the minds of other men,—nay further, although we may conclude from those actions of the lower animals which display plan, that they are not, as Descartes alleged, mere machines—yet it is not legitimate to conclude from the apparent presence of design in the operations of nature that a conscious mind directs those operations. For, he argues, that in comparing the actions of men and the lower animals, or in comparing the actions of one man with those of another, we are not pressing our analogy beyond the limits of experience. Men and beasts alike are finite living beings, subject to the limitations of finite existence; and hence the law which governs the one series of operations may be regarded by analogy as sufficiently explaining the other series. But the power at the basis of Nature is utterly above definition or comprehension, and we are going beyond our legitimate province if we venture to ascribe to it a mode of operation with which we are only conversant in the case of beings subject to the conditions of space and time. He urges in short that when speaking about man and his mind we thoroughly understand what we are talking about; but in speaking of the Mind of Deity we are dealing with something of which we have no experience, and of which therefore we have no right to predicate anything.

But it is apparent that, as has been pointed out, even when we infer the existence of another finite mind from certain observed operations, we are making an inference about something which is as mysterious an x as anything can be. Mind is not a thing that is subject to the laws and conditions of the world of sense; it is “in the world but not of the world.” And so to infer the existence of the mind of any individual except myself is a quite different kind of inference from that by which, for example, we infer the presence of an electro-magnet in a given field. The action of the latter we understand to a large extent; but we do not understand the action of mind, which yet we know from daily experience of ourselves does produce effects in the phenomenal world, often permanent and important effects. Briefly, the action of mind upon matter (to use the ordinary phraseology for the sake of clearness) is—we may assume for our present purpose—an established fact. Hence the causality of mind is a vera causa; we bring it in to account for the actions of other human beings, and by precisely the same process of reasoning we invoke it to explain the operations of nature.

And it is altogether beside the point to urge, as Kant does incessantly, that in the latter case the intelligence inferred is infinite; in the former only finite. All that the Design Argument undertakes to prove is that mind lies at the basis of nature. It is quite beyond its province to say whether this mind is finite or infinite; and thus Kant’s criticisms on p. 364 are somewhat wide of the mark. There is always a difficulty in any argument which tries to establish the operation of mind anywhere, for mind cannot be seen or touched or felt; but the difficulty is not peculiar to that particular form of argument with which theological interests are involved.

The real plausibility of this objection arises from a vague idea, often present to us when we speak of infinite wisdom or infinite intelligence, namely that the epithet infinite in some way alters the meaning of the attributes to which it is applied. But the truth is that the word infinite, when applied to wisdom or knowledge or any other intellectual or moral quality, can only properly have reference to the number of acts of wisdom or knowledge that we suppose to have been performed. The only sense in which we have any right to speak of infinite wisdom is that it is that which performs an infinite number of wise acts. And so when we speak of infinite intelligence, we have not the slightest warrant, either in logic or in common sense, for supposing that such intelligence is not similar in kind to that finite intelligence which we know in man.

To understand Kant’s attitude fully, we must also take into consideration the great weight that he attaches to the Moral Argument for the existence of God. The positive side of his teaching on Theism is summed up in the following sentence (p. 388): “For the theoretical reflective Judgement physical Teleology sufficiently proves from the purposes of Nature an intelligent world-cause; for the practical Judgement moral Teleology establishes it by the concept of a final purpose, which it is forced to ascribe to creation.” That side of his system which is akin to Agnosticism finds expression in his determined refusal to admit anything more than this. The existence of God is for him a “thing of faith”; and is not a fact of knowledge, strictly so called. “Faith” he holds (p. 409) “is the moral attitude of Reason as to belief in that which is unattainable by theoretical cognition. It is therefore the constant principle of the mind to assume as true that which it is necessary to presuppose as condition of the possibility of the highest moral final purpose.” As he says elsewhere (Introduction to Logic, ix. p. 60), “That man is morally unbelieving who does not accept that which, though impossible to know, is morally necessary to suppose.” And as far as he goes a Theist may agree with him, and he has done yeoman’s service to Theism by his insistence on the absolute impossibility of any other working hypothesis as an explanation of the phenomena of nature. But I have endeavoured to indicate at what points he does not seem to me to have gone as far as even his own declared principles would justify him in going. If the existence of a Supreme Mind be a “thing of faith,” this may with equal justice be said of the finite minds of the men all around us; and his attempt to show that the argument from analogy is here without foundation is not convincing.

Kant, however, in the Critique of Judgement is sadly fettered by the chains that he himself had forged, and frequently chafes under the restraints they impose. He indicates more than once a point of view higher than that of the Critique of Pure Reason, from which the phenomena of life and mind may be contemplated. He had already hinted in that work that the supersensible substrate of the ego and the non-ego might be identical. “Both kinds of objects differ from each other, not internally, but only so far as the one appears external to the other; possibly what is at the basis of phenomenal matter as a thing in itself may not be so heterogeneous after all as we imagine.”4 This hypothesis which remains a bare undeveloped possibility in the earlier work is put forward as a positive doctrine in the Critique of Judgement. “There must,” says Kant, “be a ground of the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains” (Introduction, p. 13). That is to say, he maintains that to explain the phenomena of organic life and the purposiveness of nature we must hold that the world of sense is not disparate from and opposed to the world of thought, but that nature is the development of freedom. The connexion of nature and freedom is suggested by, nay is involved in, the notion of natural adaptation; and although we can arrive at no knowledge of the supersensible substrate of both, yet such a common ground there must be. This principle is the starting-point of the systems which followed that of Kant; and the philosophy of later Idealism is little more than a development of the principle in its consequences.

He approaches the same doctrine by a different path in the Critique of the Teleological Judgement (§ 77), where he argues that the distinction between the mechanical and the teleological working of nature, upon which so much stress has been justly laid, depends for its validity upon the peculiar character of our Understanding. When we give what may be called a mechanical elucidation of any natural phenomenon, we begin with its parts, and from what we know of them we explain the whole. But in the case of certain objects, e.g. organised bodies, this cannot be done. In their case we can only account for the parts by a reference to the whole. Now, were it possible for us to perceive a whole before its parts and derive the latter from the former,5 then an organism would be capable of being understood and would be an object of knowledge in the strictest sense. But our Understanding is not able to do this, and its inadequacy for such a task leads us to conceive the possibility of an Understanding, not discursive like ours, but intuitive, for which knowledge of the whole would precede that of the parts. “It is at least possible to consider the material world as mere phenomenon, and to think as its substrate something like a thing in itself (which is not phenomenon), and to attach to this a corresponding intellectual intuition. Thus there would be, although incognisable by us, a supersensible real ground for nature, to which we ourselves belong” (p. 325). Hence, although Mechanism and Technic must not be confused and must ever stand side by side in our scientific investigation of natural law, yet must they be regarded as coalescing in a single higher principle incognisable by us. The ground of union is “the supersensible substrate of nature of which we can determine nothing positively, except that it is the being in itself of which we merely know the phenomenon.” Thus, then, it appears that the whole force of Kant’s main argument has proceeded upon an assumption, viz. the permanent opposition between Sense and Understanding, which the progress of the argument has shown to be unsound. “Kant seems,” says Goethe,6 “to have woven a certain element of irony into his method. For, while at one time he seemed to be bent on limiting our faculties of knowledge in the narrowest way, at another time he pointed, as it were with a side gesture, beyond the limits which he himself had drawn.” The fact of adaptation of means to ends observable in nature seems to break down the barrier between Nature and Freedom; and if we once relinquish the distinction between Mechanism and Technic in the operations of nature we are led to the Idea of an absolute Being, who manifests Himself by action which, though necessary, is yet the outcome of perfect freedom.

Kant, however, though he approaches such a position more than once, can never be said to have risen to it. He deprecates unceasingly the attempt to combine principles of nature with the principles of freedom as a task beyond the modest capacity of human reason; and while strenuously insisting on the practical force of the Moral Argument for the Being of God, which is found in the witness of man’s conscience, will not admit that it can in any way be regarded as strengthening the theoretical arguments adduced by Teleology. The two lines of proof, he holds, are quite distinct; and nothing but confusion and intellectual disaster can result from the effort to combine them. The moral proof stands by itself, and it needs no such crutches as the argument from Design can offer. But, as Mr. Kennedy has pointed out in his acute criticism7 of the Kantian doctrine of Theism, it would not be possible to combine a theoretical disbelief in God with a frank acceptance of the practical belief of His existence borne in upon us by the Moral Law. Kant himself admits this: “A dogmatical unbelief,” he says (p. 411), “cannot subsist together with a moral maxim dominant in the mental attitude.” That is, though the theoretical argument be incomplete, we cannot reject the conclusion to which it leads, for this is confirmed by the moral necessities of conscience.

Kant’s position, then, seems to come to this, that though he never doubts the existence of God, he has very grave doubts that He can be theoretically known by man. That He is, is certain; what He is, we cannot determine. It is a position not dissimilar to current Agnostic doctrines; and as long as the antithesis between Sense and Understanding, between Matter and Mind, is insisted upon as expressing a real and abiding truth, Kant’s reasoning can hardly be refuted with completeness. No doubt it may be urged that since the practical and theoretical arguments both arrive at the same conclusion, the cogency of our reasoning in the latter should confirm our trust in the former. But true conclusions may sometimes seem to follow from quite insufficient premises; and Kant is thus justified in demanding that each argument shall be submitted to independent tests. I have endeavoured to show above that he has not treated the theoretical line of reasoning quite fairly, and that he has underestimated its force; but its value as an argument is not increased by showing that another entirely different process of thought leads to the same result. And that the witness of conscience affords the most powerful and convincing argument for the existence of a Supreme Being, the source of law as of love, is a simple matter of experience. Induction, syllogism, analogy, do not really generate belief in God, though they may serve to justify to reason a faith that we already possess. The poet has the truth of it:

Wer Gott nicht fühlt in sich und allen Lebenskreisen,

Dem werdet Ihr Ihn nicht beweisen mit Beweisen.

* * * * *

I give at the end of this Introduction a Glossary of the chief philosophical terms used by Kant; I have tried to render them by the same English equivalents all through the work, in order to preserve, as far as may be, the exactness of expression in the original. I am conscious that this makes the translation clumsy in many places, but have thought it best to sacrifice elegance to precision. This course is the more necessary to adopt, as Kant cannot be understood unless his nice verbal distinctions be attended to. Thus real means quite a different thing from wirklich; Hang from Neigung; Rührung from Affekt or Leidenschaft; Anschauung from Empfindung or Wahrnehmung; Endzweck from letzter Zweck; Idee from Vorstellung; Eigenschaft from Attribut or Beschaffenheit; Schranke from Grenze; überreden from überzeugen, etc. I am not satisfied with “gratification” and “grief” as the English equivalents for Vergnügen and Schmerz; but it is necessary to distinguish these words from Lust and Unlust, and “mental pleasure,” “mental pain,” which would nearly hit the sense, are awkward. Again, the constant rendering of schön by beautiful involves the expression “beautiful art” instead of the more usual phrase “fine art.” Purposive is an ugly word, but it has come into use lately; and its employment enables us to preserve the connexion between Zweck and zweckmässig. I have printed Judgement with a capital letter when it signifies the faculty, with a small initial when it signifies the act, of judging. And in like manner I distinguish Objekt from Gegenstand, by printing the word “Object,” when it represents the former, with a large initial.

The text I have followed is, in the main, that printed by Hartenstein; but occasionally Rosenkranz preserves the better reading. All important variants between the First and Second Editions have been indicated at the foot of the page. A few notes have been added, which are enclosed in square brackets, to distinguish them from those which formed part of the original work. I have in general quoted Kant’s Introduction to Logic and Critique of Practical Reason in Dr. Abbott’s translations.

My best thanks are due to Rev. J. H. Kennedy and Mr. F. Purser for much valuable aid during the passage of this translation through the press. And I am under even greater obligations to Mr. Mahaffy, who was good enough to read through the whole of the proof; by his acute and learned criticisms many errors have been avoided. Others I have no doubt still remain, but for these I must be accounted alone responsible.

J. H. BERNARD.

Trinity College, Dublin,

May 24, 1892.

* * * * *

More than twenty-one years have passed since the first edition of this Translation was published, and during that time much has been written, both in Germany and in England, on the subject of Kant’s Critique of Judgement. In particular, the German text has been critically determined by the labours of Professor Windelband, whose fine edition forms the fifth volume of Kant’s Collected Works as issued by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (Berlin, 1908). It will be indispensable to future students. An excellent account of the significance, in the Kantian system, of the Urtheilskraft, by Mr. R. A. C. Macmillan, appeared in 1912; and Mr. J. C. Meredith has published recently an English edition of the Critique of Aesthetical Judgement, with notes and essays, dealing with the philosophy of art, which goes over the ground very fully.

Some critics of my first edition took exception to the clumsiness of the word “representation” as the equivalent of Vorstellung, but I have made no change in this respect, as it seems to me (and so far as I have observed to others who have worked on the Critique of Judgement), that it is necessary to preserve in English the relation between the noun Vorstellung and the verb vorstellen, if Kant’s reasoning is to be exhibited clearly. I have, however, abandoned the attempt to preserve the word Kritik in English, and have replaced it by Critique or criticism, throughout. The other changes that have been made are mere corrections or emendations of faulty or obscure renderings, with a few additional notes. I have left my original Introduction as it was written in 1892, without attempting any fresh examination of the problems that Kant set himself.

JOHN OSSORY.  The Palace, Kilkenny,  January 6, 1914.

PREFACE

We may call the faculty of cognition from principles a priori, pure Reason, and the inquiry into its possibility and bounds generally the Critique of pure Reason, although by this faculty we only understand Reason in its theoretical employment, as it appears under that name in the former work; without wishing to inquire into its faculty, as practical Reason, according to its special principles. That [Critique] goes merely into our faculty of knowing things a priori, and busies itself therefore only with the cognitive faculty to the exclusion of the feeling of pleasure and pain and the faculty of desire; and of the cognitive faculties it only concerns itself with Understanding, according to its principles a priori, to the exclusion of Judgement and Reason (as faculties alike belonging to theoretical cognition), because it is found in the sequel that no other cognitive faculty but the Understanding can furnish constitutive principles of cognition a priori. The Critique, then, which sifts them all, as regards the share which each of the other faculties might pretend to have in the clear possession of knowledge from its own peculiar root, leaves nothing but what the Understanding prescribes a priori as law for nature as the complex of phenomena (whose form also is given a priori). It relegates all other pure concepts under Ideas, which are transcendent for our theoretical faculty of cognition, but are not therefore useless or to be dispensed with. For they serve as regulative principles; partly to check the dangerous pretensions of Understanding, as if (because it can furnish a priori the conditions of the possibility of all things which it can know) it had thereby confined within these bounds the possibility of all things in general; and partly to lead it to the consideration of nature according to a principle of completeness, although it can never attain to this, and thus to further the final design of all knowledge.

It was then properly the Understanding which has its special realm in the cognitive faculty, so far as it contains constitutive principles of cognition a priori, which by the Critique, comprehensively called the Critique of pure Reason, was to be placed in certain and sole possession8 against all other competitors. And so also to Reason, which contains constitutive principles a priori nowhere except simply in respect of the faculty of desire, should be assigned its place in the Critique of practical Reason.

Whether now the Judgement, which in the order of our cognitive faculties forms a mediating link between Understanding and Reason, has also principles a priori for itself; whether these are constitutive or merely regulative (thus indicating no special realm); and whether they give a rule a priori to the feeling of pleasure and pain, as the mediating link between the cognitive faculty and the faculty of desire (just as the Understanding prescribes laws a priori to the first, Reason to the second); these are the questions with which the present Critique of Judgement is concerned.

A Critique of pure Reason, i.e. of our faculty of judging a priori according to principles, would be incomplete, if the Judgement, which as a cognitive faculty also makes claim to such principles, were not treated as a particular part of it; although its principles in a system of pure Philosophy need form no particular part between the theoretical and the practical, but can be annexed when needful to one or both as occasion requires. For if such a system is one day to be completed under the general name of Metaphysic (which it is possible to achieve quite completely, and which is supremely important for the use of Reason in every reference), the soil for the edifice must be explored by Criticism as deep down as the foundation of the faculty of principles independent of experience, in order that it may sink in no part, for this would inevitably bring about the downfall of the whole.

We can easily infer from the nature of the Judgement (whose right use is so necessarily and so universally requisite, that by the name of sound Understanding nothing else but this faculty is meant), that it must be attended with great difficulties to find a principle peculiar to it; (some such it must contain a priori in itself, for otherwise it would not be set apart by the commonest Criticism as a special cognitive faculty). This principle must not be derived a priori from concepts, for these belong to the Understanding, and Judgement is only concerned with their application. It must, therefore, furnish of itself a concept, through which, properly speaking, no thing is cognised, but which only serves as a rule, though not an objective one to which it can adapt its judgement; because for this latter another faculty of Judgement would be requisite, in order to be able to distinguish whether [any given case] is or is not the case for the rule.

This perplexity about a principle (whether it is subjective or objective) presents itself mainly in those judgements that we call aesthetical, which concern the Beautiful and the Sublime of Nature or of Art. And, nevertheless, the critical investigation of a principle of Judgement in these is the most important part in a Critique of this faculty. For although they do not by themselves contribute to the knowledge of things, yet they belong to the cognitive faculty alone, and point to an immediate reference of this faculty to the feeling of pleasure or pain according to some principle a priori; without confusing this with what may be the determining ground of the faculty of desire, which has its principles a priori in concepts of Reason.—In the logical judging of nature, experience exhibits a conformity to law in things, to the understanding or to the explanation of which the general concept of the sensible does not attain; here the Judgement can only derive from itself a principle of the reference of the natural thing to the unknowable supersensible (a principle which it must only use from its own point of view for the cognition of nature). And so, though in this case such a principle a priori can and must be applied to the cognition of the beings of the world, and opens out at the same time prospects which are advantageous for the practical Reason, yet it has no immediate reference to the feeling of pleasure and pain. But this reference is precisely the puzzle in the principle of Judgement, which renders a special section for this faculty necessary in the Critique; since the logical judging according to concepts (from which an immediate inference can never be drawn to the feeling of pleasure and pain) along with their critical limitation, has at all events been capable of being appended to the theoretical part of Philosophy.

The examination of the faculty of taste, as the aesthetical Judgement, is not here planned in reference to the formation or the culture of taste (for this will take its course in the future as in the past without any such investigations), but merely in a transcendental point of view. Hence, I trust that as regards the deficiency of the former purpose it will be judged with indulgence, though in the latter point of view it must be prepared for the severest scrutiny. But I hope that the great difficulty of solving a problem so involved by nature may serve as excuse for some hardly avoidable obscurity in its solution, if only it be clearly established that the principle is correctly stated. I grant that the mode of deriving the phenomena of the Judgement from it has not all the clearness which might be rightly demanded elsewhere, viz. in the case of cognition according to concepts; but I believe that I have attained to it in the second part of this work.

Here then I end my whole critical undertaking. I shall proceed without delay to the doctrinal [part] in order to profit, as far as is possible, by the more favourable moments of my increasing years. It is obvious that in this [part] there will be no special section for the Judgement, because in respect of this faculty Criticism serves instead of Theory; but, according to the division of Philosophy (and also of pure Philosophy) into theoretical and practical, the Metaphysic of Nature and of Morals will complete the undertaking.

INTRODUCTION

I. OF THE DIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY

We proceed quite correctly if, as usual, we divide Philosophy, as containing the principles of the rational cognition of things by means of concepts (not merely, as logic does, principles of the form of thought in general without distinction of Objects), into theoretical and practical. But then the concepts, which furnish their Object to the principles of this rational cognition, must be specifically distinct; otherwise they would not justify a division, which always presupposes a contrast between the principles of the rational cognition belonging to the different parts of a science.

Now there are only two kinds of concepts, and these admit as many distinct principles of the possibility of their objects, viz. natural concepts and the concept of freedom. The former render possible theoretical cognition according to principles a priori; the latter in respect of this theoretical cognition only supplies in itself a negative principle (that of mere contrast), but on the other hand it furnishes fundamental propositions which extend the sphere of the determination of the will and are therefore called practical. Thus Philosophy is correctly divided into two parts, quite distinct in their principles; the theoretical part or Natural Philosophy, and the practical part or Moral Philosophy (for that is the name given to the practical legislation of Reason in accordance with the concept of freedom). But up to the present a gross misuse of these expressions has prevailed, both in the division of the different principles and consequently also of Philosophy itself. For what is practical according to natural concepts has been identified with the practical according to the concept of freedom; and so with the like titles, ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ Philosophy, a division has been made, by which in fact nothing has been divided (for both parts might in such case have principles of the same kind).

The will, regarded as the faculty of desire, is (in this view) one of the many natural causes in the world, viz. that cause which acts in accordance with concepts. All that is represented as possible (or necessary) by means of a will is called practically possible (or necessary); as distinguished from the physical possibility or necessity of an effect, whose cause is not determined to causality by concepts (but in lifeless matter by mechanism and in animals by instinct). Here, in respect of the practical, it is left undetermined whether the concept which gives the rule to the causality of the will, is a natural concept or a concept of freedom.

But the last distinction is essential. For if the concept which determines the causality is a natural concept, then the principles are technically practical; whereas, if it is a concept of freedom they are morally practical. And as the division of a rational science depends on the distinction between objects whose cognition needs distinct principles, the former will belong to theoretical Philosophy (doctrine of Nature), but the latter alone will constitute the second part, viz. practical Philosophy (doctrine of Morals).

All technically practical rules (i.e. the rules of art and skill generally, or of prudence regarded as skill in exercising an influence over men and their wills), so far as their principles rest on concepts, must be reckoned only as corollaries to theoretical Philosophy. For they concern only the possibility of things according to natural concepts, to which belong not only the means which are to be met with in nature, but also the will itself (as a faculty of desire and consequently a natural faculty), so far as it can be determined conformably to these rules by natural motives. However, practical rules of this kind are not called laws (like physical laws), but only precepts; because the will does not stand merely under the natural concept, but also under the concept of freedom, in relation to which its principles are called laws. These with their consequences alone constitute the second or practical part of Philosophy.

The solution of the problems of pure geometry does not belong to a particular part of the science; mensuration does not deserve the name of practical, in contrast to pure, geometry, as a second part of geometry in general; and just as little ought the mechanical or chemical art of experiment or observation to be reckoned as a practical part of the doctrine of Nature. Just as little, in fine, ought housekeeping, farming, statesmanship, the art of conversation, the prescribing of diet, the universal doctrine of happiness itself, or the curbing of the inclinations and checking of the affections for the sake of happiness, to be reckoned as practical Philosophy, or taken to constitute the second part of Philosophy in general. For all these contain only rules of skill (and are consequently only technically practical) for bringing about an effect that is possible according to the natural concepts of causes and effects, which, since they belong to theoretical Philosophy, are subject to those precepts as mere corollaries from it (viz. natural science), and can therefore claim no place in a special Philosophy called practical. On the other hand, the morally practical precepts, which are altogether based on the concept of freedom to the complete exclusion of the natural determining grounds of the will, constitute a quite special class. These, like the rules which nature obeys, are called simply laws, but they do not, like them, rest on sensuous conditions but on a supersensible principle; and accordingly they require for themselves a quite different part of Philosophy, called practical, corresponding to its theoretical part.

We hence see that a complex of practical precepts given by Philosophy does not constitute a distinct part of Philosophy, as opposed to the theoretical part, because these precepts are practical; for they might be that, even if their principles were derived altogether from the theoretical cognition of nature (as technically practical rules). [A distinct branch of Philosophy is constituted only] if their principle, as it is not borrowed from the natural concept, which is always sensuously conditioned, rests on the supersensible, which alone makes the concept of freedom cognisable by formal laws. These precepts are then morally practical, i.e. not merely precepts or rules in this or that aspect, but, without any preceding reference to purposes and designs, are laws.

II. OF THE REALM OF PHILOSOPHY IN GENERAL

So far as our concepts have a priori application, so far extends the use of our cognitive faculty according to principles, and with it Philosophy.

But the complex of all objects, to which those concepts are referred, in order to bring about a knowledge of them where it is possible, may be subdivided according to the adequacy or inadequacy of our [cognitive] faculty to this design.

Concepts, so far as they are referred to objects, independently of the possibility or impossibility of the cognition of these objects, have their field which is determined merely according to the relation that their Object has to our cognitive faculty in general. The part of this field in which knowledge is possible for us is a ground or territory (territorium) for these concepts and the requisite cognitive faculty. The part of this territory, where they are legislative, is the realm (ditio) of these concepts and of the corresponding cognitive faculties. Empirical concepts have, therefore, their territory in nature, as the complex of all objects of sense, but no realm, only a dwelling-place (domicilium); for though they are produced in conformity to law they are not legislative, but the rules based on them are empirical and consequently contingent.

Our whole cognitive faculty has two realms, that of natural concepts and that of the concept of freedom; for through both it is legislative a priori. In accordance with this, Philosophy is divided into theoretical and practical. But the territory to which its realm extends and in which its legislation is exercised, is always only the complex of objects of all possible experience, so long as they are taken for nothing more than mere phenomena; for otherwise no legislation of the Understanding in respect of them is conceivable.

Legislation through natural concepts is carried on by means of the Understanding and is theoretical. Legislation through the concept of freedom is carried on by the Reason and is merely practical. It is only in the practical [sphere] that the Reason can be legislative; in respect of theoretical cognition (of nature) it can merely (as acquainted with law by the Understanding) deduce from given laws consequences which always remain within [the limits of] nature. But on the other hand, Reason is not always therefore legislative, where there are practical rules, for they may be only technically practical.

Understanding and Reason exercise, therefore, two distinct legislations in regard to one and the same territory of experience, without prejudice to each other. The concept of freedom as little disturbs the legislation of nature, as the natural concept influences the legislation through the former.—The possibility of at least thinking without contradiction the co-existence of both legislations, and of the corresponding faculties in the same subject, has been shown in the Critique of pure Reason; for it annulled the objections on the other side by exposing the dialectical illusion which they contain.

These two different realms then do not limit each other in their legislation, though they perpetually do so in the world of sense. That they do not constitute one realm, arises from this, that the natural concept represents its objects in intuition, not as things in themselves, but as mere phenomena; the concept of freedom, on the other hand, represents in its Object a thing in itself, but not in intuition. Hence, neither of them can furnish a theoretical knowledge of its Object (or even of the thinking subject) as a thing in itself; this would be the supersensible, the Idea of which we must indeed make the basis of the possibility of all these objects of experience, but which we can never extend or elevate into a cognition.

There is, then, an unbounded but also inaccessible field for our whole cognitive faculty—the field of the supersensible—wherein we find no territory, and, therefore, can have in it, for theoretical cognition, no realm either for concepts of Understanding or Reason. This field we must indeed occupy with Ideas on behalf of the theoretical as well as the practical use of Reason, but we can supply to them in reference to the laws [arising] from the concept of freedom no other than practical reality, by which our theoretical cognition is not extended in the slightest degree towards the supersensible.

Now even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom, so that no transition is possible from the first to the second (by means of the theoretical use of Reason), just as if they were two different worlds of which the first could have no influence upon the second, yet the second is meant to have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is meant to actualise in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form, at least harmonises with the possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to laws of freedom.—There must, therefore, be a ground of the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains; and the concept of this ground, although it does not attain either theoretically or practically to a knowledge of the same, and hence has no peculiar realm, nevertheless makes possible the transition from the mode of thought according to the principles of the one to that according to the principles of the other.

III. OF THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT AS A MEANS OF COMBINING THE TWO PARTS OF PHILOSOPHY INTO A WHOLE.

The Critique of the cognitive faculties, as regards what they can furnish a priori, has properly speaking no realm in respect of Objects, because it is not a doctrine, but only has to investigate whether and how, in accordance with the state of these faculties, a doctrine is possible by their means. Its field extends to all their pretensions, in order to confine them within their legitimate bounds. But what cannot enter into the division of Philosophy may yet enter, as a chief part, into the Critique of the pure faculty of cognition in general, viz. if it contains principles which are available neither for theoretical nor for practical use.

The natural concepts, which contain the ground of all theoretical knowledge a priori, rest on the legislation of the Understanding.—The concept of freedom, which contains the ground of all sensuously-unconditioned practical precepts a priori, rests on the legislation of the Reason. Both faculties, therefore, besides being capable of application as regards their logical form to principles of whatever origin, have also as regards their content, their special legislations above which there is no other (a priori); and hence the division of Philosophy into theoretical and practical is justified.

But in the family of the higher cognitive faculties there is a middle term between the Understanding and the Reason. This is the Judgement, of which we have cause for supposing according to analogy that it may contain in itself, if not a special legislation, yet a special principle of its own to be sought according to laws, though merely subjective a priori. This principle, even if it have no field of objects as its realm, yet may have somewhere a territory with a certain character, for which no other principle can be valid.

But besides (to judge by analogy) there is a new ground for bringing the Judgement into connexion with another arrangement of our representative faculties, which seems to be of even greater importance than that of its relationship with the family of the cognitive faculties. For all faculties or capacities of the soul can be reduced to three, which cannot be any further derived from one common ground: the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the faculty of desire.9 For the faculty of knowledge the Understanding is alone legislative, if (as must happen when it is considered by itself without confusion with the faculty of desire) this faculty is referred to nature as the faculty of theoretical knowledge; for in respect of nature (as phenomenon) it is alone possible for us to give laws by means of natural concepts a priori, i.e. by pure concepts of Understanding.—For the faculty of desire, as a higher faculty according to the concept of freedom, the Reason (in which alone this concept has a place) is alone a priori legislative.—Now between the faculties of knowledge and desire there is the feeling of pleasure, just as the Judgement is intermediate between the Understanding and the Reason. We may therefore suppose provisionally that the Judgement likewise contains in itself an a priori principle. And as pleasure or pain is necessarily combined with the faculty of desire (either preceding this principle as in the lower desires, or following it as in the higher, when the desire is determined by the moral law), we may also suppose that the Judgement will bring about a transition from the pure faculty of knowledge, the realm of natural concepts, to the realm of the concept of freedom, just as in its logical use it makes possible the transition from Understanding to Reason.

Although, then, Philosophy can be divided only into two main parts, the theoretical and the practical, and although all that we may be able to say of the special principles of Judgement must be counted as belonging in it to the theoretical part, i.e. to rational cognition in accordance with natural concepts; yet the Critique of pure Reason, which must decide all this, as regards the possibility of the system before undertaking it, consists of three parts; the Critique of pure Understanding, of pure Judgement, and of pure Reason, which faculties are called pure because they are legislative a priori.

IV. OF JUDGEMENT AS A FACULTY LEGISLATING A PRIORI

Judgement in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the Universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) be given, the Judgement which subsumes the particular under it (even if, as transcendental Judgement, it furnishes a priori, the conditions in conformity with which subsumption under that universal is alone possible) is determinant. But if only the particular be given for which the universal has to be found, the Judgement is merely reflective.

The determinant Judgement only subsumes under universal transcendental laws given by the Understanding; the law is marked out for it, a priori, and it has therefore no need to seek a law for itself in order to be able to subordinate the particular in nature to the universal.—But the forms of nature are so manifold, and there are so many modifications of the universal transcendental natural concepts left undetermined by the laws given, a priori, by the pure Understanding,—because these only concern the possibility of a nature in general (as an object of sense),—that there must be laws for these [forms] also. These, as empirical, may be contingent from the point of view of our Understanding, and yet, if they are to be called laws (as the concept of a nature requires), they must be regarded as necessary in virtue of a principle of the unity of the manifold, though it be unknown to us.—The reflective Judgement, which is obliged to ascend from the particular in nature to the universal, requires on that account a principle that it cannot borrow from experience, because its function is to establish the unity of all empirical principles under higher ones, and hence to establish the possibility of their systematic subordination. Such a transcendental principle, then, the reflective Judgement can only give as a law from and to itself. It cannot derive it from outside (because then it would be the determinant Judgement); nor can it prescribe it to nature, because reflection upon the laws of nature adjusts itself by nature, and not nature by the conditions according to which we attempt to arrive at a concept of it which is quite contingent in respect of these.

This principle can be no other than the following: As universal laws of nature have their ground in our Understanding, which prescribes them to nature (although only according to the universal concept of it as nature); so particular empirical laws, in respect of what is in them left undetermined by these universal laws, must be considered in accordance with such a unity as they would have if an Understanding (although not our Understanding) had furnished them to our cognitive faculties, so as to make possible a system of experience according to particular laws of nature. Not as if, in this way, such an Understanding must be assumed as actual (for it is only our reflective Judgement to which this Idea serves as a principle—for reflecting, not for determining); but this faculty thus gives a law only to itself and not to nature.

Now the concept of an Object, so far as it contains the ground of the actuality of this Object, is the purpose; and the agreement of a thing with that constitution of things, which is only possible according to purposes, is called the purposiveness of its form. Thus the principle of Judgement, in respect of the form of things of nature under empirical laws generally, is the purposiveness of nature in its manifoldness. That is, nature is represented by means of this concept, as if an Understanding contained the ground of the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws.

The purposiveness of nature is therefore a particular concept, a priori, which has its origin solely in the reflective Judgement. For we cannot ascribe to natural products anything like a reference of nature in them to purposes; we can only use this concept to reflect upon such products in respect of the connexion of phenomena which is given in nature according to empirical laws. This concept is also quite different from practical purposiveness (in human art or in morals), though it is certainly thought according to the analogy of these last.

V. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE FORMAL PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE IS A TRANSCENDENTAL PRINCIPLE OF JUDGEMENT.

A transcendental principle is one by means of which is represented, a priori, the universal condition under which alone things can be in general Objects of our cognition. On the other hand, a principle is called metaphysical if it represents the a priori condition under which alone Objects, whose concept must be empirically given, can be further determined a priori. Thus the principle of the cognition of bodies as substances, and as changeable substances, is transcendental, if thereby it is asserted that their changes must have a cause; it is metaphysical if it asserts that their changes must have an external cause. For in the former case bodies need only be thought by means of ontological predicates (pure concepts of Understanding), e.g. substance, in order to cognise the proposition a priori; but in the latter case the empirical concept of a body (as a movable thing in space) must lie at the basis of the proposition, although once this basis has been laid down, it may be seen completely a priori that this latter predicate (motion only by external causes) belongs to body.—Thus, as I shall presently show, the principle of the purposiveness of nature (in the manifoldness of its empirical laws) is a transcendental principle. For the concept of Objects, so far as they are thought as standing under this principle, is only the pure concept of objects of possible empirical cognition in general and contains nothing empirical. On the other hand, the principle of practical purposiveness, which must be thought in the Idea of the determination of a free will, is a metaphysical principle; because the concept of a faculty of desire as a will must be given empirically (i.e. does not belong to transcendental predicates). Both principles are, however, not empirical, but a priori; because for the combination of the predicate with the empirical concept of the subject of their judgements no further experience is needed, but it can be apprehended completely a priori.

That the concept of a purposiveness of nature belongs to transcendental principles can be sufficiently seen from the maxims of the Judgement, which lie at the basis of the investigation of nature a priori, and yet do not go further than the possibility of experience, and consequently of the cognition of nature—not indeed nature in general, but nature as determined through a variety of particular laws. These maxims present themselves in the course of this science often enough, though in a scattered way, as sentences of metaphysical wisdom, whose necessity we cannot demonstrate from concepts. “Nature takes the shortest way (lex parsimoniae); at the same time it makes no leaps, either in the course of its changes or in the juxtaposition of specifically different forms (lex continui in natura); its great variety in empirical laws is yet unity under a few principles (principia praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda),” etc.

If we propose to set forth the origin of these fundamental propositions and try to do so by the psychological method, we violate their sense. For they do not tell us what happens, i.e. by what rule our cognitive powers actually operate, and how we judge, but how we ought to judge; and this logical objective necessity does not emerge if the principles are merely empirical. Hence that purposiveness of nature for our cognitive faculties and their use, which is plainly apparent from them, is a transcendental principle of judgements, and needs therefore also a Transcendental Deduction, by means of which the ground for so judging must be sought in the sources of cognition a priori.

We find in the grounds of the possibility of an experience in the very first place something necessary, viz. the universal laws without which nature in general (as an object of sense) cannot be thought; and these rest upon the Categories, applied to the formal conditions of all intuition possible for us, so far as it is also given a priori. Now under these laws the Judgement is determinant, for it has nothing to do but to subsume under given laws. For example, the Understanding says that every change has its cause (universal law of nature); the transcendental Judgement has nothing further to do than to supply a priori the condition of subsumption under the concept of the Understanding placed before it, i.e. the succession [in time] of the determinations of one and the same thing. For nature in general (as an object of possible experience) that law is cognised as absolutely necessary.—But now the objects of empirical cognition are determined in many other ways than by that formal time-condition, or, at least as far as we can judge a priori, are determinable. Hence specifically different natures can be causes in an infinite variety of ways, as well as in virtue of what they have in common as belonging to nature in general; and each of these modes must (in accordance with the concept of a cause in general) have its rule, which is a law and therefore brings necessity with it, although we do not at all comprehend this necessity, in virtue of the constitution and the limitations of our cognitive faculties. We must therefore think in nature, in respect of its merely empirical laws, a possibility of infinitely various empirical laws, which are, as far as our insight goes, contingent (cannot be cognised a priori), and in respect of which we judge nature, according to empirical laws and the possibility of the unity of experience (as a system according to empirical laws), to be contingent. But such a unity must be necessarily presupposed and assumed, for otherwise there would be no thoroughgoing connexion of empirical cognitions in a whole of experience. The universal laws of nature no doubt furnish such a connexion of things according to their kind as things of nature in general, but not specifically, as such particular beings of nature. Hence the Judgement must assume for its special use this principle a priori, that what in the particular (empirical) laws of nature is from the human point of view contingent, yet contains a unity of law in the combination of its manifold into an experience possible in itself—a unity not indeed to be fathomed by us, but yet thinkable. Consequently as the unity of law in a combination, which we cognise as contingent in itself, although in conformity with a necessary design (a need) of Understanding, is represented as the purposiveness of Objects (here of nature); so must the Judgement, which in respect of things under possible (not yet discovered) empirical laws is merely reflection, think of nature in respect of the latter according to a principle of purposiveness for our cognitive faculty, which then is expressed in the above maxims of the Judgement. This transcendental concept of a purposiveness of nature is neither a natural concept nor a concept of freedom, because it ascribes nothing to the Object (of nature), but only represents the peculiar way in which we must proceed in reflection upon the objects of nature in reference to a thoroughly connected experience, and is consequently a subjective principle (maxim) of the Judgement. Hence, as if it were a lucky chance favouring our design, we are rejoiced (properly speaking, relieved of a want), if we meet with such systematic unity under merely empirical laws; although we must necessarily assume that there is such a unity without our comprehending it or being able to prove it.

In order to convince ourselves of the correctness of this Deduction of the concept before us, and the necessity of assuming it as a transcendental principle of cognition, just consider the magnitude of the problem. The problem, which lies a priori in our Understanding, is to make a connected experience out of given perceptions of a nature containing at all events an infinite variety of empirical laws. The Understanding is, no doubt, in possession a priori of universal laws of nature, without which nature could not be an object of experience; but it needs in addition a certain order of nature in its particular rules, which can only be empirically known and which are, as regards the Understanding, contingent. These rules, without which we could not proceed from the universal analogy of a possible experience in general to the particular, must be thought by it as laws (i.e. as necessary), for otherwise they would not constitute an order of nature; although their necessity can never be cognised or comprehended by it. Although, therefore, the Understanding can determine nothing a priori in respect of Objects, it must, in order to trace out these empirical so-called laws, place at the basis of all reflection upon Objects an a priori principle, viz. that a cognisable order of nature is possible in accordance with these laws. The following propositions express some such principle. There is in nature a subordination of genera and species comprehensible by us. Each one approximates to some other according to a common principle, so that a transition from one to another and so on to a higher genus may be possible. Though it seems at the outset unavoidable for our Understanding to assume different kinds of causality for the specific differences of natural operations, yet these different kinds may stand under a small number of principles, with the investigation of which we have to busy ourselves. This harmony of nature with our cognitive faculty is presupposed a priori by the Judgement, on behalf of its reflection upon nature in accordance with its empirical laws; whilst the Understanding at the same time cognises it objectively as contingent, and it is only the Judgement that ascribes it to nature as a trancendental purposiveness (in relation to the cognitive faculty of the subject). For without this presupposition we should have no order of nature in accordance with empirical laws, and consequently no guiding thread for an experience ordered by these in all their variety, or for an investigation of them.

For it might easily be thought that, in spite of all the uniformity of natural things according to the universal laws, without which we should not have the form of an empirical cognition in general, the specific variety of the empirical laws of nature including their effects might yet be so great, that it would be impossible for our Understanding, to detect in nature a comprehensible order; to divide its products into genera and species, so as to use the principles which explain and make intelligible one for the explanation and comprehension of another; or out of such confused material (strictly we should say, so infinitely various and not to be measured by our faculty of comprehension) to make a connected experience.

The Judgement has therefore also in itself a principle a priori of the possibility of nature, but only in a subjective aspect; by which it prescribes, not to nature (autonomy), but to itself (heautonomy) a law for its reflection upon nature. This we might call the law of the specification of nature in respect of its empirical laws. The Judgement does not cognise this a priori in nature, but assumes it on behalf of a natural order cognisable by our Understanding in the division which it makes of the universal laws of nature when it wishes to subordinate to these the variety of particular laws. If then we say that nature specifies its universal laws according to the principles of purposiveness for our cognitive faculty, i.e. in accordance with the necessary business of the human Understanding of finding the universal for the particular which perception offers it, and again of finding connexion for the diverse (which however is a universal for each species) in the unity of a principle,—we thus neither prescribe to nature a law, nor do we learn one from it by observation (although such a principle may be confirmed by this means). For it is not a principle of the determinant but merely of the reflective Judgement. We only require that, be nature disposed as it may as regards its universal laws, investigation into its empirical laws may be carried on in accordance with that principle and the maxims founded thereon, because it is only so far as that holds that we can make any progress with the use of our Understanding in experience, or gain knowledge.

VI. OF THE COMBINATION OF THE FEELING OF PLEASURE WITH THE CONCEPT OF THE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE.

The thought harmony of nature in the variety of its particular laws with our need of finding universality of principles for it, must be judged as contingent in respect of our insight, but yet at the same time as indispensable for the needs of our Understanding, and consequently as a purposiveness by which nature is harmonised with our design, which, however, has only knowledge for its aim. The universal laws of the Understanding, which are at the same time laws of nature, are just as necessary (although arising from spontaneity) as the material laws of motion. Their production presupposes no design on the part of our cognitive faculty, because it is only by means of them that we, in the first place, attain a concept of what the cognition of things (of nature) is, and attribute them necessarily to nature as Object of our cognition in general. But, so far as we can see, it is contingent that the order of nature according to its particular laws, in all its variety and heterogeneity possibly at least transcending our comprehension, should be actually conformable to these [laws]. The discovery of this [order] is the business of the Understanding which is designedly borne towards a necessary purpose, viz. the bringing of unity of principles into nature, which purpose then the Judgement must ascribe to nature, because the Understanding cannot here prescribe any law to it.

The attainment of that design is bound up with the feeling of pleasure, and since the condition of this attainment is a representation a priori,—as here a principle for the reflective Judgement in general,—therefore the feeling of pleasure is determined by a ground a priori and valid for every man, and that merely by the reference of the Object to the cognitive faculty, the concept of purposiveness here not having the least reference to the faculty of desire. It is thus quite distinguished from all practical purposiveness of nature.

In fact, although from the agreement of perceptions with laws in accordance with universal natural concepts (the categories), we do not and cannot find in ourselves the slightest effect upon the feeling of pleasure, because the Understanding necessarily proceeds according to its nature without any design; yet, on the other hand, the discovery that two or more empirical heterogeneous laws of nature may be combined under one principle comprehending them both, is the ground of a very marked pleasure, often even of an admiration, which does not cease, though we may be already quite familiar with the objects of it. We no longer find, it is true, any marked pleasure in the comprehensibility of nature and in the unity of its divisions into genera and species, whereby are possible all empirical concepts, through which we cognise it according to its particular laws. But this pleasure has certainly been present at one time, and it is only because the commonest experience would be impossible without it that it is gradually confounded with mere cognition and no longer arrests particular attention. There is then something in our judgements upon nature which makes us attentive to its purposiveness for our Understanding—an endeavour to bring, where possible, its dissimilar laws under higher ones, though still always empirical—and thus, if successful, makes us feel pleasure in that harmony of these with our cognitive faculty, which harmony we regard as merely contingent. On the other hand, a representation of nature would altogether displease, by which it should be foretold to us that in the smallest investigation beyond the commonest experience we should meet with a heterogeneity of its laws, which would make the union of its particular laws under universal empirical laws impossible for our Understanding. For this would contradict the principle of the subjectively-purposive specification of nature in its genera, and also of our reflective Judgement in respect of such principle.

This presupposition of the Judgement is, however, at the same time so indeterminate as to how far that ideal purposiveness of nature for our cognitive faculty should be extended, that if we were told that a deeper or wider knowledge of nature derived from observation must lead at last to a variety of laws, which no human Understanding could reduce to a principle, we should at once acquiesce. But still we more gladly listen to one who offers hope that the more we know nature internally, and can compare it with external members now unknown to us, the more simple shall we find it in its principles, and that the further our experience reaches the more uniform shall we find it amid the apparent heterogeneity of its empirical laws. For it is a mandate of our Judgement to proceed according to the principle of the harmony of nature with our cognitive faculty so far as that reaches, without deciding (because it is not the determinant Judgement which gives us this rule) whether or not it is bounded anywhere. For although in respect of the rational use of our cognitive faculty we can determine such bounds, this is not possible in the empirical field.

VII. OF THE AESTHETICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE.

That which in the representation of an Object is merely subjective, i.e. which decides its reference to the subject, not to the object, is its aesthetical character; but that which serves or can be used for the determination of the object (for cognition), is its logical validity. In the cognition of an object of sense both references present themselves. In the sense-representation of external things the quality of space wherein we intuite them is the merely subjective [element] of my representation (by which it remains undecided what they may be in themselves as Objects), on account of which reference the object is thought thereby merely as phenomenon. But space, notwithstanding its merely subjective quality, is at the same time an ingredient in the cognition of things as phenomena. Sensation, again (i.e. external sensation), expresses the merely subjective [element] of our representations of external things, but it is also the proper material (reale) of them (by which something existing is given), just as space is the mere form a priori of the possibility of their intuition. Nevertheless, however, sensation is also employed in the cognition of external Objects.

But the subjective [element] in a representation which cannot be an ingredient of cognition, is the pleasure or pain which is bound up with it; for through it I cognise nothing in the object of the representation, although it may be the effect of some cognition. Now the purposiveness of a thing, so far as it is represented in perception, is no characteristic of the Object itself (for such cannot be perceived), although it may be inferred from a cognition of things. The purposiveness, therefore, which precedes the cognition of an Object, and which, even without our wishing to use the representation of it for cognition, is, at the same time, immediately bound up with it, is that subjective [element] which cannot be an ingredient in cognition. Hence the object is only called purposive, when its representation is immediately combined with the feeling of pleasure; and this very representation is an aesthetical representation of purposiveness.—The only question is whether there is, in general, such a representation of purposiveness.

If pleasure is bound up with the mere apprehension (apprehensio) of the form of an object of intuition, without reference to a concept for a definite cognition, then the representation is thereby not referred to the Object, but simply to the subject; and the pleasure can express nothing else than its harmony with the cognitive faculties which come into play in the reflective Judgement, and so far as they are in play; and hence can only express a subjective formal purposiveness of the Object. For that apprehension of forms in the Imagination can never take place without the reflective Judgement, though undesignedly, at least comparing them with its faculty of referring intuitions to concepts. If now in this comparison the Imagination (as the faculty of a priori intuitions) is placed by means of a given representation undesignedly in agreement with the Understanding, as the faculty of concepts, and thus a feeling of pleasure is aroused, the object must then be regarded as purposive for the reflective Judgement. Such a judgement is an aesthetical judgement upon the purposiveness of the Object, which does not base itself upon any present concept of the object, nor does it furnish any such. In the case of an object whose form (not the matter of its representation, as sensation), in the mere reflection upon it (without reference to any concept to be obtained of it), is judged as the ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an Object, this pleasure is judged as bound up with the representation necessarily; and, consequently, not only for the subject which apprehends this form, but for every judging being in general. The object is then called beautiful; and the faculty of judging by means of such a pleasure (and, consequently, with universal validity) is called Taste. For since the ground of the pleasure is placed merely in the form of the object for reflection in general—and, consequently, in no sensation of the object, and also without reference to any concept which anywhere involves design—it is only the conformity to law in the empirical use of the Judgement in general (unity of the Imagination with the Understanding) in the subject, with which the representation of the Object in reflection, whose conditions are universally valid a priori, harmonises. And since this harmony of the object with the faculties of the subject is contingent, it brings about the representation of its purposiveness in respect of the cognitive faculties of the subject.

Here now is a pleasure, which, like all pleasure or pain that is not produced through the concept of freedom (i.e. through the preceding determination of the higher faculties of desire by pure Reason), can never be comprehended from concepts, as necessarily bound up with the representation of an object. It must always be cognised as combined with this only by means of reflective perception; and, consequently, like all empirical judgements, it can declare no objective necessity and lay claim to no a priori validity. But the judgement of taste also claims, as every other empirical judgement does, to be valid for every one; and in spite of its inner contingency this is always possible. The strange and irregular thing is that it is not an empirical concept, but a feeling of pleasure (consequently not a concept at all), which by the judgement of taste is attributed to every one,—just as if it were a predicate bound up with the cognition of the Object—and which is connected with the representation thereof.

A singular judgement of experience, e.g., when we perceive a moveable drop of water in an ice-crystal, may justly claim that every one else should find it the same; because we have formed this judgement, according to the universal conditions of the determinant faculty of Judgement, under the laws of a possible experience in general. Just in the same way he who feels pleasure in the mere reflection upon the form of an object without respect to any concept, although this judgement be empirical and singular, justly claims the agreement of every one; because the ground of this pleasure is found in the universal, although subjective, condition of reflective judgements, viz., the purposive harmony of an object (whether a product of nature or of art) with the mutual relations of the cognitive faculties (the Imagination and the Understanding), a harmony which is requisite for every empirical cognition. The pleasure, therefore, in the judgement of taste is dependent on an empirical representation, and cannot be bound up a priori with any concept (we cannot determine a priori what object is or is not according to taste; that we must find out by experiment). But the pleasure is the determining ground of this judgement only because we are conscious that it rests merely on reflection and on the universal though only subjective conditions of the harmony of that reflection with the cognition of Objects in general, for which the form of the Object is purposive.

Thus the reason why judgements of taste according to their possibility are subjected to a Critique is that they presuppose a principle a priori, although this principle is neither one of cognition for the Understanding nor of practice for the Will, and therefore is not in any way determinant a priori.

Susceptibility to pleasure from reflection upon the forms of things (of Nature as well as of Art), indicates not only a purposiveness of the Objects in relation to the reflective Judgement, conformably to the concept of nature in the subject; but also conversely a purposiveness of the subject in respect of the objects according to their form or even their formlessness, in virtue of the concept of freedom. Hence the aesthetical judgement is not only related as a judgement of taste to the beautiful, but also as springing from a spiritual feeling is related to the sublime; and thus the Critique of the aesthetical Judgement must be divided into two corresponding sections.

VIII. OF THE LOGICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PURPOSIVENESS OF NATURE

Purposiveness may be represented in an object given in experience on a merely subjective ground, as the harmony of its form,—in the apprehension (apprehensio) of it prior to any concept,—with the cognitive faculties, in order to unite the intuition with concepts for a cognition generally. Or it may be represented objectively as the harmony of the form of the object with the possibility of the thing itself, according to a concept of it which precedes and contains the ground of this form. We have seen that the representation of purposiveness of the first kind rests on the immediate pleasure in the form of the object in the mere reflection upon it. But the representation of purposiveness of the second kind, since it refers the form of the Object, not to the cognitive faculties of the subject in the apprehension of it, but to a definite cognition of the object under a given concept, has nothing to do with a feeling of pleasure in things, but only with the Understanding in its judgement upon them. If the concept of an object is given, the business of the Judgement in the use of the concept for cognition consists in presentation (exhibitio), i.e. in setting a corresponding intuition beside the concept. This may take place either through our own Imagination, as in Art when we realise a preconceived concept of an object which is a purpose of ours; or through Nature in its Technic (as in organised bodies) when we supply to it our concept of its purpose in order to judge of its products. In the latter case it is not merely the purposiveness of nature in the form of the thing that is represented, but this its product is represented as a natural purpose.—Although our concept of a subjective purposiveness of nature in its forms according to empirical laws is not a concept of the Object, but only a principle of the Judgement for furnishing itself with concepts amid the immense variety of nature (and thus being able to ascertain its own position), yet we thus ascribe to nature as it were a regard to our cognitive faculty according to the analogy of purpose. Thus we can regard natural beauty as the presentation of the concept of the formal (merely subjective) purposiveness, and natural purposes as the presentation of the concept of a real (objective) purposiveness. The former of these we judge of by Taste (aesthetically, by the medium of the feeling of pleasure), the latter by Understanding and Reason (logically, according to concepts).

On this is based the division of the Critique of Judgement into the Critique of aesthetical and of teleological Judgement. By the first we understand the faculty of judging of the formal purposiveness (otherwise called subjective) of Nature by means of the feeling of pleasure or pain; by the second the faculty of judging its real (objective) purposiveness by means of Understanding and Reason.

In a Critique of Judgement the part containing the aesthetical Judgement is essential, because this alone contains a principle which the Judgement places quite a priori at the basis of its reflection upon nature; viz., the principle of a formal purposiveness of nature, according to its particular (empirical) laws, for our cognitive faculty, without which the Understanding could not find itself in nature. On the other hand no reason a priori could be specified,—and even the possibility of a reason would not be apparent from the concept of nature as an object of experience whether general or particular,—why there should be objective purposes of nature, i.e. things which are only possible as natural purposes; but the Judgement, without containing such a principle a priori in itself, in given cases (of certain products), in order to make use of the concept of purposes on behalf of Reason, would only contain the rule according to which that transcendental principle has already prepared the Understanding to apply to nature the concept of a purpose (at least as regards its form).

But the transcendental principle which represents a purposiveness of nature (in subjective reference to our cognitive faculty) in the form of a thing as a principle by which we judge of nature, leaves it quite undetermined where and in what cases I have to judge of a product according to a principle of purposiveness, and not rather according to universal natural laws. It leaves it to the aesthetical Judgement to decide by taste the harmony of this product (of its form) with our cognitive faculty (so far as this decision rests not on any agreement with concepts but on feeling). On the other hand, the Judgement teleologically employed furnishes conditions determinately under which something (e.g. an organised body) is to be judged according to the Idea of a purpose of nature; but it can adduce no fundamental proposition from the concept of nature as an object of experience authorising it to ascribe to nature a priori a reference to purposes, or even indeterminately to assume this of such products in actual experience. The reason of this is that we must have many particular experiences, and consider them under the unity of their principle, in order to be able to cognise, even empirically, objective purposiveness in a certain object.—The aesthetical Judgement is therefore a special faculty for judging of things according to a rule, but not according to concepts. The teleological Judgement is not a special faculty, but only the reflective Judgement in general, so far as it proceeds, as it always does in theoretical cognition, according to concepts; but in respect of certain objects of nature according to special principles, viz., of a merely reflective Judgement, and not of a Judgement that determines Objects. Thus as regards its application it belongs to the theoretical part of Philosophy; and on account of its special principles which are not determinant, as they must be in Doctrine, it must constitute a special part of the Critique. On the other hand, the aesthetical Judgement contributes nothing towards the knowledge of its objects, and thus must be reckoned as belonging to the criticism of the judging subject and its cognitive faculties, only so far as they are susceptible of a priori principles, of whatever other use (theoretical or practical) they may be. This is the propaedeutic of all Philosophy.

IX. OF THE CONNEXION OF THE LEGISLATION OF UNDERSTANDING WITH THAT OF REASON BY MEANS OF THE JUDGEMENT

The Understanding legislates a priori for nature as an Object of sense—for a theoretical knowledge of it in a possible experience. Reason legislates a priori for freedom and its peculiar casuality; as the supersensible in the subject, for an unconditioned practical knowledge. The realm of the natural concept under the one legislation and that of the concept of freedom under the other are entirely removed from all mutual influence which they might have on one another (each according to its fundamental laws) by the great gulf that separates the supersensible from phenomena. The concept of freedom determines nothing in respect of the theoretical cognition of nature; and the natural concept determines nothing in respect of the practical laws of freedom. So far then it is not possible to throw a bridge from the one realm to the other. But although the determining grounds of causality according to the concept of freedom (and the practical rules which it contains) are not resident in nature, and the sensible cannot determine the supersensible in the subject, yet this is possible conversely (not, to be sure, in respect of the cognition of nature, but as regards the effects of the supersensible upon the sensible). This in fact is involved in the concept of a causality through freedom, the effect of which is to take place in the world according to its formal laws. The word cause, of course, when used of the supersensible only signifies the ground which determines the causality of natural things to an effect in accordance with their proper natural laws, although harmoniously with the formal principle of the laws of Reason. Although the possibility of this cannot be comprehended, yet the objection of a contradiction alleged to be found in it can be sufficiently answered.10—The effect in accordance with the concept of freedom is the final purpose which (or its phenomenon in the world of sense) ought to exist; and the condition of the possibility of this is presupposed in nature (in the nature of the subject as a sensible being, that is, as man). The Judgement presupposes this a priori and without reference to the practical; and thus furnishes the mediating concept between the concepts of nature and that of freedom. It makes possible the transition from the conformity to law in accordance with the former to the final purpose in accordance with the latter, and this by the concept of a purposiveness of nature. For thus is cognised the possibility of the final purpose which alone can be actualised in nature in harmony with its laws.

The Understanding by the possibility of its a priori laws for nature, gives a proof that nature is only cognised by us as phenomenon; and implies at the same time that it has a supersensible substrate, though it leaves this quite undetermined. The Judgement by its a priori principle for the judging of nature according to its possible particular laws, makes the supersensible substrate (both in us and without us) determinable by means of the intellectual faculty. But the Reason by its practical a priori law determines it; and thus the Judgement makes possible the transition from the realm of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom.

As regards the faculties of the soul in general, in their higher aspect, as containing an autonomy; the Understanding is that which contains the constitutive principles a priori for the cognitive faculty (the theoretical cognition of nature). For the feeling of pleasure and pain there is the Judgement, independently of concepts and sensations which relate to the determination of the faculty of desire and can thus be immediately practical. For the faculty of desire there is the Reason which is practical without the mediation of any pleasure whatever. It determines for the faculty of desire, as a superior faculty, the final purpose which carries with it the pure intellectual satisfaction in the Object.—The concept formed by Judgement of a purposiveness of nature belongs to natural concepts, but only as a regulative principle of the cognitive faculty; although the aesthetical judgement upon certain objects (of Nature or Art) which occasions it is, in respect of the feeling of pleasure or pain, a constitutive principle. The spontaneity in the play of the cognitive faculties, the harmony of which contains the ground of this pleasure, makes the above concept [of the purposiveness of nature] fit to be the mediating link between the realm of the natural concept and that of the concept of freedom in its effects; whilst at the same time it promotes the sensibility of the mind for moral feeling.—The following table may facilitate the review of all the higher faculties according to their systematic unity.11

All the faculties of the mind

Cognitive faculties. Faculties of desire.

Feeling of pleasure and pain.

Cognitive faculties

Understanding. Judgement. Reason.

A priori principles

Conformity to law. Purposiveness. Final purpose.

Application to

Nature. Art. Freedom.

THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT

PART I

CRITIQUE OF THE AESTHETICAL JUDGEMENT

FIRST DIVISION

ANALYTIC OF THE AESTHETICAL JUDGEMENT

FIRST BOOK

ANALYTIC OF THE BEAUTIFUL

FIRST MOMENT

OF THE JUDGEMENT OF TASTE12 ACCORDING TO QUALITY

§ 1. The judgement of taste is aesthetical

In order to decide whether anything is beautiful or not, we refer the representation, not by the Understanding to the Object for cognition but, by the Imagination (perhaps in conjunction with the Understanding) to the subject, and its feeling of pleasure or pain. The judgement of taste is therefore not a judgement of cognition, and is consequently not logical but aesthetical, by which we understand that whose determining ground can be no other than subjective. Every reference of representations, even that of sensations, may be objective (and then it signifies the real in an empirical representation); save only the reference to the feeling of pleasure and pain, by which nothing in the Object is signified, but through which there is a feeling in the subject, as it is affected by the representation.

To apprehend a regular, purposive building by means of one’s cognitive faculty (whether in a clear or a confused way of representation) is something quite different from being conscious of this representation as connected with the sensation of satisfaction. Here the representation is altogether referred to the subject and to its feeling of life, under the name of the feeling of pleasure or pain. This establishes a quite separate faculty of distinction and of judgement, adding nothing to cognition, but only comparing the given representation in the subject with the whole faculty of representations, of which the mind is conscious in the feeling of its state. Given representations in a judgement can be empirical (consequently, aesthetical); but the judgement which is formed by means of them is logical, provided they are referred in the judgement to the Object. Conversely, if the given representations are rational, but are referred in a judgement simply to the subject (to its feeling), the judgement is so far always aesthetical.

§ 2. The satisfaction which determines the judgement of taste is disinterested

The satisfaction which we combine with the representation of the existence of an object is called interest. Such satisfaction always has reference to the faculty of desire, either as its determining ground or as necessarily connected with its determining ground. Now when the question is if a thing is beautiful, we do not want to know whether anything depends or can depend on the existence of the thing either for myself or for any one else, but how we judge it by mere observation (intuition or reflection). If any one asks me if I find that palace beautiful which I see before me, I may answer: I do not like things of that kind which are made merely to be stared at. Or I can answer like that Iroquois sachem who was pleased in Paris by nothing more than by the cook-shops. Or again after the manner of Rousseau I may rebuke the vanity of the great who waste the sweat of the people on such superfluous things. In fine I could easily convince myself that if I found myself on an uninhabited island without the hope of ever again coming among men, and could conjure up just such a splendid building by my mere wish, I should not even give myself the trouble if I had a sufficiently comfortable hut. This may all be admitted and approved; but we are not now talking of this. We wish only to know if this mere representation of the object is accompanied in me with satisfaction, however indifferent I may be as regards the existence of the object of this representation. We easily see that in saying it is beautiful and in showing that I have taste, I am concerned, not with that in which I depend on the existence of the object, but with that which I make out of this representation in myself. Every one must admit that a judgement about beauty, in which the least interest mingles, is very partial and is not a pure judgement of taste. We must not be in the least prejudiced in favour of the existence of the things, but be quite indifferent in this respect, in order to play the judge in things of taste.

We cannot, however, better elucidate this proposition, which is of capital importance, than by contrasting the pure disinterested13 satisfaction in judgements of taste, with that which is bound up with an interest, especially if we can at the same time be certain that there are no other kinds of interest than those which are now to be specified.

§ 3. The satisfaction in the PLEASANT is bound up with interest

That which pleases the senses in sensation is PLEASANT. Here the opportunity presents itself of censuring a very common confusion of the double sense which the word sensation can have, and of calling attention to it. All satisfaction (it is said or thought) is itself sensation (of a pleasure). Consequently everything that pleases is pleasant because it pleases (and according to its different degrees or its relations to other pleasant sensations it is agreeable, lovely, delightful, enjoyable, etc.). But if this be admitted, then impressions of Sense which determine the inclination, fundamental propositions of Reason which determine the Will, mere reflective forms of intuition which determine the Judgement, are quite the same, as regards the effect upon the feeling of pleasure. For this would be pleasantness in the sensation of one’s state, and since in the end all the operations of our faculties must issue in the practical and unite in it as their goal, we could suppose no other way of estimating things and their worth than that which consists in the gratification that they promise. It is of no consequence at all how this is attained, and since then the choice of means alone could make a difference, men could indeed blame one another for stupidity and indiscretion, but never for baseness and wickedness. For all, each according to his own way of seeing things, seek one goal, that is, gratification.

If a determination of the feeling of pleasure or pain is called sensation, this expression signifies something quite different from what I mean when I call the representation of a thing (by sense, as a receptivity belonging to the cognitive faculty) sensation. For in the latter case the representation is referred to the Object, in the former simply to the subject, and is available for no cognition whatever, not even for that by which the subject cognises itself.

In the above elucidation we understand by the word sensation, an objective representation of sense; and in order to avoid misinterpretation, we shall call that, which must always remain merely subjective and can constitute absolutely no representation of an object, by the ordinary term “feeling.” The green colour of the meadows belongs to objective sensation, as a perception of an object of sense; the pleasantness of this belongs to subjective sensation by which no object is represented, i.e. to feeling, by which the object is considered as an Object of satisfaction (which does not furnish a cognition of it).

Now that a judgement about an object, by which I describe it as pleasant, expresses an interest in it, is plain from the fact that by sensation it excites a desire for objects of that kind; consequently the satisfaction presupposes not the mere judgement about it, but the relation of its existence to my state, so far as this is affected by such an Object. Hence we do not merely say of the pleasant, it pleases; but, it gratifies. I give to it no mere approval, but inclination is aroused by it; and in the case of what is pleasant in the most lively fashion, there is no judgement at all upon the character of the Object, for those who always lay themselves out only for enjoyment (for that is the word describing intense gratification) would fain dispense with all judgement.

§ 4. The satisfaction in the GOOD is bound up with interest

Whatever by means of Reason pleases through the mere concept is GOOD. That which pleases only as a means we call good for something (the useful); but that which pleases for itself is good in itself. In both there is always involved the concept of a purpose, and consequently the relation of Reason to the (at least possible) volition, and thus a satisfaction in the presence of an Object or an action, i.e. some kind of interest.

In order to find anything good, I must always know what sort of a thing the object ought to be, i.e. I must have a concept of it. But there is no need of this, to find a thing beautiful. Flowers, free delineations, outlines intertwined with one another without design and called foliage, have no meaning, depend on no definite concept, and yet they please. The satisfaction in the beautiful must depend on the reflection upon an object, leading to any concept (however indefinite); and it is thus distinguished from the pleasant which rests entirely upon sensation.

It is true, the Pleasant seems in many cases to be the same as the Good. Thus people are accustomed to say that all gratification (especially if it lasts) is good in itself; which is very much the same as to say that lasting pleasure and the good are the same. But we can soon see that this is merely a confusion of words; for the concepts which properly belong to these expressions can in no way be interchanged. The pleasant, which, as such, represents the object simply in relation to Sense, must first be brought by the concept of a purpose under principles of Reason, in order to call it good, as an object of the Will. But that there is [involved] a quite different relation to satisfaction in calling that which gratifies at the same time good, may be seen from the fact that in the case of the good the question always is, whether it is mediately or immediately good (useful or good in itself); but on the contrary in the case of the pleasant there can be no question about this at all, for the word always signifies something which pleases immediately. (The same is applicable to what I call beautiful.)

Even in common speech men distinguish the Pleasant from the Good. Of a dish which stimulates the taste by spices and other condiments we say unhesitatingly that it is pleasant, though it is at the same time admitted not to be good; for though it immediately delights the senses, yet mediately, i.e. considered by Reason which looks to the after results, it displeases. Even in the judging of health we may notice this distinction. It is immediately pleasant to every one possessing it (at least negatively, i.e. as the absence of all bodily pains). But in order to say that it is good, it must be considered by Reason with reference to purposes; viz. that it is a state which makes us fit for all our business. Finally in respect of happiness every one believes himself entitled to describe the greatest sum of the pleasantnesses of life (as regards both their number and their duration) as a true, even as the highest, good. However Reason is opposed to this. Pleasantness is enjoyment. And if we were concerned with this alone, it would be foolish to be scrupulous as regards the means which procure it for us, or [to care] whether it is obtained passively by the bounty of nature or by our own activity and work. But Reason can never be persuaded that the existence of a man who merely lives for enjoyment (however busy he may be in this point of view), has a worth in itself; even if he at the same time is conducive as a means to the best enjoyment of others, and shares in all their gratifications by sympathy. Only what he does, without reference to enjoyment, in full freedom and independently of what nature can procure for him passively, gives an [absolute14] worth to his being, as the existence of a person; and happiness, with the whole abundance of its pleasures, is far from being an unconditioned good.15

However, notwithstanding all this difference between the pleasant and the good, they both agree in this that they are always bound up with an interest in their object. [This is true] not only of the pleasant(§ 3), and the mediate good (the useful) which is pleasing as a means towards pleasantness somewhere, but also of that which is good absolutely and in every aspect, viz. moral good, which brings with it the highest interest. For the good is the Object of will (i.e. of a faculty of desire determined by Reason). But to will something, and to have a satisfaction in its existence, i.e. to take an interest in it, are identical.

§ 5. Comparison of the three specifically different kinds of satisfaction

The pleasant and the good have both a reference to the faculty of desire; and they bring with them—the former a satisfaction pathologically conditioned (by impulses, stimuli)—the latter a pure practical satisfaction, which is determined not merely by the representation of the object, but also by the represented connexion of the subject with the existence of the object. [It is not merely the object that pleases, but also its existence.16] On the other hand, the judgement of taste is merely contemplative; i.e. it is a judgement which, indifferent as regards the being of an object, compares its character with the feeling of pleasure and pain. But this contemplation itself is not directed to concepts; for the judgement of taste is not a cognitive judgement (either theoretical or practical), and thus is not based on concepts, nor has it concepts as its purpose.

The Pleasant, the Beautiful, and the Good, designate then, three different relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure and pain, in reference to which we distinguish from each other objects or methods of representing them. And the expressions corresponding to each, by which we mark our complacency in them, are not the same. That which GRATIFIES a man is called pleasant; that which merely PLEASES him is beautiful; that which is ESTEEMED [or approved17] by him, i.e. that to which he accords an objective worth, is good. Pleasantness concerns irrational animals also; but Beauty only concerns men, i.e. animal, but still rational, beings—not merely quâ rational (e.g. spirits), but quâ animal also; and the Good concerns every rational being in general. This is a proposition which can only be completely established and explained in the sequel. We may say that of all these three kinds of satisfaction, that of taste in the Beautiful is alone a disinterested and free satisfaction; for no interest, either of Sense or of Reason, here forces our assent. Hence we may say of satisfaction that it is related in the three aforesaid cases to inclination, to favour, or to respect. Now favour is the only free satisfaction. An object of inclination, and one that is proposed to our desire by a law of Reason, leave us no freedom in forming for ourselves anywhere an object of pleasure. All interest presupposes or generates a want; and, as the determining ground of assent, it leaves the judgement about the object no longer free.

As regards the interest of inclination in the case of the Pleasant, every one says that hunger is the best sauce, and everything that is eatable is relished by people with a healthy appetite; and thus a satisfaction of this sort does not indicate choice directed by taste. It is only when the want is appeased that we can distinguish which of many men has or has not taste. In the same way there may be manners (conduct) without virtue, politeness without goodwill, decorum without modesty, etc. For where the moral law speaks there is no longer, objectively, a free choice as regards what is to be done; and to display taste in its fulfilment (or in judging of another’s fulfilment of it) is something quite different from manifesting the moral attitude of thought. For this involves a command and generates a want, whilst moral taste only plays with the objects of satisfaction, without attaching itself to one of them.

EXPLANATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL RESULTING FROM THE FIRST MOMENT

Taste is the faculty of judging of an object or a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful.18

SECOND MOMENT

OF THE JUDGEMENT OF TASTE, VIZ. ACCORDING TO QUANTITY

§ 6. The beautiful is that which apart from concepts is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction

This explanation of the beautiful can be derived from the preceding explanation of it as the object of an entirely disinterested satisfaction. For the fact of which every one is conscious, that the satisfaction is for him quite disinterested, implies in his judgement a ground of satisfaction for every one. For since it does not rest on any inclination of the subject (nor upon any other premeditated interest), but since he who judges feels himself quite free as regards the satisfaction which he attaches to the object, he cannot find the ground of this satisfaction in any private conditions connected with his own subject; and hence it must be regarded as grounded on what he can presuppose in every other man. Consequently he must believe that he has reason for attributing a similar satisfaction to every one. He will therefore speak of the beautiful, as if beauty were a characteristic of the object and the judgement logical (constituting a cognition of the Object by means of concepts of it); although it is only aesthetical and involves merely a reference of the representation of the object to the subject. For it has this similarity to a logical judgement that we can presuppose its validity for every one. But this universality cannot arise from concepts; for from concepts there is no transition to the feeling of pleasure or pain (except in pure practical laws, which bring an interest with them such as is not bound up with the pure judgement of taste). Consequently the judgement of taste, accompanied with the consciousness of separation from all interest, must claim validity for every one, without this universality depending on Objects. That is, there must be bound up with it a title to subjective universality.

§ 7. Comparison of the Beautiful with the Pleasant and the Good by means of the above characteristic

As regards the Pleasant every one is content that his judgement, which he bases upon private feeling, and by which he says of an object that it pleases him, should be limited merely to his own person. Thus he is quite contented that if he says “Canary wine is pleasant,” another man may correct his expression and remind him that he ought to say “It is pleasant to me.” And this is the case not only as regards the taste of the tongue, the palate, and the throat, but for whatever is pleasant to any one’s eyes and ears. To one violet colour is soft and lovely, to another it is faded and dead. One man likes the tone of wind instruments, another that of strings. To strive here with the design of reproving as incorrect another man’s judgement which is different from our own, as if the judgements were logically opposed, would be folly. As regards the pleasant therefore the fundamental proposition is valid, every one has his own taste (the taste of Sense).

The case is quite different with the Beautiful. It would (on the contrary) be laughable if a man who imagined anything to his own taste, thought to justify himself by saying: “This object (the house we see, the coat that person wears, the concert we hear, the poem submitted to our judgement) is beautiful for me.” For he must not call it beautiful if it merely pleases himself. Many things may have for him charm and pleasantness; no one troubles himself at that; but if he gives out anything as beautiful, he supposes in others the same satisfaction—he judges not merely for himself, but for every one, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things. Hence he says “the thing is beautiful”; and he does not count on the agreement of others with this his judgement of satisfaction, because he has found this agreement several times before, but he demands it of them. He blames them if they judge otherwise and he denies them taste, which he nevertheless requires from them. Here then we cannot say that each man has his own particular taste. For this would be as much as to say that there is no taste whatever; i.e. no aesthetical judgement, which can make a rightful claim upon every one’s assent.

At the same time we find as regards the Pleasant that there is an agreement among men in their judgements upon it, in regard to which we deny Taste to some and attribute it to others; by this not meaning one of our organic senses, but a faculty of judging in respect of the pleasant generally. Thus we say of a man who knows how to entertain his guests with pleasures (of enjoyment for all the senses), so that they are all pleased, “he has taste.” But here the universality is only taken comparatively; and there emerge rules which are only general (like all empirical ones), and not universal; which latter the judgement of Taste upon the beautiful undertakes or lays claim to. It is a judgement in reference to sociability, so far as this rests on empirical rules. In respect of the Good it is true that judgements make rightful claim to validity for every one; but the Good is represented only by means of a concept as the Object of a universal satisfaction, which is the case neither with the Pleasant nor with the Beautiful.

§ 8. The universality of the satisfaction is represented in a judgement of Taste only as subjective

This particular determination of the universality of an aesthetical judgement, which is to be met with in a judgement of taste, is noteworthy, not indeed for the logician, but for the transcendental philosopher. It requires no small trouble to discover its origin, but we thus detect a property of our cognitive faculty which without this analysis would remain unknown.

First, we must be fully convinced of the fact that in a judgement of taste (about the Beautiful) the satisfaction in the object is imputed to every one, without being based on a concept (for then it would be the Good). Further, this claim to universal validity so essentially belongs to a judgement by which we describe anything as beautiful, that if this were not thought in it, it would never come into our thoughts to use the expression at all, but everything which pleases without a concept would be counted as pleasant. In respect of the latter every one has his own opinion; and no one assumes, in another, agreement with his judgement of taste, which is always the case in a judgement of taste about beauty. I may call the first the taste of Sense, the second the taste of Reflection; so far as the first lays down mere private judgements, and the second judgements supposed to be generally valid (public), but in both cases aesthetical (not practical) judgements about an object merely in respect of the relation of its representation to the feeling of pleasure and pain. Now here is something strange. As regards the taste of Sense not only does experience show that its judgement (of pleasure or pain connected with anything) is not valid universally, but every one is content not to impute agreement with it to others (although actually there is often found a very extended concurrence in these judgements). On the other hand, the taste of Reflection has its claim to the universal validity of its judgements (about the beautiful) rejected often enough, as experience teaches; although it may find it possible (as it actually does) to represent judgements which can demand this universal agreement. In fact for each of its judgements of taste it imputes this to every one, without the persons that judge disputing as to the possibility of such a claim; although in particular cases they cannot agree as to the correct application of this faculty.

Here we must, in the first place, remark that a universality which does not rest on concepts of Objects (not even on empirical ones) is not logical but aesthetical, i.e. it involves no objective quantity of the judgement but only that which is subjective. For this I use the expression general validity which signifies the validity of the reference of a representation, not to the cognitive faculty but, to the feeling of pleasure and pain for every subject. (We can avail ourselves also of the same expression for the logical quantity of the judgement, if only we prefix objective to “universal validity,” to distinguish it from that which is merely subjective and aesthetical.)

A judgement with objective universal validity is also always valid subjectively; i.e. if the judgement holds for everything contained under a given concept, it holds also for every one who represents an object by means of this concept. But from a subjective universal validity, i.e. aesthetical and resting on no concept, we cannot infer that which is logical; because that kind of judgement does not extend to the Object. Hence the aesthetical universality which is ascribed to a judgement must be of a particular kind, because it does not unite the predicate of beauty with the concept of the Object, considered in its whole logical sphere, and yet extends it to the whole sphere of judging persons.

In respect of logical quantity all judgements of taste are singular judgements. For because I must refer the object immediately to my feeling of pleasure and pain, and that not by means of concepts, they cannot have the quantity of objective generally valid judgements. Nevertheless if the singular representation of the Object of the judgement of taste in accordance with the conditions determining the latter, were transformed by comparison into a concept, a logically universal judgement could result therefrom. E.g. I describe by a judgement of taste the rose, that I see, as beautiful. But the judgement which results from the comparison of several singular judgements, “Roses in general are beautiful” is no longer described simply as aesthetical, but as a logical judgement based on an aesthetical one. Again the judgement “The rose is pleasant” (to smell) is, although aesthetical and singular, not a judgement of Taste but of Sense. It is distinguished from the former by the fact that the judgement of Taste carries with it an aesthetical quantity of universality, i.e. of validity for every one; which cannot be found in a judgement about the Pleasant. It is only judgements about the Good which—although they also determine satisfaction in an object,—have logical and not merely aesthetical universality; for they are valid of the Object, as cognitive of it, and thus are valid for every one.

If we judge Objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no rule according to which any one is to be forced to recognise anything as beautiful. We cannot press [upon others] by the aid of any reasons or fundamental propositions our judgement that a coat, a house, or a flower is beautiful. We wish to submit the Object to our own eyes, as if the satisfaction in it depended on sensation; and yet if we then call the object beautiful, we believe that we speak with a universal voice, and we claim the assent of every one, although on the contrary all private sensation can only decide for the observer himself and his satisfaction.

We may see now that in the judgement of taste nothing is postulated but such a universal voice, in respect of the satisfaction without the intervention of concepts; and thus the possibility of an aesthetical judgement that can, at the same time, be regarded as valid for every one. The judgement of taste itself does not postulate the agreement of every one (for that can only be done by a logically universal judgement because it can adduce reasons); it only imputes this agreement to every one, as a case of the rule in respect of which it expects, not confirmation by concepts, but assent from others. The universal voice is, therefore, only an Idea (we do not yet inquire upon what it rests). It may be uncertain whether or not the man, who believes that he is laying down a judgement of taste, is, as a matter of fact, judging in conformity with that Idea; but that he refers his judgement thereto, and, consequently, that it is intended to be a judgement of taste, he announces by the expression “beauty.” He can be quite certain of this for himself by the mere consciousness of the separation of everything belonging to the Pleasant and the Good from the satisfaction which is left; and this is all for which he promises himself the agreement of every one—a claim which would be justifiable under these conditions, provided only he did not often make mistakes, and thus lay down an erroneous judgement of taste.

§ 9. Investigation of the question whether in the judgement of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes or follows the judging of the object

The solution of this question is the key to the Critique of Taste, and so is worthy of all attention.

If the pleasure in the given object precedes, and it is only its universal communicability that is to be acknowledged in the judgement of taste about the representation of the object, there would be a contradiction. For such pleasure would be nothing different from the mere pleasantness in the sensation, and so in accordance with its nature could have only private validity, because it is immediately dependent on the representation through which the object is given.

Hence, it is the universal capability of communication of the mental state in the given representation which, as the subjective condition of the judgement of taste, must be fundamental, and must have the pleasure in the object as its consequent. But nothing can be universally communicated except cognition and representation, so far as it belongs to cognition. For it is only thus that this latter can be objective; and only through this has it a universal point of reference, with which the representative power of every one is compelled to harmonise. If the determining ground of our judgement as to this universal communicability of the representation is to be merely subjective, i.e. is conceived independently of any concept of the object, it can be nothing else than the state of mind, which is to be met with in the relation of our representative powers to each other, so far as they refer a given representation to cognition in general.

The cognitive powers, which are involved by this representation, are here in free play, because no definite concept limits them to a particular19 rule of cognition. Hence, the state of mind in this representation must be a feeling of the free play of the representative powers in a given representation with reference to a cognition in general. Now a representation by which an object is given, that is to become a cognition in general, requires Imagination, for the gathering together the manifold of intuition, and Understanding, for the unity of the concept uniting the representations. This state of free play of the cognitive faculties in a representation by which an object is given, must be universally communicable; because cognition, as the determination of the Object with which given representations (in whatever subject) are to agree, is the only kind of representation which is valid for every one.

The subjective universal communicability of the mode of representation in a judgement of taste, since it is to be possible without presupposing a definite concept, can refer to nothing else than the state of mind in the free play of the Imagination and the Understanding (so far as they agree with each other, as is requisite for cognition in general). We are conscious that this subjective relation, suitable for cognition in general, must be valid for every one, and thus must be universally communicable, just as if it were a definite cognition, resting always on that relation as its subjective condition.

This merely subjective (aesthetical) judging of the object, or of the representation by which it is given, precedes the pleasure in it, and is the ground of this pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive faculties; but on the universality of the subjective conditions for judging of objects is alone based the universal subjective validity of the satisfaction bound up by us with the representation of the object that we call beautiful.

The power of communicating one’s state of mind, even though only in respect of the cognitive faculties, carries a pleasure with it, as we can easily show from the natural propension of man towards sociability (empirical and psychological). But this is not enough for our design. The pleasure that we feel is, in a judgement of taste, necessarily imputed by us to every one else; as if, when we call a thing beautiful, it is to be regarded as a characteristic of the object which is determined in it according to concepts; though beauty, without a reference to the feeling of the subject, is nothing by itself. But we must reserve the examination of this question until we have answered another, viz. “If and how aesthetical judgements are possible a priori?”

We now occupy ourselves with the easier question, in what way we are conscious of a mutual subjective harmony of the cognitive powers with one another in the judgement of taste; is it aesthetically by mere internal sense and sensation? or is it intellectually by the consciousness of our designed activity, by which we bring them into play?

If the given representation, which occasions the judgement of taste, were a concept uniting Understanding and Imagination in the judging of the object, into a cognition of the Object, the consciousness of this relation would be intellectual (as in the objective schematism of the Judgement of which the Critique20 treats). But then the judgement would not be laid down in reference to pleasure and pain, and consequently would not be a judgement of taste. But the judgement of taste, independently of concepts, determines the Object in respect of satisfaction and of the predicate of beauty. Therefore that subjective unity of relation can only make itself known by means of sensation. The excitement of both faculties (Imagination and Understanding) to indeterminate, but yet, through the stimulus of the given sensation, harmonious activity, viz. that which belongs to cognition in general, is the sensation whose universal communicability is postulated by the judgement of taste. An objective relation can only be thought, but yet, so far as it is subjective according to its conditions, can be felt in its effect on the mind; and, of a relation based on no concept (like the relation of the representative powers to a cognitive faculty in general), no other consciousness is possible than that through the sensation of the effect, which consists in the more lively play of both mental powers (the Imagination and the Understanding) when animated by mutual agreement. A representation which, as singular and apart from comparison with others, yet has an agreement with the conditions of universality which it is the business of the Understanding to supply, brings the cognitive faculties into that proportionate accord which we require for all cognition, and so regard as holding for every one who is determined to judge by means of Understanding and Sense in combination (i.e. for every man).

EXPLANATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL RESULTING FROM THE SECOND MOMENT

The beautiful is that which pleases universally, without a concept.

THIRD MOMENT

OF JUDGEMENTS OF TASTE, ACCORDING TO THE RELATION OF THE PURPOSES WHICH ARE BROUGHT INTO CONSIDERATION THEREIN.

§ 10. Of purposiveness in general

If we wish to explain what a purpose is according to its transcendental determinations (without presupposing anything empirical like the feeling of pleasure) [we say that] the purpose is the object of a concept, in so far as the concept is regarded as the cause of the object (the real ground of its possibility); and the causality of a concept in respect of its Object is its purposiveness (forma finalis). Where then not merely the cognition of an object, but the object itself (its form and existence) is thought as an effect only possible by means of the concept of this latter, there we think a purpose. The representation of the effect is here the determining ground of its cause and precedes it. The consciousness of the causality of a representation, for maintaining the subject in the same state, may here generally denote what we call pleasure; while on the other hand pain is that representation which contains the ground of the determination of the state of representations into their opposite [of restraining or removing them21].

The faculty of desire, so far as it is determinable only through concepts, i.e. to act in conformity with the representation of a purpose, would be the Will. But an Object, or a state of mind, or even an action, is called purposive, although its possibility does not necessarily presuppose the representation of a purpose, merely because its possibility can be explained and conceived by us only so far as we assume for its ground a causality according to purposes, i.e. a will which would have so disposed it according to the representation of a certain rule. There can be, then, purposiveness without22 purpose, so far as we do not place the causes of this form in a will, but yet can only make the explanation of its possibility intelligible to ourselves by deriving it from a will. Again, we are not always forced to regard what we observe (in respect of its possibility) from the point of view of Reason. Thus we can at least observe a purposiveness according to form, without basing it on a purpose (as the material of the nexus finalis), and we can notice it in objects, although only by reflection.

§ 11. The judgement of taste has nothing at its basis but the form of the purposiveness of an object (or of its mode of representation)

Every purpose, if it be regarded as a ground of satisfaction, always carries with it an interest—as the determining ground of the judgement—about the object of pleasure. Therefore no subjective purpose can lie at the basis of the judgement of taste. But neither can the judgement of taste be determined by any representation of an objective purpose, i.e. of the possibility of the object itself in accordance with principles of purposive combination, and consequently it can be determined by no concept of the good; because it is an aesthetical and not a cognitive judgement. It therefore has to do with no concept of the character and internal or external possibility of the object by means of this or that cause, but merely with the relation of the representative powers to one another, so far as they are determined by a representation.

Now this relation in the determination of an object as beautiful is bound up with the feeling of pleasure, which is declared by the judgement of taste to be valid for every one; hence a pleasantness, accompanying the representation, can as little contain the determining ground [of the judgement] as the representation of the perfection of the object and the concept of the good can. Therefore it can be nothing else than the subjective purposiveness in the representation of an object without any purpose (either objective or subjective); and thus it is the mere form of purposiveness in the representation by which an object is given to us, so far as we are conscious of it, which constitutes the satisfaction that we without a concept judge to be universally communicable; and, consequently, this is the determining ground of the judgement of taste.

§ 12. The judgement of taste rests on a priori grounds

To establish a priori the connexion of the feeling of a pleasure or pain as an effect, with any representation whatever (sensation or concept) as its cause, is absolutely impossible; for that would be a [particular]23 causal relation which (with objects of experience) can always only be cognised a posteriori, and through the medium of experience itself. We actually have, indeed, in the Critique of practical Reason, derived from universal moral concepts a priori the feeling of respect (as a special and peculiar modification of feeling which will not strictly correspond either to the pleasure or the pain that we get from empirical objects). But there we could go beyond the bounds of experience and call in a causality which rested on a supersensible attribute of the subject, viz. freedom. And even there, properly speaking, it was not this feeling which we derived from the Idea of the moral as cause, but merely the determination of the will. But the state of mind which accompanies any determination of the will is in itself a feeling of pleasure and identical with it, and therefore does not follow from it as its effect. This last must only be assumed if the concept of the moral as a good precede the determination of the will by the law; for in that case the pleasure that is bound up with the concept could not be derived from it as from a mere cognition.

Now the case is similar with the pleasure in aesthetical judgements, only that here it is merely contemplative and does not bring about an interest in the Object, which on the other hand in the moral judgement it is practical.24 The consciousness of the mere formal purposiveness in the play of the subject’s cognitive powers, in a representation through which an object is given, is the pleasure itself; because it contains a determining ground of the activity of the subject in respect of the excitement of its cognitive powers, and therefore an inner causality (which is purposive) in respect of cognition in general without however being limited to any definite cognition; and consequently contains a mere form of the subjective purposiveness of a representation in an aesthetical judgement. This pleasure is in no way practical, neither like that arising from the pathological ground of pleasantness, nor that from the intellectual ground of the represented good. But yet it involves causality, viz. of maintaining the state of the representation itself, and the exercise of the cognitive powers without further design. We linger over the contemplation of the beautiful, because this contemplation strengthens and reproduces itself, which is analogous to (though not of the same kind as) that lingering which takes place when a [physical] charm in the representation of the object repeatedly arouses the attention, the mind being passive.

§ 13. The pure judgement of taste is independent of charm and emotion

Every interest spoils the judgement of taste and takes from its impartiality, especially if the purposiveness is not, as with the interest of Reason, placed before the feeling of pleasure but grounded on it. This last always happens in an aesthetical judgement upon anything so far as it gratifies or grieves us. Hence judgements so affected can lay no claim at all to a universally valid satisfaction, or at least so much the less claim, in proportion as there are sensations of this sort among the determining grounds of taste. That taste is still barbaric which needs a mixture of charms and emotions in order that there may be satisfaction, and still more so if it make these the measure of its assent.

Nevertheless charms are often not only taken account of in the case of beauty (which properly speaking ought merely to be concerned with form) as contributory to the aesthetical universal satisfaction; but they are passed off as in themselves beauties, and thus the matter of satisfaction is substituted for the form. This misconception, however, like so many others which have something true at their basis, may be removed by a careful definition of these concepts.

A judgement of taste on which charm and emotion have no influence (although they may be bound up with the satisfaction in the beautiful),—which therefore has as its determining ground merely the purposiveness of the form,—is a pure judgement of taste.

§ 14. Elucidation by means of examples

Aesthetical judgements can be divided just like theoretical (logical) judgements into empirical and pure. The first assert pleasantness or unpleasantness; the second assert the beauty of an object or of the manner of representing it. The former are judgements of Sense (material aesthetical judgements); the latter [as formal25] are alone strictly judgements of Taste.

A judgement of taste is therefore pure, only so far as no merely empirical satisfaction is mingled with its determining ground. But this always happens if charm or emotion have any share in the judgement by which anything is to be described as beautiful.

Now here many objections present themselves, which fallaciously put forward charm not merely as a necessary ingredient of beauty, but as alone sufficient [to justify] a thing’s being called beautiful. A mere colour, e.g. the green of a grass plot, a mere tone (as distinguished from sound and noise) like that of a violin, are by most people described as beautiful in themselves; although both seem to have at their basis merely the matter of representations, viz. simply sensation, and therefore only deserve to be called pleasant. But we must at the same time remark that the sensations of colours and of tone have a right to be regarded as beautiful only in so far as they are pure. This is a determination which concerns their form, and is the only [element] of these representations which admits with certainty of universal communicability; for we cannot assume that the quality of sensations is the same in all subjects, and we can hardly say that the pleasantness of one colour or the tone of one musical instrument is judged preferable to that of another in the same26 way by every one.

If we assume with Euler that colours are isochronous vibrations (pulsus) of the aether, as sounds are of the air in a state of disturbance, and,—what is most important,—that the mind not only perceives by sense the effect of these in exciting the organ, but also perceives by reflection the regular play of impressions (and thus the form of the combination of different representations) which I still do not doubt27—then colours and tone cannot be reckoned as mere sensations, but as the formal determination of the unity of a manifold of sensations, and thus as beauties in themselves.

But “pure” in a simple mode of sensation means that its uniformity is troubled and interrupted by no foreign sensation, and it belongs merely to the form; because here we can abstract from the quality of that mode of sensation (abstract from the colours and tone, if any, which it represents). Hence all simple colours, so far as they are pure, are regarded as beautiful; composite colours have not this advantage, because, as they are not simple, we have no standard for judging whether they should be called pure or not.

But as regards the beauty attributed to the object on account of its form, to suppose it to be capable of augmentation through the charm of the object is a common error, and one very prejudicial to genuine, uncorrupted, well-founded taste. We can doubtless add these charms to beauty, in order to interest the mind by the representation of the object, apart from the bare satisfaction [received]; and thus they may serve as a recommendation of taste and its cultivation, especially when it is yet crude and unexercised. But they actually do injury to the judgement of taste if they draw attention to themselves as the grounds for judging of beauty. So far are they from adding to beauty that they must only be admitted by indulgence as aliens; and provided always that they do not disturb the beautiful form, in cases when taste is yet weak and untrained.

In painting, sculpture, and in all the formative arts—in architecture, and horticulture, so far as they are beautiful arts—the delineation is the essential thing; and here it is not what gratifies in sensation but what pleases by means of its form that is fundamental for taste. The colours which light up the sketch belong to the charm; they may indeed enliven28 the object for sensation, but they cannot make it worthy of contemplation and beautiful. In most cases they are rather limited by the requirements of the beautiful form; and even where charm is permissible it is ennobled solely by this.

Every form of the objects of sense (both of external sense and also mediately of internal) is either figure or play. In the latter case it is either play of figures (in space, viz. pantomime and dancing), or the mere play of sensations (in time). The charm of colours or of the pleasant tones of an instrument may be added; but the delineation in the first case and the composition in the second constitute the proper object of the pure judgement of taste. To say that the purity of colours and of tones, or their variety and contrast, seems to add to beauty, does not mean that they supply a homogeneous addition to our satisfaction in the form because they are pleasant in themselves; but they do so, because they make the form more exactly, definitely, and completely, intuitible, and besides by their charm [excite the representation, whilst they29] awaken and fix our attention on the object itself.

Even what we call ornaments [parerga29], i.e. those things which do not belong to the complete representation of the object internally as elements but only externally as complements, and which augment the satisfaction of taste, do so only by their form; as for example [the frames of pictures,29 or] the draperies of statues or the colonnades of palaces. But if the ornament does not itself consist in beautiful form, and if it is used as a golden frame is used, merely to recommend the painting by its charm, it is then called finery and injures genuine beauty.

Emotion, i.e. a sensation in which pleasantness is produced by means of a momentary checking and a consequent more powerful outflow of the vital force, does not belong at all to beauty. But sublimity [with which the feeling of emotion is bound up29] requires a different standard of judgement from that which is at the foundation of taste; and thus a pure judgement of taste has for its determining ground neither charm nor emotion, in a word, no sensation as the material of the aesthetical judgement.

§ 15. The judgement of taste is quite independent of the concept of perfection

Objective purposiveness can only be cognised by means of the reference of the manifold to a definite purpose, and therefore only through a concept. From this alone it is plain that the Beautiful, the judging of which has at its basis a merely formal purposiveness, i.e. a purposiveness without purpose, is quite independent of the concept of the Good; because the latter presupposes an objective purposiveness, i.e. the reference of the object to a definite purpose.

Objective purposiveness is either external, i.e. the utility, or internal, i.e. the perfection of the object. That the satisfaction in an object, on account of which we call it beautiful, cannot rest on the representation of its utility, is sufficiently obvious from the two preceding sections; because in that case it would not be an immediate satisfaction in the object, which is the essential condition of a judgement about beauty. But objective internal purposiveness, i.e. perfection, comes nearer to the predicate of beauty; and it has been regarded by celebrated philosophers30 as the same as beauty, with the proviso, if it is thought in a confused way. It is of the greatest importance in a Critique of Taste to decide whether beauty can thus actually be resolved into the concept of perfection.

To judge of objective purposiveness we always need not only the concept of a purpose, but (if that purposiveness is not to be external utility but internal) the concept of an internal purpose which shall contain the ground of the internal possibility of the object. Now as a purpose in general is that whose concept can be regarded as the ground of the possibility of the object itself; so, in order to represent objective purposiveness in a thing, the concept of what sort of thing it is to be must come first. The agreement of the manifold in it with this concept (which furnishes the rule for combining the manifold) is the qualitative perfection of the thing. Quite different from this is quantitative perfection, the completeness of a thing after its kind, which is a mere concept of magnitude (of totality).31 In this what the thing ought to be is conceived as already determined, and it is only asked if it has all its requisites. The formal [element] in the representation of a thing, i.e. the agreement of the manifold with a unity (it being undetermined what this ought to be), gives to cognition no objective purposiveness whatever. For since abstraction is made of this unity as purpose (what the thing ought to be), nothing remains but the subjective purposiveness of the representations in the mind of the intuiting subject. And this, although it furnishes a certain purposiveness of the representative state of the subject, and so a facility of apprehending a given form by the Imagination, yet furnishes no perfection of an Object, since the Object is not here conceived by means of the concept of a purpose. For example, if in a forest I come across a plot of sward, round which trees stand in a circle, and do not then represent to myself a purpose, viz. that it is intended to serve for country dances, not the least concept of perfection is furnished by the mere form. But to represent to oneself a formal objective purposiveness without purpose, i.e. the mere form of a perfection (without any matter and without the concept of that with which it is accordant, even if it were merely the Idea of conformity to law in general32) is a veritable contradiction.

Now the judgement of taste is an aesthetical judgement, i.e. such as rests on subjective grounds, the determining ground of which cannot be a concept, and consequently cannot be the concept of a definite purpose. Therefore in beauty, regarded as a formal subjective purposiveness, there is in no way thought a perfection of the object, as a would-be formal purposiveness, which yet is objective. And thus to distinguish between the concepts of the Beautiful and the Good, as if they were only different in logical form, the first being a confused, the second a clear concept of perfection, but identical in content and origin, is quite fallacious. For then there would be no specific difference between them, but a judgement of taste would be as much a cognitive judgement as the judgement by which a thing is described as good; just as when the ordinary man says that fraud is unjust he bases his judgement on confused grounds, whilst the philosopher bases it on clear grounds, but both on identical principles of Reason. I have already, however, said that an aesthetical judgement is unique of its kind, and gives absolutely no cognition (not even a confused cognition) of the Object; this is only supplied by a logical judgement. On the contrary, it simply refers the representation, by which an Object is given, to the subject; and brings to our notice no characteristic of the object, but only the purposive form in the determination of the representative powers which are occupying themselves therewith. The judgement is called aesthetical just because its determining ground is not a concept, but the feeling (of internal sense) of that harmony in the play of the mental powers, so far as it can be felt in sensation. On the other hand, if we wish to call confused concepts and the objective judgement based on them, aesthetical, we shall have an Understanding judging sensibly or a Sense representing its Objects by means of concepts [both of which are contradictory.33] The faculty of concepts, be they confused or clear, is the Understanding; and although Understanding has to do with the judgement of taste, as an aesthetical judgement (as it has with all judgements), yet it has to do with it not as a faculty by which an object is cognised, but as the faculty which determines the judgement and its representation (without any concept) in accordance with its relation to the subject and the subject’s internal feeling, in so far as this judgement may be possible in accordance with a universal rule.

§ 16. The judgement of taste, by which an object is declared to be beautiful under the condition of a definite concept, is not pure

There are two kinds of beauty; free beauty (pulchritudo vaga) or merely dependent beauty (pulchritudo adhaerens). The first presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith. The first is called the (self-subsistent) beauty of this or that thing; the second, as dependent upon a concept (conditioned beauty), is ascribed to Objects which come under the concept of a particular purpose.

Flowers are free natural beauties. Hardly any one but a botanist knows what sort of a thing a flower ought to be; and even he, though recognising in the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no regard to this natural purpose if he is passing judgement on the flower by Taste. There is then at the basis of this judgement no perfection of any kind, no internal purposiveness, to which the collection of the manifold is referred. Many birds (such as the parrot, the humming bird, the bird of paradise), and many sea shells are beauties in themselves, which do not belong to any object determined in respect of its purpose by concepts, but please freely and in themselves. So also delineations à la grecque, foliage for borders or wall-papers, mean nothing in themselves; they represent nothing—no Object under a definite concept,—and are free beauties. We can refer to the same class what are called in music phantasies (i.e. pieces without any theme), and in fact all music without words.

In the judging of a free beauty (according to the mere form) the judgement of taste is pure. There is presupposed no concept of any purpose, for which the manifold should serve the given Object, and which therefore is to be represented therein. By such a concept the freedom of the Imagination which disports itself in the contemplation of the figure would be only limited.

But human beauty (i.e. of a man, a woman, or a child), the beauty of a horse, or a building (be it church, palace, arsenal, or summer-house) presupposes a concept of the purpose which determines what the thing is to be, and consequently a concept of its perfection; it is therefore adherent beauty. Now as the combination of the Pleasant (in sensation) with Beauty, which properly is only concerned with form, is a hindrance to the purity of the judgement of taste; so also is its purity injured by the combination with Beauty of the Good (viz. that manifold which is good for the thing itself in accordance with its purpose).

We could add much to a building which would immediately please the eye, if only it were not to be a church. We could adorn a figure with all kinds of spirals and light but regular lines, as the New Zealanders do with their tattooing, if only it were not the figure of a human being. And again this could have much finer features and a more pleasing and gentle cast of countenance provided it were not intended to represent a man, much less a warrior.

Now the satisfaction in the manifold of a thing in reference to the internal purpose which determines its possibility is a satisfaction grounded on a concept; but the satisfaction in beauty is such as presupposes no concept, but is immediately bound up with the representation through which the object is given (not through which it is thought). If now the judgement of Taste in respect of the beauty of a thing is made dependent on the purpose in its manifold, like a judgement of Reason, and thus limited, it is no longer a free and pure judgement of Taste.

It is true that taste gains by this combination of aesthetical with intellectual satisfaction, inasmuch as it becomes fixed; and though it is not universal, yet in respect to certain purposively determined Objects it becomes possible to prescribe rules for it. These, however, are not rules of taste, but merely rules for the unification of Taste with Reason, i.e. of the Beautiful with the Good, by which the former becomes available as an instrument of design in respect of the latter. Thus the tone of mind which is self-maintaining and of subjective universal validity is subordinated to the way of thinking which can be maintained only by painful resolve, but is of objective universal validity. Properly speaking, however, perfection gains nothing by beauty or beauty by perfection; but, when we compare the representation by which an object is given to us with the Object (as regards what it ought to be) by means of a concept, we cannot avoid considering along with it the sensation in the subject. And thus when both states of mind are in harmony our whole faculty of representative power gains.

A judgement of taste, then, in respect of an object with a definite internal purpose, can only be pure, if either the person judging has no concept of this purpose, or else abstracts from it in his judgement. Such a person, although forming an accurate judgement of taste in judging of the object as free beauty, would yet by another who considers the beauty in it only as a dependent attribute (who looks to the purpose of the object) be blamed, and accused of false taste; although both are right in their own way, the one in reference to what he has before his eyes, the other in reference to what he has in his thought. By means of this distinction we can settle many disputes about beauty between judges of taste; by showing that the one is speaking of free, the other of dependent, beauty,—that the first is making a pure, the second an applied, judgement of taste.

§ 17. Of the Ideal of beauty

There can be no objective rule of taste which shall determine by means of concepts what is beautiful. For every judgement from this source is aesthetical; i.e. the feeling of the subject, and not a concept of the Object, is its determining ground. To seek for a principle of taste which shall furnish, by means of definite concepts, a universal criterion of the beautiful, is fruitless trouble; because what is sought is impossible and self-contradictory. The universal communicability of sensation (satisfaction or dissatisfaction) without the aid of a concept—the agreement, as far as is possible, of all times and peoples as regards this feeling in the representation of certain objects—this is the empirical criterion, although weak and hardly sufficing for probability, of the derivation of a taste, thus confirmed by examples, from the deep-lying grounds of agreement common to all men, in judging of the forms under which objects are given to them.

Hence, we consider some products of taste as exemplary. Not that taste can be acquired by imitating others; for it must be an original faculty. He who imitates a model shows, no doubt, in so far as he attains to it, skill; but only shows taste in so far as he can judge of this model itself.34 It follows from hence that the highest model, the archetype of taste, is a mere Idea, which every one must produce in himself; and according to which he must judge every Object of taste, every example of judgement by taste, and even the taste of every one. Idea properly means a rational concept, and Ideal the representation of an individual being, regarded as adequate to an Idea.35 Hence that archetype of taste, which certainly rests on the indeterminate Idea that Reason has of a maximum, but which cannot be represented by concepts, but only in an individual presentation, is better called the Ideal of the beautiful. Although we are not in possession of this, we yet strive to produce it in ourselves. But it can only be an Ideal of the Imagination, because it rests on a presentation and not on concepts, and the Imagination is the faculty of presentation.—How do we arrive at such an Ideal of beauty? A priori, or empirically? Moreover, what species of the beautiful is susceptible of an Ideal?

First, it is well to remark that the beauty for which an Ideal is to be sought cannot be vague beauty, but is fixed by a concept of objective purposiveness; and thus it cannot appertain to the Object of a quite pure judgement of taste, but to that of a judgement of taste which is in part intellectual. That is, in whatever grounds of judgement an Ideal is to be found, an Idea of Reason in accordance with definite concepts must lie at its basis; which determines a priori the purpose on which the internal possibility of the object rests. An Ideal of beautiful flowers, of a beautiful piece of furniture, of a beautiful view, is inconceivable. But neither can an Ideal be represented of a beauty dependent on definite purposes, e.g. of a beautiful dwelling-house, a beautiful tree, a beautiful garden, etc.; presumably because their purpose is not sufficiently determined and fixed by the concept, and thus the purposiveness is nearly as free as in the case of vague beauty. The only being which has the purpose of its existence in itself is man, who can determine his purposes by Reason; or, where he must receive them from external perception, yet can compare them with essential and universal purposes, and can judge this their accordance aesthetically. This man is, then, alone of all objects in the world, susceptible of an Ideal of beauty; as it is only humanity in his person, as an intelligence, that is susceptible of the Ideal of perfection.

But there are here two elements. First, there is the aesthetical normal Idea, which is an individual intuition (of the Imagination), representing the standard of our judgement [upon man] as a thing belonging to a particular animal species. Secondly, there is the rational Idea which makes the purposes of humanity, so far as they cannot be sensibly represented, the principle for judging of a figure through which, as their phenomenal effect, those purposes are revealed. The normal Idea of the figure of an animal of a particular race must take its elements from experience. But the greatest purposiveness in the construction of the figure, that would be available for the universal standard of aesthetical judgement upon each individual of this species—the image which is as it were designedly at the basis of nature’s Technic, to which only the whole race and not any isolated individual is adequate—this lies merely in the Idea of the judging [subject]. And this, with its proportions, as an aesthetical Idea, can be completely presented in concreto in a model. In order to make intelligible in some measure (for who can extract her whole secret from nature?) how this comes to pass, we shall attempt a psychological explanation.

We must remark that, in a way quite incomprehensible by us, the Imagination can not only recall, on occasion, the signs for concepts long past, but can also reproduce the image of the figure of the object out of an unspeakable number of objects of different kinds or even of the same kind. Further, if the mind is concerned with comparisons, the Imagination can, in all probability, actually though unconsciously let one image glide into another, and thus by the concurrence of several of the same kind come by an average, which serves as the common measure of all. Every one has seen a thousand full-grown men. Now if you wish to judge of their normal size, estimating it by means of comparison, the Imagination (as I think) allows a great number of images (perhaps the whole thousand) to fall on one another. If I am allowed to apply here the analogy of optical presentation, it is in the space where most of them are combined and inside the contour, where the place is illuminated with the most vivid colours, that the average size is cognisable; which, both in height and breadth, is equally far removed from the extreme bounds of the greatest and smallest stature. And this is the stature of a beautiful man. (We could arrive at the same thing mechanically, by adding together all thousand magnitudes, heights, breadths, and thicknesses, and dividing the sum by a thousand. But the Imagination does this by means of a dynamical effect, which arises from the various impressions of such figures on the organ of internal sense.) If now in a similar way for this average man we seek the average head, for this head the average nose, etc., such figure is at the basis of the normal Idea in the country where the comparison is instituted. Thus necessarily under these empirical conditions a negro must have a different normal Idea of the beauty of the [human figure] from a white man, a Chinaman a different normal Idea from a European, etc. And the same is the case with the model of a beautiful horse or dog (of a certain breed).—This normal Idea is not derived from proportions got from experience [and regarded] as definite rules; but in accordance with it rules for judging become in the first instance possible. It is the image for the whole race, which floats among all the variously different intuitions of individuals, which nature takes as archetype in her productions of the same species, but which seems not to be fully reached in any individual case. It is by no means the whole archetype of beauty in the race, but only the form constituting the indispensable condition of all beauty, and thus merely correctness in the [mental] presentation of the race. It is, like the celebrated Doryphorus of Polycletus,36 the rule (Myron’s37 Cow might also be used thus for its kind). It can therefore contain nothing specifically characteristic, for otherwise it would not be the normal Idea for the race. Its presentation pleases, not by its beauty, but merely because it contradicts no condition, under which alone a thing of this kind can be beautiful. The presentation is merely correct.38

We must yet distinguish the normal Idea of the beautiful from the Ideal, which latter, on grounds already alleged, we can only expect in the human figure. In this the Ideal consists in the expression of the moral, without which the object would not please universally and thus positively (not merely negatively in a correct presentation). The visible expression of moral Ideas that rule men inwardly, can indeed only be got from experience; but to make its connexion with all which our Reason unites with the morally good in the Idea of the highest purposiveness,—goodness of heart, purity, strength, peace, etc.,—visible as it were in bodily manifestation (as the effect of that which is internal), requires a union of pure Ideas of Reason with great imaginative power, even in him who wishes to judge of it, still more in him who wishes to present it. The correctness of such an Ideal of beauty is shown by its permitting no sensible charm to mingle with the satisfaction in the Object and yet allowing us to take a great interest therein. This shows that a judgement in accordance with such a standard can never be purely aesthetical, and that a judgement in accordance with an Ideal of beauty is not a mere judgement of taste.

EXPLANATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL DERIVED FROM THIS THIRD MOMENT

Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, so far as this is perceived in it without any representation of a purpose.39

FOURTH MOMENT

OF THE JUDGEMENT OF TASTE, ACCORDING TO THE MODALITY OF THE SATISFACTION IN THE OBJECT

§ 18. What the modality in a judgement of taste is

I can say of every representation that it is at least possible that (as a cognition) it should be bound up with a pleasure. Of a representation that I call pleasant I say that it actually excites pleasure in me. But the beautiful we think as having a necessary reference to satisfaction. Now this necessity is of a peculiar kind. It is not a theoretical objective necessity; in which case it would be cognised a priori that every one will feel this satisfaction in the object called beautiful by me. It is not a practical necessity; in which case, by concepts of a pure rational will serving as a rule for freely acting beings, the satisfaction is the necessary result of an objective law and only indicates that we absolutely (without any further design) ought to act in a certain way. But the necessity which is thought in an aesthetical judgement can only be called exemplary; i.e. a necessity of the assent of all to a judgement which is regarded as the example of a universal rule that we cannot state. Since an aesthetical judgement is not an objective cognitive judgement, this necessity cannot be derived from definite concepts, and is therefore not apodictic. Still less can it be inferred from the universality of experience (of a complete agreement of judgements as to the beauty of a certain object). For not only would experience hardly furnish sufficiently numerous vouchers for this; but also, on empirical judgements we can base no concept of the necessity of these judgements.

§ 19. The subjective necessity, which we ascribe to the judgement of taste, is conditioned

The judgement of taste requires the agreement of every one; and he who describes anything as beautiful claims that every one ought to give his approval to the object in question and also describe it as beautiful. The ought in the aesthetical judgement is therefore pronounced in accordance with all the data which are required for judging and yet is only conditioned. We ask for the agreement of every one else, because we have for it a ground that is common to all; and we could count on this agreement, provided we were always sure that the case was correctly subsumed under that ground as rule of assent.

§ 20. The condition of necessity which a judgement of taste asserts is the Idea of a common sense

If judgements of taste (like cognitive judgements) had a definite objective principle, then the person who lays them down in accordance with this latter would claim an unconditioned necessity for his judgement. If they were devoid of all principle, like those of the mere taste of sense, we would not allow them in thought any necessity whatever. Hence they must have a subjective principle which determines what pleases or displeases only by feeling and not by concepts, but yet with universal validity. But such a principle could only be regarded as a common sense, which is essentially different from common Understanding which people sometimes call common Sense (sensus communis); for the latter does not judge by feeling but always by concepts, although ordinarily only as by obscurely represented principles.

Hence it is only under the presupposition that there is a common sense (by which we do not understand an external sense, but the effect resulting from the free play of our cognitive powers)—it is only under this presupposition, I say, that the judgement of taste can be laid down.

§ 21. Have we ground for presupposing a common sense?

Cognitions and judgements must, along with the conviction that accompanies them, admit of universal communicability; for otherwise there would be no harmony between them and the Object, and they would be collectively a mere subjective play of the representative powers, exactly as scepticism would have it. But if cognitions are to admit of communicability, so must also the state of mind,—i.e. the accordance of the cognitive powers with a cognition generally, and that proportion of them which is suitable for a representation (by which an object is given to us) in order that a cognition may be made out of it—admit of universal communicability. For without this as the subjective condition of cognition, knowledge as an effect could not arise. This actually always takes place when a given object by means of Sense excites the Imagination to collect the manifold, and the Imagination in its turn excites the Understanding to bring about a unity of this collective process in concepts. But this accordance of the cognitive powers has a different proportion according to the variety of the Objects which are given. However, it must be such that this internal relation, by which one mental faculty is excited by another, shall be generally the most beneficial for both faculties in respect of cognition (of given objects); and this accordance can only be determined by feeling (not according to concepts). Since now this accordance itself must admit of universal communicability, and consequently also our feeling of it (in a given representation), and since the universal communicability of a feeling presupposes a common sense, we have grounds for assuming this latter. And this common sense is assumed without relying on psychological observations, but simply as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every Logic and in every principle of knowledge that is not sceptical.

§ 22. The necessity of the universal agreement that is thought in a judgement of taste is a subjective necessity, which is represented as objective under the presupposition of a common sense

In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion; without however grounding our judgement on concepts but only on our feeling, which we therefore place at its basis not as a private, but as a communal feeling.40 Now this common sense cannot be grounded on experience; for it aims at justifying judgements which contain an ought. It does not say that every one will agree with my judgement, but that he ought. And so common sense, as an example of whose judgement I here put forward my judgement of taste and on account of which I attribute to the latter an exemplary validity, is a mere ideal norm, under the supposition of which I have a right to make into a rule for every one a judgement that accords therewith, as well as the satisfaction in an Object expressed in such judgement. For the principle, which concerns the agreement of different judging persons, although only subjective, is yet assumed as subjectively universal (an Idea necessary for every one); and thus can claim universal assent (as if it were objective) provided we are sure that we have correctly subsumed [the particulars] under it.

This indeterminate norm of a common sense is actually presupposed by us; as is shown by our claim to lay down judgements of taste. Whether there is in fact such a common sense, as a constitutive principle of the possibility of experience, or whether a yet higher principle of Reason makes it only into a regulative principle for producing in us a common sense for higher purposes: whether therefore Taste is an original and natural faculty, or only the Idea of an artificial one yet to be acquired, so that a judgement of taste with its assumption of a universal assent in fact, is only a requirement of Reason for producing such harmony of sentiment; whether the “ought,” i.e. the objective necessity of the confluence of the feeling of any one man with that of every other, only signifies the possibility of arriving at this accord, and the judgement of taste only affords an example of the application of this principle: these questions we have neither the wish nor the power to investigate as yet; we have now only to resolve the faculty of taste into its elements in order to unite them at last in the Idea of a common sense.

EXPLANATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL RESULTING FROM THE FOURTH MOMENT

The beautiful is that which without any concept is cognised as the object of a necessary satisfaction.

GENERAL REMARK ON THE FIRST SECTION OF THE ANALYTIC

If we seek the result of the preceding analysis we find that everything runs up into this concept of Taste, that it is a faculty for judging an object in reference to the Imagination’s free conformity to law. Now if in the judgement of taste the Imagination must be considered in its freedom, it is in the first place not regarded as reproductive, as it is subject to the laws of association, but as productive and spontaneous (as the author of arbitrary forms of possible intuition). And although in the apprehension of a given object of sense it is tied to a definite form of this Object, and so far has no free play (such as that of poetry) yet it may readily be conceived that the object can furnish it with such a form containing a collection of the manifold, as the Imagination itself, if it were left free, would project in accordance with the conformity to law of the Understanding in general. But that the imaginative power should be free and yet of itself conformed to law, i.e. bringing autonomy with it, is a contradiction. The Understanding alone gives the law. If, however, the Imagination is compelled to proceed according to a definite law, its product in respect of form is determined by concepts as to what it ought to be. But then, as is above shown, the satisfaction is not that in the Beautiful, but in the Good (in perfection, at any rate in mere formal perfection); and the judgement is not a judgement of taste. Hence it is a conformity to law without a law; and a subjective agreement of the Imagination and Understanding,—without such an objective agreement as there is when the representation is referred to a definite concept of an object,—can subsist along with the free conformity to law of the Understanding (which is also called purposiveness without purpose) and with the peculiar feature of a judgement of taste.

Now geometrically regular figures, such as a circle, a square, a cube, etc., are commonly adduced by critics of taste as the simplest and most indisputable examples of beauty; and yet they are called regular, because we can only represent them by regarding them as mere presentations of a definite concept which prescribes the rule for the figure (according to which alone it is possible). One of these two must be wrong, either that judgement of the critic which ascribes beauty to the said figures, or ours, which regards purposiveness apart from a concept as requisite for beauty.

Hardly any one will say that a man must have taste in order that he should find more satisfaction in a circle than in a scrawled outline, in an equilateral and equiangular quadrilateral than in one which is oblique, irregular, and as it were deformed, for this belongs to the ordinary Understanding and is not Taste at all. Where, e.g. our design is to judge of the size of an area, or to make intelligible the relation of the parts of it, when divided, to one another and to the whole, then regular figures and those of the simplest kind are needed, and the satisfaction does not rest immediately on the aspect of the figure, but on its availability for all kinds of possible designs. A room whose walls form oblique angles, or a parterre of this kind, even every violation of symmetry in the figure of animals (e.g. being one-eyed), of buildings, or of flower beds, displeases, because it contradicts the purpose of the thing, not only practically in respect of a definite use of it, but also when we pass judgement on it as regards any possible design. This is not the case in the judgement of taste, which when pure combines satisfaction or dissatisfaction,—without any reference to its use or to a purpose,—with the mere consideration of the object.

The regularity which leads to the concept of an object is indeed the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non) for grasping the object in a single representation and determining the manifold in its form. This determination is a purpose in respect of cognition, and in reference to this it is always bound up with satisfaction (which accompanies the execution of every, even problematical, design). There is here, however, merely the approval of the solution satisfying a problem, and not a free and indefinite purposive entertainment of the mental powers with what we call beautiful, where the Understanding is at the service of Imagination and not vice versa.

In a thing that is only possible by means of design,—a building, or even an animal,—the regularity consisting in symmetry must express the unity of the intuition that accompanies the concept of purpose, and this regularity belongs to cognition. But where only a free play of the representative powers (under the condition, however, that the Understanding is to suffer no shock thereby) is to be kept up, in pleasure gardens, room decorations, all kinds of tasteful furniture, etc., regularity that shows constraint is avoided as much as possible. Thus in the English taste in gardens, or in bizarre taste in furniture, the freedom of the Imagination is pushed almost near to the grotesque, and in this separation from every constraint of rule we have the case, where taste can display its greatest perfection in the enterprises of the Imagination.

All stiff regularity (such as approximates to mathematical regularity) has something in it repugnant to taste; for our entertainment in the contemplation of it lasts for no length of time, but it rather, in so far as it has not expressly in view cognition or a definite practical purpose, produces weariness. On the other hand that with which Imagination can play in an unstudied and purposive manner is always new to us, and one does not get tired of looking at it. Marsden in his description of Sumatra makes the remark that the free beauties of nature surround the spectator everywhere and thus lose their attraction for him.41 On the other hand a pepper-garden, where the stakes on which this plant twines itself form parallel rows, had much attractiveness for him, if he met with it in the middle of a forest. And hence he infers that wild beauty, apparently irregular, only pleases as a variation from the regular beauty of which one has seen enough. But he need only have made the experiment of spending one day in a pepper-garden, to have been convinced that, once the Understanding, by the aid of this regularity, has put itself in accord with the order that it always needs, the object will not entertain for long,—nay rather it will impose a burdensome constraint upon the Imagination. On the other hand, nature, which there is prodigal in its variety even to luxuriance, that is subjected to no constraint of artificial rules, can supply constant food for taste.—Even the song of birds, which we can bring under no musical rule, seems to have more freedom, and therefore more for taste, than a song of a human being which is produced in accordance with all the rules of music; for we very much sooner weary of the latter, if it is repeated often and at length. Here, however, we probably confuse our participation in the mirth of a little creature that we love, with the beauty of its song; for if this were exactly imitated by man (as sometimes the notes of the nightingale are)42 it would seem to our ear quite devoid of taste.

Again, beautiful objects are to be distinguished from beautiful views of objects (which often on account of their distance cannot be clearly recognised). In the latter case taste appears not so much in what the Imagination apprehends in this field, as in the impulse it thus gets to fiction, i.e. in the peculiar fancies with which the mind entertains itself, whilst it is continually being aroused by the variety which strikes the eye. An illustration is afforded, e.g. by the sight of the changing shapes of a fire on the hearth or of a rippling brook; neither of these has beauty, but they bring with them a charm for the Imagination, because they entertain it in free play.

SECOND BOOK

ANALYTIC OF THE SUBLIME

§ 23. Transition from the faculty which judges of the Beautiful to that which judges of the Sublime

The Beautiful and the Sublime agree in this, that both please in themselves. Further, neither presupposes a judgement of sense nor a judgement logically determined, but a judgement of reflection. Consequently the satisfaction [belonging to them] does not depend on a sensation, as in the case of the Pleasant, nor on a definite concept, as in the case of the Good; but it is nevertheless referred to concepts although indeterminate ones. And so the satisfaction is connected with the mere presentation [of the object] or with the faculty of presentation; so that in the case of a given intuition this faculty or the Imagination is considered as in agreement with the faculty of concepts of Understanding or Reason (in its furtherance of these latter). Hence both kinds of judgements are singular, and yet announce themselves as universally valid for every subject; although they lay claim merely to the feeling of pleasure and not to any knowledge of the object.

But there are also remarkable differences between the two. The Beautiful in nature is connected with the form of the object, which consists in having boundaries. The Sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is represented, and yet its totality is also present to thought. Thus the Beautiful seems to be regarded as the presentation of an indefinite concept of Understanding; the Sublime as that of a like concept of Reason. Therefore the satisfaction in the one case is bound up with the representation of quality, in the other with that of quantity. And the latter satisfaction is quite different in kind from the former, for this [the Beautiful43] directly brings with it a feeling of the furtherance of life, and thus is compatible with charms and with the play of the Imagination. But the other [the feeling of the Sublime43] is a pleasure that arises only indirectly; viz. it is produced by the feeling of a momentary checking of the vital powers and a consequent stronger outflow of them, so that it seems to be regarded as emotion,—not play, but earnest in the exercise of the Imagination.—Hence it is incompatible with charms; and as the mind is not merely attracted by the object but is ever being alternately repelled, the satisfaction in the sublime does not so much involve a positive pleasure as admiration or respect, which rather deserves to be called negative pleasure.

But the inner and most important distinction between the Sublime and Beautiful is, certainly, as follows. (Here, as we are entitled to do, we only bring under consideration in the first instance the sublime in natural Objects; for the sublime of Art is always limited by the conditions of agreement with Nature.) Natural beauty (which is self-subsisting) brings with it a purposiveness in its form by which the object seems to be, as it were, pre-adapted to our Judgement, and thus constitutes in itself an object of satisfaction. On the other hand, that which excites in us, without any reasoning about it, but in the mere apprehension of it, the feeling of the sublime, may appear as regards its form to violate purpose in respect of the Judgement, to be unsuited to our presentative faculty, and, as it were, to do violence to the Imagination; and yet it is judged to be only the more sublime.

Now from this we may see that in general we express ourselves incorrectly if we call any object of nature sublime, although we can quite correctly call many objects of nature beautiful. For how can that be marked by an expression of approval, which is apprehended in itself as being a violation of purpose? All that we can say is that the object is fit for the presentation of a sublimity which can be found in the mind; for no sensible form can contain the sublime properly so-called. This concerns only Ideas of the Reason, which, although no adequate presentation is possible for them, by this inadequacy that admits of sensible presentation, are aroused and summoned into the mind. Thus the wide ocean, agitated by the storm, cannot be called sublime. Its aspect is horrible; and the mind must be already filled with manifold Ideas if it is to be determined by such an intuition to a feeling itself sublime, as it is incited to abandon sensibility and to busy itself with Ideas that involve higher purposiveness.

Self-subsisting natural beauty discovers to us a Technic of nature, which represents it as a system in accordance with laws, the principle of which we do not find in the whole of our faculty of Understanding. That principle is the principle of purposiveness, in respect of the use of our Judgement in regard to phenomena; [which requires] that these must not be judged as merely belonging to nature in its purposeless mechanism, but also as belonging to something analogous to art. It, therefore, actually extends, not indeed our cognition of natural Objects, but our concept of nature; [which is now not regarded] as mere mechanism but as art. This leads to profound investigations as to the possibility of such a form. But in what we are accustomed to call sublime there is nothing at all that leads to particular objective principles and forms of nature corresponding to them; so far from it that for the most part nature excites the Ideas of the sublime in its chaos or in its wildest and most irregular disorder and desolation, provided size and might are perceived. Hence, we see that the concept of the Sublime is not nearly so important or rich in consequences as the concept of the Beautiful; and that in general it displays nothing purposive in nature itself, but only in that possible use of our intuitions of it by which there is produced in us a feeling of a purposiveness quite independent of nature. We must seek a ground external to ourselves for the Beautiful of nature; but seek it for the Sublime merely in ourselves and in our attitude of thought which introduces sublimity into the representation of nature. This is a very needful preliminary remark, which quite separates the Ideas of the sublime from that of a purposiveness of nature, and makes the theory of the sublime a mere appendix to the aesthetical judging of that purposiveness; because by means of it no particular form is represented in nature, but there is only developed a purposive use which the Imagination makes of its representation.

§ 24. Of the divisions of an investigation into the feeling of the sublime

As regards the division of the moments of the aesthetical judging of objects in reference to the feeling of the sublime, the Analytic can proceed according to the same principle as was adapted in the analysis of judgements of taste. For as an act of the aesthetical reflective Judgement, the satisfaction in the Sublime must be represented just as in the case of the Beautiful,—according to quantity as universally valid, according to quality as devoid of interest, according to relation as subjective purposiveness, and according to modality as necessary. And so the method here will not diverge from that of the preceding section; unless, indeed, we count it a difference that in the case where the aesthetical Judgement is concerned with the form of the Object we began with the investigation of its quality, but here, in view of the formlessness which may belong to what we call sublime, we shall begin with quantity, as the first moment of the aesthetical judgement as to the sublime. The reason for this may be seen from the preceding paragraph.

But the analysis of the Sublime involves a division not needed in the case of the Beautiful, viz. a division into the mathematically and the dynamically sublime.

For the feeling of the Sublime brings with it as its characteristic feature a movement of the mind bound up with the judging of the object, while in the case of the Beautiful taste presupposes and maintains the mind in restful contemplation. Now this movement ought to be judged as subjectively purposive (because the sublime pleases us), and thus it is referred through the Imagination either to the faculty of cognition or of desire. In either reference the purposiveness of the given representation ought to be judged only in respect of this faculty (without purpose or interest); but in the first case it is ascribed to the Object as a mathematical determination of the Imagination, in the second as dynamical. And hence we have this twofold way of representing the sublime.

A.—Of the Mathematically Sublime

§ 25. Explanation of the term “sublime”

We call that sublime which is absolutely great. But to be great, and to be a great something are quite different concepts (magnitudo and quantitas). In like manner to say simply (simpliciter) that anything is great is quite different from saying that it is absolutely great (absolute, non comparative magnum). The latter is what is great beyond all comparison.—What now is meant by the expression that anything is great or small or of medium size? It is not a pure concept of Understanding that is thus signified; still less is it an intuition of Sense, and just as little is it a concept of Reason, because it brings with it no principle of cognition. It must therefore be a concept of Judgement or derived from one; and a subjective purposiveness of the representation in reference to the Judgement must lie at its basis. That anything is a magnitude (quantum) may be cognised from the thing itself, without any comparison of it with other things; viz. if there is a multiplicity of the homogeneous constituting one thing. But to cognise how great it is always requires some other magnitude as a measure. But because the judging of magnitude depends not merely on multiplicity (number), but also on the magnitude of the unit (the measure), and since, to judge of the magnitude of this latter again requires another as measure with which it may be compared, we see that the determination of the magnitude of phenomena can supply no absolute concept whatever of magnitude, but only a comparative one.

If now I say simply that anything is great, it appears that I have no comparison in view, at least none with an objective measure; because it is thus not determined at all how great the object is. But although the standard of comparison is merely subjective, yet the judgement none the less claims universal assent; “this man is beautiful,” and “he is tall,” are judgements not limited merely to the judging subject, but, like theoretical judgements, demanding the assent of every one.

In a judgement by which anything is designated simply as great, it is not merely meant that the object has a magnitude, but that this magnitude is superior to that of many other objects of the same kind, without, however, any exact determination of this superiority. Thus there is always at the basis of our judgement a standard which we assume as the same for every one; this, however, is not available for any logical (mathematically definite) judging of magnitude, but only for aesthetical judging of the same, because it is a merely subjective standard lying at the basis of the reflective judgement upon magnitude. It may be empirical, as, e.g. the average size of the men known to us, of animals of a certain kind, trees, houses, mountains, etc. Or it may be a standard given a priori, which through the defects of the judging subject is limited by the subjective conditions of presentation in concreto; as, e.g. in the practical sphere, the greatness of a certain virtue, or of the public liberty and justice in a country; or, in the theoretical sphere, the greatness of the accuracy or the inaccuracy of an observation or measurement that has been made, etc.

Here it is remarkable that, although we have no interest whatever in an Object,—i.e. its existence is indifferent to us,—yet its mere size, even if it is considered as formless, may bring a satisfaction with it that is universally communicable, and that consequently involves the consciousness of a subjective purposiveness in the use of our cognitive faculty. This is not indeed a satisfaction in the Object (because it may be formless), as in the case of the Beautiful, in which the reflective Judgement finds itself purposively determined in reference to cognition in general; but [a satisfaction] in the extension of the Imagination by itself.

If (under the above limitation) we say simply of an object “it is great,” this is no mathematically definite judgement but a mere judgement of reflection upon the representation of it, which is subjectively purposive for a certain use of our cognitive powers in the estimation of magnitude; and we always then bind up with the representation a kind of respect, as also a kind of contempt for what we simply call “small.” Further, the judging of things as great or small extends to everything, even to all their characteristics; thus we describe beauty as great or small. The reason of this is to be sought in the fact that whatever we present in intuition according to the precept of the Judgement (and thus represent aesthetically) is always a phenomenon and thus a quantum.

But if we call anything not only great, but absolutely great in every point of view (great beyond all comparison), i.e. sublime, we soon see that it is not permissible to seek for an adequate standard of this outside itself, but merely in itself. It is a magnitude which is like itself alone. It follows hence that the sublime is not to be sought in the things of nature, but only in our Ideas; but in which of them it lies must be reserved for the Deduction.

The foregoing explanation can be thus expressed: the sublime is that in comparison with which everything else is small. Here we easily see that nothing can be given in nature, however great it is judged by us to be, which could not if considered in another relation be reduced to the infinitely small; and conversely there is nothing so small, which does not admit of extension by our Imagination to the greatness of a world, if compared with still smaller standards. Telescopes have furnished us with abundant material for making the first remark, microscopes for the second. Nothing, therefore, which can be an object of the senses, is, considered on this basis, to be called sublime. But because there is in our Imagination a striving towards infinite progress, and in our Reason a claim for absolute totality, regarded as a real Idea, therefore this very inadequateness for that Idea in our faculty for estimating the magnitude of things of sense, excites in us the feeling of a supersensible faculty. And it is not the object of sense, but the use which the Judgement naturally makes of certain objects on behalf of this latter feeling, that is absolutely great; and in comparison every other use is small. Consequently it is the state of mind produced by a certain representation with which the reflective Judgement is occupied, and not the Object, that is to be called sublime.

We may therefore append to the preceding formulas explaining the sublime this other: the sublime is that, the mere ability to think which, shows a faculty of the mind surpassing every standard of Sense.

§ 26. Of that estimation of the magnitude of natural things which is requisite for the Idea of the Sublime

The estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number (or their signs in Algebra) is mathematical; but that in mere intuition (by the measurement of the eye) is aesthetical. Now we can come by definite concepts of how great a thing is, [only]44 by numbers, of which the unit is the measure (at all events by series of numbers progressing to infinity); and so far all logical estimation of magnitude is mathematical. But since the magnitude of the measure must then be assumed known, and this again is only to be estimated mathematically by means of numbers,—the unit of which must be another [smaller] measure,—we can never have a first or fundamental measure, and therefore can never have a definite concept of a given magnitude. So the estimation of the magnitude of the fundamental measure must consist in this, that we can immediately apprehend it in intuition and use it by the Imagination for the presentation of concepts of number. That is, all estimation of the magnitude of the objects of nature is in the end aesthetical (i.e. subjectively and not objectively determined).

Now for the mathematical estimation of magnitude there is, indeed, no maximum (for the power of numbers extends to infinity); but for its aesthetical estimation there is always a maximum, and of this I say that if it is judged as the absolute measure than which no greater is possible subjectively (for the judging subject), it brings with it the Idea of the sublime and produces that emotion which no mathematical estimation of its magnitude by means of numbers can bring about (except so far as the aesthetical fundamental measure remains vividly in the Imagination). For the former only presents relative magnitude by means of comparison with others of the same kind; but the latter presents magnitude absolutely, so far as the mind can grasp it in an intuition.

In receiving a quantum into the Imagination by intuition, in order to be able to use it for a measure or as a unit for the estimation of magnitude by means of numbers, there are two operations of the Imagination involved: apprehension (apprehensio) and comprehension (comprehensio aesthetica). As to apprehension there is no difficulty, for it can go on ad infinitum; but comprehension becomes harder the further apprehension advances, and soon attains to its maximum, viz. the aesthetically greatest fundamental measure for the estimation of magnitude. For when apprehension has gone so far that the partial representations of sensuous intuition at first apprehended begin to vanish in the Imagination, whilst this ever proceeds to the apprehension of others, then it loses as much on the one side as it gains on the other; and in comprehension there is a maximum beyond which it cannot go.

Hence can be explained what Savary45 remarks in his account of Egypt, viz. that we must keep from going very near the Pyramids just as much as we keep from going too far from them, in order to get the full emotional effect from their size. For if we are too far away, the parts to be apprehended (the stones lying one over the other) are only obscurely represented, and the representation of them produces no effect upon the aesthetical judgement of the subject. But if we are very near, the eye requires some time to complete the apprehension of the tiers from the bottom up to the apex; and then the first tiers are always partly forgotten before the Imagination has taken in the last, and so the comprehension of them is never complete.—The same thing may sufficiently explain the bewilderment or, as it were, perplexity which, it is said, seizes the spectator on his first entrance into St. Peter’s at Rome. For there is here a feeling of the inadequacy of his Imagination for presenting the Ideas of a whole, wherein the Imagination reaches its maximum, and, in striving to surpass it, sinks back into itself, by which, however, a kind of emotional satisfaction is produced.

I do not wish to speak as yet of the ground of this satisfaction, which is bound up with a representation from which we should least of all expect it, viz. a representation which lets us remark its inadequacy and consequently its subjective want of purposiveness for the Judgement in the estimation of magnitude. I only remark that if the aesthetical judgement is pure (i.e. mingled with no teleological judgement or judgement of Reason) and is to be given as a completely suitable example of the Critique of the aesthetical Judgement, we must not exhibit the sublime in products of art (e.g. buildings, pillars, etc.) where human purpose determines the form as well as the size; nor yet in things of nature the concepts of which bring with them a definite purpose (e.g. animals with a known natural destination); but in rude nature (and in this only in so far as it does not bring with it any charm or emotion produced by actual danger) merely as containing magnitude. For in this kind of representation nature contains nothing monstrous (either magnificent or horrible); the magnitude that is apprehended may be increased as much as you wish provided it can be comprehended in a whole by the Imagination. An object is monstrous if by its size it destroys the purpose which constitutes the concept of it. But the mere presentation of a concept is called colossal, which is almost too great for any presentation (bordering on the relatively monstrous); because the purpose of the presentation of a concept is made harder [to realise] by the intuition of the object being almost too great for our faculty of apprehension.—A pure judgement upon the sublime must, however, have no purpose of the Object as its determining ground, if it is to be aesthetical and not mixed up with any judgement of Understanding or Reason.

* * * * *

Because everything which is to give disinterested pleasure to the merely reflective Judgement must bring with the representation of it, subjective and, as subjective, universally valid purposiveness—although no purposiveness of the form of the object lies (as in the case of the Beautiful) at the ground of the judgement—the question arises “what is this subjective purposiveness?” And how does it come to be prescribed as the norm by which a ground for universally valid satisfaction is supplied in the mere estimation of magnitude, even in that which is forced up to the point where our faculty of Imagination is inadequate for the presentation of the concept of magnitude?

In the process of combination requisite for the estimation of magnitude, the Imagination proceeds of itself to infinity without anything hindering it; but the Understanding guides it by means of concepts of number, for which the Imagination must furnish the schema. And in this procedure, as belonging to the logical estimation of magnitude, there is indeed something objectively purposive,—in accordance with the concept of a purpose (as all measurement is),—but nothing purposive and pleasing for the aesthetical Judgement. There is also in this designed purposiveness nothing which would force us to push the magnitude of the measure, and consequently the comprehension of the manifold in an intuition, to the bounds of the faculty of Imagination, or as far as ever this can reach in its presentations. For in the estimation of magnitude by the Understanding (Arithmetic) we only go to a certain point whether we push the comprehension of the units up to the number 10 (as in the decimal scale) or only up to 4 (as in the quaternary scale); the further production of magnitude proceeds by combination or, if the quantum is given in intuition, by apprehension, but merely by way of progression (not of comprehension) in accordance with an assumed principle of progression. In this mathematical estimation of magnitude the Understanding is equally served and contented whether the Imagination chooses for unit a magnitude that we can take in in a glance, e.g. a foot or rod, or a German mile or even the earth’s diameter,—of which the apprehension is indeed possible, but not the comprehension in an intuition of the Imagination (not possible by comprehensio aesthetica, although quite possible by comprehensio logica in a concept of number). In both cases the logical estimation of magnitude goes on without hindrance to infinity.

But now the mind listens to the voice of Reason which, for every given magnitude,—even for those that can never be entirely apprehended, although (in sensible representation) they are judged as entirely given,—requires totality. Reason consequently desires comprehension in one intuition, and so the presentation of all these members of a progressively increasing series. It does not even exempt the infinite (space and past time) from this requirement; it rather renders it unavoidable to think the infinite (in the judgement of common Reason) as entirely given (according to its totality).

But the infinite is absolutely (not merely comparatively) great. Compared with it everything else (of the same kind of magnitudes) is small. And what is most important is that to be able only to think it as a whole indicates a faculty of mind which surpasses every standard of Sense. For [to represent it sensibly] would require a comprehension having for unit a standard bearing a definite relation, expressible in numbers, to the infinite; which is impossible. Nevertheless, the bare capability of thinking this infinite without contradiction requires in the human mind a faculty itself supersensible. For it is only by means of this faculty and its Idea of a noumenon,—which admits of no intuition, but which yet serves as the substrate for the intuition of the world, as a mere phenomenon,—that the infinite of the world of sense, in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude, can be completely comprehended under a concept, although in the mathematical estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number it can never be completely thought. The faculty of being able to think the infinite of supersensible intuition as given (in its intelligible substrate), surpasses every standard of sensibility, and is great beyond all comparison even with the faculty of mathematical estimation; not of course in a theoretical point of view and on behalf of the cognitive faculty, but as an extension of the mind which feels itself able in another (practical) point of view to go beyond the limit of sensibility.

Nature is therefore sublime in those of its phenomena, whose intuition brings with it the Idea of their infinity. This last can only come by the inadequacy of the greatest effort of our Imagination to estimate the magnitude of an object. But now in mathematical estimation of magnitude the Imagination is equal to providing a sufficient measure for every object; because the numerical concepts of the Understanding, by means of progression, can make any measure adequate to any given magnitude. Therefore it must be the aesthetical estimation of magnitude in which it is felt that the effort towards comprehension surpasses the power of the Imagination to grasp in a whole of intuition the progressive apprehension; and at the same time is perceived the inadequacy of this faculty, unbounded in its progress, for grasping and using, for the estimation of magnitude, a fundamental measure which could be made available by the Understanding with little trouble. Now the proper unchangeable fundamental measure of nature is its absolute whole; which, regarding nature as a phenomenon, would be infinity comprehended. But since this fundamental measure is a self-contradictory concept (on account of the impossibility of the absolute totality of an endless progress), that magnitude of a natural Object, on which the Imagination fruitlessly spends its whole faculty of comprehension, must carry our concept of nature to a supersensible substrate (which lies at its basis and also at the basis of our faculty of thought). As this, however, is great beyond all standards of sense, it makes us judge as sublime, not so much the object, as our own state of mind in the estimation of it.

Therefore, just as the aesthetical Judgement in judging the Beautiful refers the Imagination in its free play to the Understanding, in order to harmonise it with the concepts of the latter in general (without any determination of them); so does the same faculty when judging a thing as Sublime refer itself to the Reason in order that it may subjectively be in accordance with its Ideas (no matter what they are):—i.e. that it may produce a state of mind conformable to them and compatible with that brought about by the influence of definite (practical) Ideas upon feeling.

We hence see also that true sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the [subject] judging, not in the natural Object, the judgement upon which occasions this state. Who would call sublime, e.g. shapeless mountain masses piled in wild disorder upon each other with their pyramids of ice, or the gloomy raging sea? But the mind feels itself elevated in its own judgement if, while contemplating them without any reference to their form, and abandoning itself to the Imagination and to the Reason—which although placed in combination with the Imagination without any definite purpose, merely extends it—it yet finds the whole power of the Imagination inadequate to its Ideas.

Examples of the mathematically Sublime of nature in mere intuition are all the cases in which we are given, not so much a larger numerical concept as a large unit for the measure of the Imagination (for shortening the numerical series). A tree, [the height of] which we estimate with reference to the height of a man, at all events gives a standard for a mountain; and if this were a mile high, it would serve as unit for the number expressive of the earth’s diameter, so that the latter might be made intuitible. The earth’s diameter [would supply a unit] for the known planetary system; this again for the Milky Way; and the immeasurable number of milky way systems called nebulae,—which presumably constitute a system of the same kind among themselves—lets us expect no bounds here. Now the Sublime in the aesthetical judging of an immeasurable whole like this lies not so much in the greatness of the number [of units], as in the fact that in our progress we ever arrive at yet greater units. To this the systematic division of the universe contributes, which represents every magnitude in nature as small in its turn; and represents our Imagination with its entire freedom from bounds, and with it Nature, as a mere nothing in comparison with the Ideas of Reason, if it is sought to furnish a presentation which shall be adequate to them.

§ 27. Of the quality of the satisfaction in our judgements upon the Sublime

The feeling of our incapacity to attain to an Idea, which is a law for us, is RESPECT. Now the Idea of the comprehension of every phenomenon that can be given us in the intuition of a whole, is an Idea prescribed to us by a law of Reason, which recognises no other measure, definite, valid for every one, and invariable, than the absolute whole. But our Imagination, even in its greatest efforts, in respect of that comprehension, which we expect from it, of a given object in a whole of intuition (and thus with reference to the presentation of the Idea of Reason), exhibits its own limits and inadequacy; although at the same time it shows that its destination is to make itself adequate to this Idea regarded as a law. Therefore the feeling of the Sublime in nature is respect for our own destination, which by a certain subreption we attribute to an Object of nature (conversion of respect for the Idea of humanity in our own subject into respect for the Object). This makes intuitively evident the superiority of the rational determination of our cognitive faculties to the greatest faculty of our Sensibility.

The feeling of the Sublime is therefore a feeling of pain, arising from the want of accordance between the aesthetical estimation of magnitude formed by the Imagination and the estimation of the same formed by Reason. There is at the same time a pleasure thus excited, arising from the correspondence with rational Ideas of this very judgement of the inadequacy of our greatest faculty of Sense; in so far as it is a law for us to strive after these Ideas. In fact it is for us a law (of Reason), and belongs to our destination, to estimate as small, in comparison with Ideas of Reason, everything which nature, regarded as an object of Sense, contains that is great for us; and that which arouses in us the feeling of this supersensible destination agrees with that law. Now the greatest effort of the Imagination in the presentation of the unit for the estimation of magnitude indicates a reference to something absolutely great; and consequently a reference to the law of Reason, which bids us take this alone as the supreme measure of magnitude. Therefore the inner perception of the inadequacy of all sensible standards for rational estimation of magnitude indicates a correspondence with rational laws; it involves a pain, which arouses in us the feeling of our supersensible destination, according to which it is purposive and therefore pleasurable to find every standard of Sensibility inadequate to the Ideas of Understanding.

The mind feels itself moved in the representation of the Sublime in nature; whilst in aesthetical judgements about the Beautiful it is in restful contemplation. This movement may (especially in its beginnings) be compared to a vibration, i.e. to a quickly alternating attraction towards, and repulsion from, the same Object. The transcendent (towards which the Imagination is impelled in its apprehension of intuition) is for the Imagination like an abyss in which it fears to lose itself; but for the rational Idea of the supersensible it is not transcendent but in conformity with law to bring about such an effort of the Imagination, and consequently here there is the same amount of attraction as there was of repulsion for the mere Sensibility. But the judgement itself always remains in this case only aesthetical, because—without having any determinate concept of the Object at its basis—it merely represents the subjective play of the mental powers (Imagination and Reason) as harmonious through their very contrast. For just as Imagination and Understanding, in judging of the Beautiful, generate a subjective purposiveness of the mental powers by means of their harmony, so [here46] Imagination and Reason do so by means of their conflict. That is, they bring about a feeling that we possess pure self-subsistent Reason, or a faculty for the estimation of magnitude, whose pre-eminence can be made intuitively evident only by the inadequacy of that faculty [Imagination] which is itself unbounded in the presentation of magnitudes (of sensible objects).

The measurement of a space (regarded as apprehension) is at the same time a description of it, and thus an objective movement in the act of Imagination and a progress. On the other hand, the comprehension of the manifold in the unity,—not of thought but of intuition,—and consequently the comprehension of the successively apprehended [elements] in one glance, is a regress, which annihilates the condition of time in this progress of the Imagination and makes coexistence intuitible.47 It is therefore (since the time-series is a condition of the internal sense and of an intuition) a subjective movement of the Imagination, by which it does violence to the internal sense; this must be the more noticeable, the greater the quantum is which the Imagination comprehends in one intuition. The effort, therefore, to receive in one single intuition a measure for magnitudes that requires an appreciable time to apprehend, is a kind of representation, which, subjectively considered, is contrary to purpose: but objectively, as requisite for the estimation of magnitude, it is purposive. Thus that very violence which is done to the subject through the Imagination is judged as purposive in reference to the whole determination of the mind.

The quality of the feeling of the Sublime is that it is a feeling of pain in reference to the faculty by which we judge aesthetically of an object, which pain, however, is represented at the same time as purposive. This is possible through the fact that the very incapacity in question discovers the consciousness of an unlimited faculty of the same subject, and that the mind can only judge of the latter aesthetically by means of the former.

In the logical estimation of magnitude the impossibility of ever arriving at absolute totality, by means of the progress of the measurement of things of the sensible world in time and space, was cognised as objective, i.e. as an impossibility of thinking the infinite as entirely given; and not as merely subjective or that there was only an incapacity to grasp it. For there we have not to do with the degree of comprehension in an intuition, regarded as a measure, but everything depends on a concept of number. But in aesthetical estimation of magnitude the concept of number must disappear or be changed, and the comprehension of the Imagination in reference to the unit of measure (thus avoiding the concepts of a law of the successive production of concepts of magnitude) is alone purposive for it.—If now a magnitude almost reaches the limit of our faculty of comprehension in an intuition, and yet the Imagination is invited by means of numerical magnitudes (in respect of which we are conscious that our faculty is unbounded) to aesthetical comprehension in a greater unit, then we mentally feel ourselves confined aesthetically within bounds. But nevertheless the pain in regard to the necessary extension of the Imagination for accordance with that which is unbounded in our faculty of Reason, viz. the Idea of the absolute whole, and consequently the very unpurposiveness of the faculty of Imagination for rational Ideas and the arousing of them, are represented as purposive. Thus it is that the aesthetical judgement itself is subjectively purposive for the Reason as the source of Ideas, i.e. as the source of an intellectual comprehension for which all aesthetical comprehension is small; and there accompanies the reception of an object as sublime a pleasure, which is only possible through the medium of a pain.

B.—Of the Dynamically Sublime in Nature

§ 28. Of Nature regarded as Might

Might is that which is superior to great hindrances. It is called dominion if it is superior to the resistance of that which itself possesses might. Nature considered in an aesthetical judgement as might that has no dominion over us, is dynamically sublime.

If nature is to be judged by us as dynamically sublime, it must be represented as exciting fear (although it is not true conversely that every object which excites fear is regarded in our aesthetical judgement as sublime). For in aesthetical judgements (without the aid of concepts) superiority to hindrances can only be judged according to the greatness of the resistance. Now that which we are driven to resist is an evil, and, if we do not find our faculties a match for it, is an object of fear. Hence nature can be regarded by the aesthetical Judgement as might, and consequently as dynamically sublime, only so far as it is considered an object of fear.

But we can regard an object as fearful, without being afraid of it; viz. if we judge of it in such a way that we merely think a case in which we would wish to resist it, and yet in which all resistance would be altogether vain. Thus the virtuous man fears God without being afraid of Him; because to wish to resist Him and His commandments, he thinks is a case as to which he need not be anxious. But in every such case that he thinks as not impossible, he cognises Him as fearful.

He who fears can form no judgement about the Sublime in nature; just as he who is seduced by inclination and appetite can form no judgement about the Beautiful. The former flies from the sight of an object which inspires him with awe; and it is impossible to find satisfaction in a terror that is seriously felt. Hence the pleasurableness arising from the cessation of an uneasiness is a state of joy. But this, on account of the deliverance from danger [which is involved], is a state of joy conjoined with the resolve not to expose ourselves to the danger again; we cannot willingly look back upon our sensations [of danger], much less seek the occasion for them again.

Bold, overhanging, and as it were threatening, rocks; clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning flashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction; hurricanes with their track of devastation; the boundless ocean in a state of tumult; the lofty waterfall of a mighty river, and such like; these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security; and we readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the energies of the soul above their accustomed height, and discover in us a faculty of resistance of a quite different kind, which gives us courage to measure ourselves against the apparent almightiness of nature.

Now, in the immensity of nature, and in the inadequacy of our faculties for adopting a standard proportionate to the aesthetical estimation of the magnitude of its realm, we find our own limitation; although at the same time in our rational faculty we find a different, non-sensuous standard, which has that infinity itself under it as a unit, and in comparison with which everything in nature is small. Thus in our mind we find a superiority to nature even in its immensity. And so also the irresistibility of its might, while making us recognise our own [physical48] impotence, considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of, and a superiority over, nature; on which is based a kind of self-preservation, entirely different from that which can be attacked and brought into danger by external nature. Thus, humanity in our person remains unhumiliated, though the individual might have to submit to this dominion. In this way nature is not judged to be sublime in our aesthetical judgements, in so far as it excites fear; but because it calls up that power in us (which is not nature) of regarding as small the things about which we are solicitous (goods, health, and life), and of regarding its might (to which we are no doubt subjected in respect of these things), as nevertheless without any dominion over us and our personality to which we must bow where our highest fundamental propositions, and their assertion or abandonment, are concerned. Therefore nature is here called sublime merely because it elevates the Imagination to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can make felt the proper sublimity of its destination, in comparison with nature itself.

This estimation of ourselves loses nothing through the fact that we must regard ourselves as safe in order to feel this inspiriting satisfaction; and that hence, as there is no seriousness in the danger, there might be also (as might seem to be the case) just as little seriousness in the sublimity of our spiritual faculty. For the satisfaction here concerns only the destination of our faculty which discloses itself in such a case, so far as the tendency to this destination lies in our nature, whilst its development and exercise remain incumbent and obligatory. And in this there is truth, however conscious the man may be of his present actual powerlessness, when he stretches his reflection so far.

No doubt this principle seems to be too far-fetched and too subtly reasoned, and consequently seems to go beyond the scope of an aesthetical judgement; but observation of men proves the opposite, and shows that it may lie at the root of the most ordinary judgements, although we are not always conscious of it. For what is that which is, even to the savage, an object of the greatest admiration? It is a man who shrinks from nothing, who fears nothing, and therefore does not yield to danger, but rather goes to face it vigorously with the fullest deliberation. Even in the most highly civilised state this peculiar veneration for the soldier remains, though only under the condition that he exhibit all the virtues of peace, gentleness, compassion, and even a becoming care for his own person; because even by these it is recognised that his mind is unsubdued by danger. Hence whatever disputes there may be about the superiority of the respect which is to be accorded them, in the comparison of a statesman and a general, the aesthetical judgement decides for the latter. War itself, if it is carried on with order and with a sacred respect for the rights of citizens, has something sublime in it, and makes the disposition of the people who carry it on thus, only the more sublime, the more numerous are the dangers to which they are exposed, and in respect of which they behave with courage. On the other hand, a long peace generally brings about a predominant commercial spirit, and along with it, low selfishness, cowardice, and effeminacy, and debases the disposition of the people.49

It appears to conflict with this solution of the concept of the sublime, so far as sublimity is ascribed to might, that we are accustomed to represent God as presenting Himself in His wrath and yet in His sublimity, in the tempest, the storm, the earthquake, etc.; and that it would be foolish and criminal to imagine a superiority of our minds over these works of His, and, as it seems, even over the designs of such might. Hence it would appear that no feeling of the sublimity of our own nature, but rather subjection, abasement, and a feeling of complete powerlessness, is a fitting state of mind before the manifestation of such an object, and this is generally bound up with the Idea of it during natural phenomena of this kind. Generally in religion, prostration, adoration with bent head, with contrite, anxious demeanour and voice, seems to be the only fitting behaviour in presence of the Godhead; and hence most peoples have adopted and still observe it. But this state of mind is far from being necessarily bound up with the Idea of the sublimity of a religion and its object. The man who is actually afraid, because he finds reasons for fear in himself, whilst conscious by his culpable disposition of offending against a Might whose will is irresistible and at the same time just, is not in the frame of mind for admiring the divine greatness. For this a mood of calm contemplation and a quite free judgement are needed. Only if he is conscious of an upright disposition pleasing to God do those operations of might serve to awaken in him the Idea of the sublimity of this Being, for then he recognises in himself a sublimity of disposition conformable to His will; and thus he is raised above the fear of such operations of nature, which he no longer regards as outbursts of His wrath. Even humility, in the shape of a stern judgement upon his own faults,—which otherwise, with a consciousness of good intentions, could be easily palliated from the frailty of human nature,—is a sublime state of mind, consisting in a voluntary subjection of himself to the pain of remorse, in order that its causes may be gradually removed. In this way religion is essentially distinguished from superstition. The latter establishes in the mind, not reverence for the Sublime, but fear and apprehension of the all-powerful Being to whose will the terrified man sees himself subject, without according Him any high esteem. From this nothing can arise but a seeking of favour, and flattery, instead of a religion which consists in a good life.50

Sublimity, therefore, does not reside in anything of nature, but only in our mind, in so far as we can become conscious that we are superior to nature within, and therefore also to nature without us (so far as it influences us). Everything that excites this feeling in us, e.g. the might of nature which calls forth our forces, is called then (although improperly) sublime. Only by supposing this Idea in ourselves, and in reference to it, are we capable of attaining to the Idea of the sublimity of that Being, which produces respect in us, not merely by the might that it displays in nature, but rather by means of the faculty which resides in us of judging it fearlessly and of regarding our destination as sublime in respect of it.

§ 29. Of the modality of the judgement upon the sublime in nature

There are numberless beautiful things in nature about which we can assume and even expect, without being far mistaken, the harmony of every one’s judgement with our own. But in respect of our judgement upon the sublime in nature, we cannot promise ourselves so easily the accordance of others. For a far greater culture, as well of the aesthetical Judgement as of the cognitive faculties which lie at its basis, seems requisite in order to be able to pass judgement on this pre-eminent quality of natural objects.

That the mind be attuned to feel the sublime postulates a susceptibility of the mind for Ideas. For in the very inadequacy of nature to these latter, and thus only by presupposing them and by straining the Imagination to use nature as a schema for them, is to be found that which is terrible to sensibility and yet is attractive. [It is attractive] because Reason exerts a dominion over sensibility in order to extend it in conformity with its own realm (the practical) and to make it look out into the Infinite, which is for it an abyss. In fact, without development of moral Ideas, that which we, prepared by culture, call sublime, presents itself to the uneducated man merely as terrible. In the indications of the dominion of nature in destruction, and in the great scale of its might, in comparison with which his own is a vanishing quantity, he will only see the misery, danger, and distress which surround the man who is exposed to it. So the good, and indeed intelligent, Savoyard peasant (as Herr von Saussure51 relates) unhesitatingly called all lovers of snow-mountains fools. And who knows, whether he would have been so completely wrong, if Saussure had undertaken the danger to which he exposed himself merely, as most travellers do, from amateur curiosity, or that he might be able to give a pathetic account of them? But his design was the instruction of men; and this excellent man gave the readers of his Travels, soul-stirring sensations such as he himself had, into the bargain.

But although the judgement upon the Sublime in nature needs culture (more than the judgement upon the Beautiful), it is not therefore primarily produced by culture and introduced in a merely conventional way into society. Rather has it root in human nature, even in that which, alike with common Understanding, we can impute to and expect of every one, viz. in the tendency to the feeling for (practical) Ideas, i.e. to the moral feeling.

Hereon is based the necessity of that agreement of the judgement of others about the sublime with our own which we include in the latter. For just as we charge with want of taste the man who is indifferent when passing judgement upon an object of nature that we regard as beautiful; so we say of him who remains unmoved in the presence of that which we judge to be sublime, he has no feeling. But we claim both from every man, and we presuppose them in him if he has any culture at all; only with the difference, that we expect the former directly of every one, because in it the Judgement refers the Imagination merely to the Understanding, the faculty of concepts; but the latter, because in it the Imagination is related to the Reason, the faculty of Ideas, only under a subjective presupposition (which, however, we believe we are authorised in imputing to every one), viz. the presupposition of the moral feeling [in man.52] Thus it is that we ascribe necessity to this aesthetical judgement also.

In this modality of aesthetical judgements, viz. in the necessity claimed for them, lies an important moment of the Critique of Judgement. For it enables us to recognise in them an a priori principle, and raises them out of empirical psychology, in which otherwise they would remain buried amongst the feelings of gratification and grief (only with the unmeaning addition of being called finer feelings). Thus it enables us too to place the Judgement among those faculties that have a priori principles at their basis, and so to bring it into Transcendental Philosophy.

GENERAL REMARK UPON THE EXPOSITION OF THE AESTHETICAL REFLECTIVE JUDGEMENT

In reference to the feeling of pleasure an object is to be classified as either pleasant, or beautiful, or sublime, or good (absolutely), (jucundum, pulchrum, sublime, honestum).

The pleasant, as motive of desire, is always of one and the same kind, no matter whence it comes and however specifically different the representation (of sense, and sensation objectively considered) may be. Hence in judging its influence on the mind, account is taken only of the number of its charms (simultaneous and successive), and so only of the mass, as it were, of the pleasant sensation; and this can be made intelligible only by quantity. It has no reference to culture, but belongs to mere enjoyment.—On the other hand, the beautiful requires the representation of a certain quality of the Object, that can be made intelligible and reduced to concepts (although it is not so reduced in an aesthetical judgement); and it cultivates us, in that it teaches us to attend to the purposiveness in the feeling of pleasure.—The sublime consists merely in the relation by which the sensible in the representation of nature is judged available for a possible supersensible use.—The absolutely good, subjectively judged according to the feeling that it inspires (the Object of the moral feeling), as capable of determining the powers of the subject through the representation of an absolutely compelling law, is specially distinguished by the modality of a necessity that rests a priori upon concepts. This necessity involves not merely a claim, but a command for the assent of every one, and belongs in itself to the pure intellectual, rather than to the aesthetical Judgement; and is by a determinant and not a mere reflective judgement ascribed not to Nature but to Freedom. But the determinability of the subject by means of this Idea, and especially of a subject that can feel hindrances in sensibility, and at the same time its superiority to them by their subjugation involving a modification of its state—i.e. the moral feeling,—is yet so far cognate to the aesthetical Judgement and its formal conditions that it can serve to represent the conformity to law of action from duty as aesthetical, i.e. as sublime or even as beautiful, without losing its purity. This would not be so, if we were to put it in natural combination with the feeling of the pleasant.

If we take the result of the foregoing exposition of the two kinds of aesthetical judgements, there arise therefrom the following short explanations:

The Beautiful is what pleases in the mere judgement (and therefore not by the medium of sensation in accordance with a concept of the Understanding). It follows at once from this that it must please apart from all interest.

The Sublime is what pleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of sense.

Both, as explanations of aesthetical universally valid judging, are referred to subjective grounds; in the one case to grounds of sensibility, in favour of the contemplative Understanding; in the other case in opposition to sensibility, but on behalf of the purposes of practical Reason. Both, however, united in the same subject, are purposive in reference to the moral feeling. The Beautiful prepares us to love disinterestedly something, even nature itself; the Sublime prepares us to esteem something highly even in opposition to our own (sensible) interest.

We may describe the Sublime thus: it is an object (of nature) the representation of which determines the mind to think the unattainability of nature regarded as a presentation of Ideas.

Literally taken and logically considered, Ideas cannot be presented. But if we extend our empirical representative faculty (mathematically or dynamically) to the intuition of nature, Reason inevitably intervenes, as the faculty expressing the independence of absolute totality,53 and generates the effort of the mind, vain though it be, to make the representation of the senses adequate to this. This effort,—and the feeling of the unattainability of the Idea by means of the Imagination,—is itself a presentation of the subjective purposiveness of our mind in the employment of the Imagination for its supersensible destination; and forces us, subjectively, to think nature itself in its totality as a presentation of something supersensible, without being able objectively to arrive at this presentation.

For we soon see that nature in space and time entirely lacks the unconditioned, and, consequently, that absolute magnitude, which yet is desired by the most ordinary Reason. It is by this that we are reminded that we only have to do with nature as phenomenon, and that it must be regarded as the mere presentation of a nature in itself (of which Reason has the Idea). But this Idea of the supersensible, which we can no further determine,—so that we cannot know but only think nature as its presentation,—is awakened in us by means of an object, whose aesthetical appreciation strains the Imagination to its utmost bounds, whether of extension (mathematical) or of its might over the mind (dynamical). And this judgement is based upon a feeling of the mind’s destination, which entirely surpasses the realm of the former (i.e. upon the moral feeling), in respect of which the representation of the object is judged as subjectively purposive.

In fact, a feeling for the Sublime in nature cannot well be thought without combining therewith a mental disposition which is akin to the Moral. And although the immediate pleasure in the Beautiful of nature likewise presupposes and cultivates a certain liberality in our mental attitude, i.e. a satisfaction independent of mere sensible enjoyment, yet freedom is thus represented as in play rather than in that law-directed occupation which is the genuine characteristic of human morality, in which Reason must exercise dominion over Sensibility. But in aesthetical judgements upon the Sublime this dominion is represented as exercised by the Imagination, regarded as an instrument of Reason.

The satisfaction in the Sublime of nature is then only negative (whilst that in the Beautiful is positive); viz. a feeling that the Imagination is depriving itself of its freedom, while it is purposively determined according to a different law from that of its empirical employment. It thus acquires an extension and a might greater than it sacrifices,—the ground of which, however, is concealed from itself; whilst yet it feels the sacrifice or the deprivation and, at the same time, the cause to which it is subjected. Astonishment, that borders upon terror, the dread and the holy awe which seizes the observer at the sight of mountain peaks rearing themselves to heaven, deep chasms and streams raging therein, deep-shadowed solitudes that dispose one to melancholy meditations—this, in the safety in which we know ourselves to be, is not actual fear, but only an attempt to feel fear by the aid of the Imagination; that we may feel the might of this faculty in combining with the mind’s repose the mental movement thereby excited, and being thus superior to internal nature,—and therefore to external,—so far as this can have any influence on our feeling of well-being. For the Imagination by the laws of Association makes our state of contentment dependent on physical [causes]; but it also, by the principles of the Schematism of the Judgement (being so far, therefore, ranked under freedom), is the instrument of Reason and its Ideas, and, as such, has might to maintain our independence of natural influences, to regard as small what in reference to them is great, and so to place the absolutely great only in the proper destination of the subject. The raising of this reflection of the aesthetical Judgement so as to be adequate to Reason (though without a definite concept of Reason) represents the object as subjectively purposive, even by the objective want of accordance between the Imagination in its greatest extension and the Reason (as the faculty of Ideas).

We must here, generally, attend to what has been already noted, that in the Transcendental Aesthetic of Judgement we must speak solely of pure aesthetical judgements; consequently our examples are not to be taken from such beautiful or sublime objects of Nature as presuppose the concept of a purpose. For, if so, the purposiveness would be either teleological, or would be based on mere sensations of an object (gratification or grief); and thus would be in the former case not aesthetical, in the latter not merely formal. If then we call the sight of the starry heaven sublime, we must not place at the basis of our judgement concepts of worlds inhabited by rational beings, and regard the bright points, with which we see the space above us filled, as their suns moving in circles purposively fixed with reference to them; but we must regard it, just as we see it, as a distant, all-embracing vault. Only under such a representation can we range that sublimity which a pure aesthetical judgement ascribes to this object. And in the same way, if we are to call the sight of the ocean sublime, we must not think of it as we [ordinarily] do, endowed as we are with all kinds of knowledge (not contained, however, in the immediate intuition). For example, we sometimes think of the ocean as a vast kingdom of aquatic creatures; or as the great source of those vapours that fill the air with clouds for the benefit of the land; or again as an element which, though dividing continents from each other, yet promotes the greatest communication between them: but these furnish merely teleological judgements. To call the ocean sublime we must regard it as poets do, merely by what strikes the eye; if it is at rest, as a clear mirror of water only bounded by the heaven; if it is restless, as an abyss threatening to overwhelm everything. The like is to be said of the Sublime and Beautiful in the human figure. We must not regard as the determining grounds of our judgement the concepts of the purposes which all our limbs serve, and we must not allow this coincidence to influence our aesthetical judgement (for then it would no longer be pure); although it is certainly a necessary condition of aesthetical satisfaction that there should be no conflict between them. Aesthetical purposiveness is the conformity to law of the Judgement in its freedom. The satisfaction in the object depends on the relation in which we wish to place the Imagination; always provided that it by itself entertains the mind in free occupation. If, on the other hand, the judgement be determined by anything else,—whether sensation or concept,—although it may be conformable to law, it cannot be the act of a free Judgement.

If then we speak of intellectual beauty or sublimity, these expressions are, first, not quite accurate, because beauty and sublimity are aesthetical modes of representation, which would not be found in us at all if we were pure intelligences (or even regarded ourselves as such in thought). Secondly, although both, as objects of an intellectual (moral) satisfaction, are so far compatible with aesthetical satisfaction that they rest upon no interest, yet they are difficult to unite with it, because they are meant to produce an interest. This, if its presentation is to harmonise with the satisfaction in the aesthetical judgement, could only arise by means of a sensible interest that we combine with it in the presentation; and thus damage would be done to the intellectual purposiveness, and it would lose its purity.

The object of a pure and unconditioned intellectual satisfaction is the Moral Law in that might which it exercises in us over all mental motives that precede it. This might only makes itself aesthetically known to us through sacrifices (which causing a feeling of deprivation, though on behalf of internal freedom, in return discloses in us an unfathomable depth of this supersensible faculty, with consequences extending beyond our ken); thus the satisfaction on the aesthetical side (in relation to sensibility) is negative, i.e. against this interest, but regarded from the intellectual side it is positive and combined with an interest. Hence it follows that the intellectual, in itself purposive, (moral) good, aesthetically judged, must be represented as sublime rather than beautiful, so that it rather awakens the feeling of respect (which disdains charm) than that of love and familiar inclination; for human nature does not attach itself to this good spontaneously, but only by the authority which Reason exercises over Sensibility. Conversely also, that which we call sublime in nature, whether external or internal (e.g. certain affections), is only represented as a might in the mind to overcome [certain]54 hindrances of the Sensibility by means of moral fundamental propositions, and only thus does it interest.

I will dwell a moment on this latter point. The Idea of the Good conjoined with affection is called enthusiasm. This state of mind seems to be sublime, to the extent that we commonly assert that nothing great could be done without it. Now every affection55 is blind, either in the choice of its purpose, or, if this be supplied by Reason, in its accomplishment; for it is a mental movement which makes it impossible to exercise a free deliberation about fundamental propositions so as to determine ourselves thereby. It can therefore in no way deserve the approval of the Reason. Nevertheless, aesthetically, enthusiasm is sublime, because it is a tension of forces produced by Ideas, which give an impulse to the mind, that operates far more powerfully and lastingly than the impulse arising from sensible representations. But (which seems strange) the absence of affection (apatheia, phlegma in significatu bono) in a mind that vigorously follows its unalterable principles is sublime, and in a far preferable way, because it has also on its side the satisfaction of pure Reason.56 It is only a mental state of this kind that is called noble; and this expression is subsequently applied to things, e.g. a building, a garment, literary style, bodily presence, etc., when these do not so much arouse astonishment (the affection produced by the representation of novelty exceeding our expectations), as admiration (astonishment that does not cease when the novelty disappears); and this is the case when Ideas agree in their presentation undesignedly and artlessly with the aesthetical satisfaction.

Every affection of the STRENUOUS kind (viz. that excites the consciousness of our power to overcome every obstacle—animi strenui) is aesthetically sublime, e.g. wrath, even despair (i.e. the despair of indignation, not of faintheartedness). But affections of the LANGUID kind (which make the very effort of resistance an object of pain—animum languidum) have nothing noble in themselves, but they may be reckoned under the sensuously beautiful. Emotions, which may rise to the strength of affections, are very different. We have both spirited and tender emotions. The latter, if they rise to the height of affections, are worthless; the propensity to them is called sentimentality. A sympathetic grief that will not admit of consolation, or one referring to imaginary evils to which we deliberately surrender ourselves—being deceived by fancy—as if they were actual, indicates and produces a tender,57 though weak, soul—which shows a beautiful side and which can be called fanciful, though not enthusiastic. Romances, lacrymose plays, shallow moral precepts, which toy with (falsely) so-called moral dispositions, but in fact make the heart languid, insensible to the severe precept of duty, and incapable of all respect for the worth of humanity in our own person, and for the rights of men (a very different thing from their happiness), and in general incapable of all steady principle; even a religious discourse,58 which recommends a cringing, abject seeking of favour and ingratiation of ourselves, which proposes the abandonment of all confidence in our own faculties in opposition to the evil within us, instead of a sturdy resolution to endeavour to overcome our inclinations by means of those powers which with all our frailty yet remain to us; that false humility which sets the only way of pleasing the Supreme Being in self-depreciation, in whining hypocritical repentance and in a mere passive state of mind—these are not compatible with any frame of mind that can be counted beautiful, still less with one which is to be counted sublime.

But even stormy movements of mind which may be connected under the name of edification with Ideas of religion, or—as merely belonging to culture—with Ideas containing a social interest, can in no way, however they strain the Imagination, lay claim to the honour of being sublime presentations, unless they leave after them a mental mood which, although only indirectly, has influence upon the mind’s consciousness of its strength, and its resolution in reference to that which involves pure intellectual purposiveness (the supersensible). For otherwise all these emotions belong only to motion, which one would fain enjoy for the sake of health. The pleasant exhaustion, consequent upon such disturbance produced by the play of the affections, is an enjoyment of our well-being arising from the restored equilibrium of the various vital forces. This in the end amounts to the same thing as that state which Eastern voluptuaries find so delightful, when they get their bodies as it were kneaded and all their muscles and joints softly pressed and bent; only that in this case the motive principle is for the most part external, in the other case it is altogether internal. Many a man believes himself to be edified by a sermon, when indeed there is no edification at all (no system of good maxims); or to be improved by a tragedy, when he is only glad at his ennui being happily dispelled. So the Sublime must always have reference to the disposition, i.e. to the maxims which furnish to the intellectual [part] and to the Ideas of Reason a superiority over sensibility.

We need not fear that the feeling of the sublime will lose by so abstract a mode of presentation,—which is quite negative in respect of what is sensible,—for the Imagination, although it finds nothing beyond the sensible to which it can attach itself, yet feels itself unbounded by this removal of its limitations; and thus that very abstraction is a presentation of the Infinite, which can be nothing but a mere negative presentation, but which yet expands the soul. Perhaps there is no sublimer passage in the Jewish Law than the command, Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything which is in heaven or on the earth or under the earth, etc. This command alone can explain the enthusiasm that the Jewish people in their moral period felt for their religion, when they compared themselves with other peoples; or explain the pride which Mahommedanism inspires. The same is true of the moral law and of the tendency to morality in us. It is quite erroneous to fear that if we deprive this [tendency] of all that can recommend it to sense it will only involve a cold lifeless assent and no moving force or emotion. It is quite the other way, for where the senses see nothing more before them, and the unmistakable and indelible Idea of morality remains, it would be rather necessary to moderate the impetus of an unbounded Imagination, to prevent it from rising to enthusiasm, than through fear of the powerlessness of these Ideas to seek aid for them in images and childish ritual. Thus governments have willingly allowed religion to be abundantly provided with the latter accessories; and seeking thereby to relieve their subjects of trouble, they have also sought to deprive them of the faculty of extending their spiritual powers beyond the limits that are arbitrarily assigned to them, and by means of which they can be the more easily treated as mere passive59 beings.

This pure, elevating, merely negative presentation of morality brings with it, on the other hand, no danger of fanaticism, which is a delusion that we can will ourselves to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility, i.e. to dream in accordance with fundamental propositions (or to go mad with Reason); and this is so just because this presentation is merely negative. For the inscrutableness of the Idea of Freedom quite cuts it off from any positive presentation; but the moral law is in itself sufficiently and originally determinant in us, so that it does not permit us to cast a glance at any ground of determination external to itself. If enthusiasm is comparable to madness, fanaticism is comparable to monomania; of which the latter is least of all compatible with the sublime, because in its detail it is ridiculous. In enthusiasm, regarded as an affection, the Imagination is without bridle; in fanaticism, regarded as an inveterate, brooding passion, it is without rule. The first is a transitory accident which sometimes befalls the soundest Understanding; the second is a disease which unsettles it.

Simplicity (purposiveness without art) is as it were the style of Nature in the sublime, and so also of Morality which is a second (supersensible) nature; of which we only know the laws without being able to reach by intuition that supersensible faculty in ourselves which contains the ground of the legislation.

Now the satisfaction in the Beautiful, like that in the Sublime, is not alone distinguishable from other aesthetical judgements by its universal communicability, but also because, through this very property, it acquires an interest in reference to society (in which this communication is possible). We must, however, remark that separation from all society is regarded as sublime, if it rests upon Ideas that overlook all sensible interest. To be sufficient for oneself, and consequently to have no need of society, without at the same time being unsociable, i.e. without flying from it, is something bordering on the sublime; as is any dispensing with wants. On the other hand, to fly from men from misanthropy, because we bear ill-will to them, or from anthropophoby (shyness), because we fear them as foes, is partly hateful, partly contemptible. There is indeed a misanthropy (very improperly so-called), the tendency to which frequently appears with old age in many right-thinking men; which is philanthropic enough as far as goodwill to men is concerned, but which through long and sad experience is far removed from satisfaction with men. Evidence of this is afforded by the propensity to solitude, the fantastic wish for a secluded country seat, or (in the case of young persons) by the dream of the happiness of passing one’s life with a little family upon some island unknown to the rest of the world; a dream of which story-tellers or writers of Robinsonades know how to make good use. Falsehood, ingratitude, injustice, the childishness of the purposes regarded by ourselves as important and great, in the pursuit of which men inflict upon each other all imaginable evils, are so contradictory to the Idea of what men might be if they would, and conflict so with our lively wish to see them better, that, in order that we may not hate them (since we cannot love them), the renunciation of all social joys seems but a small sacrifice. This sadness—not the sadness (of which sympathy is the cause) for the evils which fate brings upon others,—but for those things which men do to one another (which depends upon an antipathy in fundamental propositions), is sublime, because it rests upon Ideas, whilst the former can only count as beautiful.—The brilliant and thorough Saussure,60 in his account of his Alpine travels, says of one of the Savoy mountains, called Bonhomme, “There reigns there a certain insipid sadness.” He therefore recognised an interesting sadness, that the sight of a solitude might inspire, to which men might wish to transport themselves that they might neither hear nor experience any more of the world; which, however, would not be quite so inhospitable that it would offer only an extremely painful retreat.—I make this remark solely with the design of indicating again that even depression (not dejected sadness) may be counted among the sturdy affections, if it has its ground in moral Ideas. But if it is grounded on sympathy and, as such, is amiable, it belongs merely to the languid affections. [I make this remark] to call attention to the state of mind which is sublime only in the first case.

* * * * *

We can now compare the above Transcendental Exposition of aesthetical judgements with the Physiological worked out by Burke and by many clear-headed men among us, in order to see whither a merely empirical exposition of the Sublime and Beautiful leads. Burke, who deserves to be regarded as the most important author who adopts this mode of treatment, infers by this method “that the feeling of the Sublime rests on the impulse towards self-preservation and on fear, i.e. on a pain, which not going so far as actually to derange the parts of the body, produces movements which, since they purify the finer or grosser vessels of dangerous or troublesome stoppages, are capable of exciting pleasant sensations; not indeed pleasure, but a kind of satisfying horror, a certain tranquillity tinged with terror.”61 The Beautiful, which he founded on love (which he wishes to keep quite separate from desire), he reduces to “the relaxing, slackening, and enervating of the fibres of the body, and a consequent weakening, languor, and exhaustion, a fainting, dissolving, and melting away for enjoyment.”62 And he confirms this explanation not only by cases in which the Imagination in combination with the Understanding can excite in us the feeling of the Beautiful or of the Sublime, but by cases in which it is combined with sensation.—As psychological observations, these analyses of the phenomena of our mind are exceedingly beautiful, and afford rich material for the favourite investigations of empirical anthropology. It is also not to be denied that all representations in us, whether, objectively viewed, they are merely sensible or are quite intellectual, may yet subjectively be united to gratification or grief, however imperceptible either may be; because they all affect the feeling of life, and none of them, so far as it is a modification of the subject, can be indifferent. And so, as Epicurus maintained, all gratification or grief may ultimately be corporeal, whether it arises from the representations of the Imagination or the Understanding; because life without a feeling of bodily organs would be merely a consciousness of existence, without any feeling of well-being or the reverse, i.e. of the furthering or the checking of the vital powers. For the mind is by itself alone life (the principle of life), and hindrances or furtherances must be sought outside it and yet in the man, consequently in union with his body.

If, however, we place the satisfaction in the object altogether in the fact that it gratifies us by charm or emotion, we must not assume that any other man agrees with the aesthetical judgement which we pass; for as to these each one rightly consults his own individual sensibility. But in that case all censorship of taste would disappear, except indeed the example afforded by the accidental agreement of others in their judgements were regarded as commanding our assent; and this principle we should probably resist, and should appeal to the natural right of subjecting the judgement, which rests on the immediate feeling of our own well-being, to our own sense and not to that of any other man.

If then the judgement of taste is not to be valid merely egoistically, but according to its inner nature,—i.e. on account of itself and not on account of the examples that others give of their taste,—to be necessarily valid pluralistically, if we regard it as a judgement which may exact the adhesion of every one; then there must lie at its basis some a priori principle (whether objective or subjective) to which we can never attain by seeking out the empirical laws of mental changes. For these only enable us to know how we judge, but do not prescribe to us how we ought to judge. They do not supply an unconditioned command,63 such as judgements of taste presuppose, inasmuch as they require that the satisfaction be immediately connected with the representation. Thus the empirical exposition of aesthetical judgements may be a beginning of a collection of materials for a higher investigation; but a transcendental discussion of this faculty is also possible, and is an essential part of the Critique of Taste. For if it had not a priori principles, it could not possibly pass sentence on the judgements of others, and it could not approve or blame them with any appearance of right.

The remaining part of the Analytic of the Aesthetical Judgement contains first the

DEDUCTION OF [PURE64] AESTHETICAL JUDGEMENTS

§ 30. The Deduction of aesthetical judgements on the objects of nature must not be directed to what we call Sublime in nature, but only to the Beautiful.

The claim of an aesthetical judgement to universal validity for every subject requires, as a judgement resting on some a priori principle, a Deduction (or legitimatising of its pretensions) in addition to its Exposition; if it is concerned with satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the form of the Object. Of this kind are judgements of taste about the Beautiful in Nature. For in that case the purposiveness has its ground in the Object and in its figure, although it does not indicate the reference of this to other objects according to concepts (for a cognitive judgement), but merely has to do in general with the apprehension of this form, so far as it shows itself conformable in the mind to the faculty of concepts and to that of their presentation (which is identical with that of apprehension). We can thus, in respect of the Beautiful in nature, suggest many questions touching the cause of this purposiveness of their forms, e.g. to explain why nature has scattered abroad beauty with such profusion, even in the depth of the ocean, where the human eye (for which alone that purposiveness exists) but seldom penetrates.

But the Sublime in nature—if we are passing upon it a pure aesthetical judgement, not mixed up with any concepts of perfection or objective purposiveness, in which case it would be a teleological judgement—may be regarded as quite formless or devoid of figure, and yet as the object of a pure satisfaction; and it may display a subjective purposiveness in the given representation. And we ask if, for an aesthetical judgement of this kind,—over and above the Exposition of what is thought in it,—a Deduction also of its claim to any (subjective) a priori principle may be demanded?

To which we may answer that the Sublime in nature is improperly so called, and that properly speaking the word should only be applied to a state of mind, or rather to its foundation in human nature. The apprehension of an otherwise formless and unpurposive object gives merely the occasion, through which we become conscious of such a state; the object is thus employed as subjectively purposive, but is not judged as such in itself and on account of its form (it is, as it were, a species finalis accepta, non data). Hence our Exposition of judgements concerning the Sublime in nature was at the same time their Deduction. For when we analysed the reflection of the Judgement in such acts, we found in them a purposive relation of the cognitive faculties, which must be ascribed ultimately to the faculty of purposes (the will), and hence is itself purposive a priori. This then immediately involves the Deduction, i.e. the justification of the claim of such a judgement to universal and necessary validity.

We shall therefore only have to seek for the deduction of judgements of Taste, i.e. of judgements about the Beauty of natural things; we shall thus treat satisfactorily the problem with which the whole faculty of aesthetical Judgement is concerned.

§ 31. Of the method of deduction of judgements of Taste

A Deduction, i.e. the guarantee of the legitimacy of a class of judgements, is only obligatory if the judgement lays claim to necessity. This it does, if it demands even subjective universality or the agreement of every one, although it is not a judgement of cognition but only one of pleasure or pain in a given object; i.e. it assumes a subjective purposiveness thoroughly valid for every one, which must not be based on any concept of the thing, because the judgement is one of taste.

We have before us in the latter case no cognitive judgement—neither a theoretical one based on the concept of a Nature in general formed by the Understanding, nor a (pure) practical one based on the Idea of Freedom, as given a priori by Reason. Therefore we have to justify a priori the validity neither of a judgement which represents what a thing is, nor of one which prescribes that I ought to do something in order to produce it. We have merely to prove for the Judgement generally the universal validity of a singular judgement that expresses the subjective purposiveness of an empirical representation of the form of an object; in order to explain how it is possible that a thing can please in the mere act of judging it (without sensation or concept), and how the satisfaction of one man can be proclaimed as a rule for every other; just as the act of judging of an object for the sake of a cognition in general has universal rules.

If now this universal validity is not to be based on any collecting of the suffrages of others, or on any questioning of them as to the kind of sensations they have, but is to rest, as it were, on an autonomy of the judging subject in respect of the feeling of pleasure (in the given representation), i.e. on his own taste, and yet is not to be derived from concepts; then a judgement like this—such as the judgement of taste is, in fact—has a twofold logical peculiarity. First, there is its a priori universal validity, which is not a logical universality in accordance with concepts, but the universality of a singular judgement. Secondly, it has a necessity (which must always rest on a priori grounds), which however does not depend on any a priori grounds of proof, through the representation of which the assent that every one concedes to the judgement of taste could be exacted.

The solution of these logical peculiarities, wherein a judgement of taste is different from all cognitive judgements—if we at the outset abstract from all content, viz. from the feeling of pleasure, and merely compare the aesthetical form with the form of objective judgements as logic prescribes it—is sufficient by itself for the deduction of this singular faculty. We shall then represent and elucidate by examples these characteristic properties of taste.

§ 32. First peculiarity of the judgement of Taste

The judgement of taste determines its object in respect of satisfaction (in its beauty) with an accompanying claim for the assent of every one, just as if it were objective.

To say that “this flower is beautiful” is the same as to assert its proper claim to satisfy every one. By the pleasantness of its smell it has no such claim. A smell which one man enjoys gives another a headache. Now what are we to presume from this except that beauty is to be regarded as a property of the flower itself, which does not accommodate itself to any diversity of persons or of their sensitive organs, but to which these must accommodate themselves if they are to pass any judgement upon it? And yet this is not so. For a judgement of taste consists in calling a thing beautiful just because of that characteristic in respect of which it accommodates itself to our mode of apprehension.

Moreover, it is required of every judgement which is to prove the taste of the subject, that the subject shall judge by himself, without needing to grope about empirically among the judgements of others, and acquaint himself previously as to their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the same object; thus his judgement should be pronounced a priori, and not be a mere imitation because the thing actually gives universal pleasure. One would think, however, that an a priori judgement must contain a concept of the Object, for the cognition of which it contains the principle; but the judgement of taste is not based upon concepts at all, and is in general not a cognitive but an aesthetical judgement.

Thus a young poet does not permit himself to be dissuaded from his conviction that his poem is beautiful, by the judgement of the public or of his friends; and if he gives ear to them he does so, not because he now judges differently, but because, although (in regard to him) the whole public has false taste, in his desire for applause he finds reason for accommodating himself to the common error (even against his judgement). It is only at a later time, when his Judgement has been sharpened by exercise, that he voluntarily departs from his former judgements; just as he proceeds with those of his judgements which rest upon Reason. Taste [merely]65 claims autonomy. To make the judgements of others the determining grounds of his own would be heteronomy.

That we, and rightly, recommend the works of the ancients as models and call their authors classical, thus forming among writers a kind of noble class who give laws to the people by their example, seems to indicate a posteriori sources of taste, and to contradict the autonomy of taste in every subject. But we might just as well say that the old mathematicians,—who are regarded up to the present day as supplying models not easily to be dispensed with for the supreme profundity and elegance of their synthetical methods,—prove that our Reason is only imitative, and that we have not the faculty of producing from it in combination with intuition rigid proofs by means of the construction of concepts.66 There is no use of our powers, however free, no use of Reason itself (which must create all its judgements a priori from common sources) which would not give rise to faulty attempts, if every subject had always to begin anew from the rude basis of his natural state, and if others had not preceded him with their attempts. Not that these make mere imitators of those who come after them, but rather by their procedure they put others on the track of seeking in themselves principles and so of pursuing their own course, often a better one. Even in religion—where certainly every one has to derive the rule of his conduct from himself, because he remains responsible for it and cannot shift the blame of his transgressions upon others, whether his teachers or his predecessors—there is never as much accomplished by means of universal precepts, either obtained from priests or philosophers or got from oneself, as by means of an example of virtue or holiness which, exhibited in history, does not dispense with the autonomy of virtue based on the proper and original Idea of morality (a priori), or change it into a mechanical imitation. Following, involving something precedent, not “imitation,” is the right expression for all influence that the products of an exemplary author may have upon others. And this only means that we draw from the same sources as our predecessor did, and learn from him only the way to avail ourselves of them. But of all faculties and talents Taste, because its judgement is not determinable by concepts and precepts, is just that one which most needs examples of what has in the progress of culture received the longest approval; that it may not become again uncivilised and return to the crudeness of its first essays.

§ 33. Second peculiarity of the judgement of Taste

The judgement of taste is not determinable by grounds of proof, just as if it were merely subjective.

If a man, in the first place, does not find a building, a prospect, or a poem beautiful, a hundred voices all highly praising it will not force his inmost agreement. He may indeed feign that it pleases him in order that he may not be regarded as devoid of taste; he may even begin to doubt whether he has formed his taste on a knowledge of a sufficient number of objects of a certain kind (just as one, who believes that he recognises in the distance as a forest, something which all others regard as a town, doubts the judgement of his own sight). But he clearly sees that the agreement of others gives no valid proof of the judgement about beauty. Others might perhaps see and observe for him; and what many have seen in one way, although he believes that he has seen it differently, might serve him as an adequate ground of proof of a theoretical and consequently logical judgement. But that a thing has pleased others could never serve as the basis of an aesthetical judgement. A judgement of others which is unfavourable to ours may indeed rightly make us scrutinise our own with care, but it can never convince us of its incorrectness. There is therefore no empirical ground of proof which would force a judgement of taste upon any one.

Still less, in the second place, can an a priori proof determine according to definite rules a judgement about beauty. If a man reads me a poem of his or brings me to a play, which does not after all suit my taste, he may bring forward in proof of the beauty of his poem Batteux67 or Lessing or still more ancient and famous critics of taste, and all the rules laid down by them; certain passages which displease me may agree very well with rules of beauty (as they have been put forth by these writers and are universally recognised): but I stop my ears, I will listen to no arguments and no reasoning; and I will rather assume that these rules of the critics are false, or at least that they do not apply to the case in question, than admit that my judgement should be determined by grounds of proof a priori. For it is to be a judgement of Taste and not of Understanding or Reason.

It seems that this is one of the chief reasons why this aesthetical faculty of judgement has been given the name of Taste. For though a man enumerate to me all the ingredients of a dish, and remark that each is separately pleasant to me and further extol with justice the wholesomeness of this particular food—yet am I deaf to all these reasons; I try the dish with my tongue and my palate, and thereafter (and not according to universal principles) do I pass my judgement.

In fact the judgement of Taste always takes the form of a singular judgement about an Object. The Understanding can form a universal judgement by comparing the Object in point of the satisfaction it affords with the judgement of others upon it: e.g. “all tulips are beautiful.” But then this is not a judgement of taste but a logical judgement, which takes the relation of an Object to taste as the predicate of things of a certain species. That judgement, however, in which I find an individual given tulip beautiful, i.e. in which I find my satisfaction in it to be universally valid, is alone a judgement of taste. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that, although it has merely subjective validity, it claims the assent of all subjects, exactly as it would do if it were an objective judgement resting on grounds of knowledge, that could be established by a proof.

§ 34. There is no objective principle of Taste possible

By a principle of taste I mean a principle under the condition of which we could subsume the concept of an object and thus infer by means of a syllogism that the object is beautiful. But that is absolutely impossible. For I must feel the pleasure immediately in the representation of the object, and of that I can be persuaded by no grounds of proof whatever. Although, as Hume says,68 all critics can reason more plausibly than cooks, yet the same fate awaits them. They cannot expect the determining ground of their judgement [to be derived] from the force of the proofs, but only from the reflection of the subject upon its own proper state (of pleasure or pain), all precepts and rules being rejected.

But although critics can and ought to pursue their reasonings so that our judgements of taste may be corrected and extended, it is not with a view to set forth the determining ground of this kind of aesthetical judgements in a universally applicable formula, which is impossible; but rather to investigate the cognitive faculties and their exercise in these judgements, and to explain by examples the reciprocal subjective purposiveness, the form of which, as has been shown above, in a given representation, constitutes the beauty of the object. Therefore the Critique of Taste is only subjective as regards the representation through which an Object is given to us; viz. it is the art or science of reducing to rules the reciprocal relation between the Understanding and the Imagination in the given representation (without reference to any preceding sensation or concept). That is, it is the art or science of reducing to rules their accordance or discordance, and of determining them with regard to their conditions. It is an art, if it only shows this by examples; it is a science if it derives the possibility of such judgements from the nature of these faculties, as cognitive faculties in general. We have here, in Transcendental Criticism, only to do with the latter. It should develop and justify the subjective principle of taste, as an a priori principle of the Judgement. This Critique, as an art, merely seeks to apply, in the judging of objects, the physiological (here psychological), and therefore empirical rules, according to which taste actually proceeds (without taking any account of their possibility); and it criticises the products of beautiful art just as, regarded as a science, it criticises the faculty by which they are judged.

§ 35. The principle of Taste is the subjective principle of Judgement in general

The judgement of taste is distinguished from a logical judgement in this, that the latter subsumes a representation under the concept of the Object, while the former does not subsume it under any concept; because otherwise the necessary universal agreement [in these judgements] would be capable of being enforced by proofs. Nevertheless it is like the latter in this, that it claims universality and necessity, though not according to concepts of the Object, and consequently a merely subjective necessity. Now, because the concepts in a judgement constitute its content (what belongs to the cognition of the Object), but the judgement of taste is not determinable by concepts, it is based only on the subjective formal condition of a judgement in general. The subjective condition of all judgements is the faculty of Judgement itself. This when used with reference to a representation by which an object is given, requires the accordance of two representative powers: viz. Imagination (for the intuition and comprehension of the manifold) and Understanding (for the concept as a representation of the unity of this comprehension). Now because no concept of the Object lies here at the basis of the judgement, it can only consist in the subsumption of the Imagination itself (in the case of a representation by which an object is given) under the conditions that the Understanding requires to pass from intuition to concepts. That is, because the freedom of the Imagination consists in the fact that it schematises without any concept, the judgement of taste must rest on a mere sensation of the reciprocal activity of the Imagination in its freedom and the Understanding with its conformity to law. It must therefore rest on a feeling, which makes us judge the object by the purposiveness of the representation (by which an object is given) in respect of the furtherance of the cognitive faculty in its free play. Taste, then, as subjective Judgement, contains a principle of subsumption, not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of intuitions or presentations (i.e. the Imagination) under the faculty of the concepts (i.e. the Understanding); so far as the former in its freedom harmonises with the latter in its conformity to law.

In order to discover this ground of legitimacy by a Deduction of the judgements of taste we can only take as a clue the formal peculiarities of this kind of judgements, and consequently can only consider their logical form.

§ 36. Of the problem of a Deduction of judgements of Taste

The concept of an Object in general can immediately be combined with the perception of an object, containing its empirical predicates, so as to form a cognitive judgement; and it is thus that a judgement of experience is produced.69 At the basis of this lie a priori concepts of the synthetical unity of the manifold of intuition, by which the manifold is thought as the determination of an Object. These concepts (the Categories) require a Deduction, which is given in the Critique of pure Reason; and by it we can get the solution of the problem, how are synthetical a priori cognitive judgements possible? This problem concerns then the a priori principles of the pure Understanding and its theoretical judgements.

But with a perception there can also be combined a feeling of pleasure (or pain) and a satisfaction, that accompanies the representation of the Object and serves instead of its predicate; thus there can result an aesthetical non-cognitive judgement. At the basis of such a judgement—if it is not a mere judgement of sensation but a formal judgement of reflection, which imputes the same satisfaction necessarily to every one,—must lie some a priori principle; which may be merely subjective (if an objective one should prove impossible for judgements of this kind), but also as such may need a Deduction, that we may thereby comprehend how an aesthetical judgement can lay claim to necessity. On this is founded the problem with which we are now occupied, how are judgements of taste possible? This problem then has to do with the a priori principles of the pure faculty of Judgement in aesthetical judgements; i.e. judgements in which it has not (as in theoretical ones) merely to subsume under objective concepts of Understanding, and in which it is subject to a law, but in which it is, itself, subjectively, both object and law.

This problem then may be thus represented: how is a judgement possible, in which merely from our own feeling of pleasure in an object, independently of its concept, we judge that this pleasure attaches to the representation of the same Object in every other subject, and that a priori without waiting for the accordance of others?

It is easy to see that judgements of taste are synthetical, because they go beyond the concept and even beyond the intuition of the Object, and add to that intuition as predicate something that is not a cognition, viz. a feeling of pleasure (or pain). Although the predicate (of the personal pleasure bound up with the representation) is empirical, nevertheless, as concerns the required assent of every one the judgements are a priori, or desire to be regarded as such; and this is already involved in the expressions of this claim. Thus this problem of the Critique of Judgement belongs to the general problem of transcendental philosophy, how are synthetical a priori judgements possible?

§ 37. What is properly asserted a priori of an object in a judgement of Taste

That the representation of an object is immediately bound up with pleasure can only be internally perceived, and if we did not wish to indicate anything more than this it would give a merely empirical judgement. For I cannot combine a definite feeling (of pleasure or pain) with any representation except where there is at bottom an a priori principle in the Reason determining the Will. In that case the pleasure (in the moral feeling) is the consequence of the principle, but cannot be compared with the pleasure in taste, because it requires a definite concept of a law; and the latter pleasure, on the contrary, must be bound up with the mere act of judging, prior to all concepts. Hence also all judgements of taste are singular judgements, because they do not combine their predicate of satisfaction with a concept, but with a given individual empirical representation.

And so it is not the pleasure, but the universal validity of this pleasure, perceived as mentally bound up with the mere judgement upon an object, which is represented a priori in a judgement of taste as a universal rule for the Judgement and valid for every one. It is an empirical judgement [to say] that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure. But it is an a priori judgement [to say] that I find it beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction necessarily to every one.

§ 38. Deduction of judgements of Taste

If it be admitted that in a pure judgement of taste the satisfaction in the object is combined with the mere act of judging its form, it is nothing else than its subjective purposiveness for the Judgement which we feel to be mentally combined with the representation of the object. The Judgement, as regards the formal rules of its action, apart from all matter (whether sensation or concept), can only be directed to the subjective conditions of its employment in general (it is applied70 neither to a particular mode of sense nor to a particular concept of the Understanding); and consequently to that subjective [element] which we can presuppose in all men (as requisite for possible cognition in general). Thus the agreement of a representation with these conditions of the Judgement must be capable of being assumed as valid a priori for every one. I.e. we may rightly impute to every one the pleasure or the subjective purposiveness of the representation for the relation between the cognitive faculties in the act of judging a sensible object in general.71

Remark

This Deduction is thus easy, because it has no need to justify the objective reality of any concept, for Beauty is not a concept of the Object and the judgement of taste is not cognitive. It only maintains that we are justified in presupposing universally in every man those subjective conditions of the Judgement which we find in ourselves; and further, that we have rightly subsumed the given Object under these conditions. The latter has indeed unavoidable difficulties which do not beset the logical Judgement. There we subsume under concepts, but in the aesthetical Judgement under a merely sensible relation between the Imagination and Understanding mutually harmonising in the representation of the form of the Object,—in which case the subsumption may easily be fallacious. Yet the legitimacy of the claim of the Judgement in counting upon universal assent is not thus annulled; it reduces itself merely to the correctness of the principle of judging validly for every one from subjective grounds. For as to the difficulty or doubt concerning the correctness of the subsumption under that principle, it makes the legitimacy of the claim of an aesthetical judgement in general to such validity and the principle of the same, as little doubtful, as the like faulty (though neither so commonly nor readily faulty) subsumption of the logical Judgement under its principle can make the latter, an objective principle, doubtful. But if the question were to be, how is it possible to assume nature a priori to be a complex of objects of taste? this problem has reference to Teleology, because it must be regarded as a purpose of nature essentially belonging to its concept to exhibit forms that are purposive for our Judgement. But the correctness of this latter assumption is very doubtful, whereas the efficacy of natural beauties is patent to experience.

§ 39. Of the communicability of a Sensation

If sensation, as the real in perception, is related to knowledge, it is called sensation of the senses; and its specific quality may be represented as generally communicable in a uniform way, if we assume that every one has senses like our own. But this cannot at all be presupposed of any single sensation. To a man who is deficient in the sense of smell, this kind of sensation cannot be communicated; and even if it is not wholly deficient, we cannot be certain that he gets exactly the same sensation from a flower that we have. But even more must we represent men as differing in respect of the pleasantness or unpleasantness involved in the sensation from the same object of sense; and it is absolutely not to be required that every man should take pleasure in the same objects. Pleasure of this kind, because it comes into the mind through the senses, in respect of which therefore we are passive, we may call the pleasure of enjoyment.

Satisfaction in an action because of its moral character is on the other hand not the pleasure of enjoyment, but of spontaneity and its accordance with the Idea of its destination. But this feeling, called moral, requires concepts, and presents not free purposiveness, but purposiveness that is conformable to law; it therefore admits of being universally communicated only by means of Reason, and, if the pleasure is to be homogeneous for every one, by very definite practical concepts of Reason.

Pleasure in the Sublime in nature, regarded as a pleasure of rational contemplation, also makes claim to universal participation; but it presupposes, besides, a different feeling, viz. that of our supersensible destination, which, however obscurely, has a moral foundation. But that other men will take account of it, and will find a satisfaction in the consideration of the wild greatness of nature (that certainly cannot be ascribed to its aspect, which is rather terrifying), I am not absolutely justified in supposing. Nevertheless, in consideration of the fact that on every suitable occasion regard should be had to these moral dispositions, I can impute such satisfaction to every man, but only by means of the moral law which on its side again is based on concepts of Reason.

On the contrary, pleasure in the Beautiful is neither a pleasure of enjoyment nor of a law-abiding activity, nor even of rational contemplation in accordance with Ideas, but of mere reflection. Without having as rule any purpose or fundamental proposition, this pleasure accompanies the ordinary apprehension of an object by the Imagination, as faculty of intuition, in relation with the Understanding, as faculty of concepts, by means of a procedure of the Judgement which it must also exercise on behalf of the commonest experience; only that in the latter case it is in order to perceive an empirical objective concept, in the former case (in aesthetical judgements) merely to perceive the accordance of the representation with the harmonious (subjectively purposive) activity of both cognitive faculties in their freedom, i.e. to feel with pleasure the mental state produced by the representation. This pleasure must necessarily depend for every one on the same conditions, for they are subjective conditions of the possibility of a cognition in general; and the proportion between these cognitive faculties requisite for Taste is also requisite for that ordinary sound Understanding which we have to presuppose in every one. Therefore he who judges with taste (if only he does not go astray in this act of consciousness and mistake matter for form or charm for beauty) may impute to every one subjective purposiveness, i.e. his satisfaction in the Object, and may assume his feeling to be universally communicable and that without the mediation of concepts.

§ 40. Of Taste as a kind of sensus communis

We often give to the Judgement, if we are considering the result rather than the act of its reflection, the name of a sense, and we speak of a sense of truth, or of a sense of decorum, of justice, etc. And yet we know, or at least we ought to know, that these concepts cannot have their place in Sense, and further, that Sense has not the least capacity for expressing universal rules; but that no representation of truth, fitness, beauty, or justice, and so forth, could come into our thoughts if we could not rise beyond Sense to higher faculties of cognition. The common Understanding of men, which, as the mere sound (not yet cultivated) Understanding, we regard as the least to be expected from any one claiming the name of man, has therefore the doubtful honour of being given the name of common sense (sensus communis); and in such a way that by the name common (not merely in our language, where the word actually has a double signification, but in many others) we understand vulgar, that which is everywhere met with, the possession of which indicates absolutely no merit or superiority.

But under the sensus communis we must include the Idea of a communal sense, i.e. of a faculty of judgement, which in its reflection takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought; in order as it were to compare its judgement with the collective Reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would injuriously affect the judgement. This is done by comparing our judgement with the possible rather than the actual judgements of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man, by abstracting from the limitations which contingently attach to our own judgement. This, again, is brought about by leaving aside as much as possible the matter of our representative state, i.e. sensation, and simply having respect to the formal peculiarities of our representation or representative state. Now this operation of reflection seems perhaps too artificial to be attributed to the faculty called common sense; but it only appears so, when expressed in abstract formulae. In itself there is nothing more natural than to abstract from charm or emotion if we are seeking a judgement that is to serve as a universal rule.

The following Maxims of common human Understanding do not properly come in here, as parts of the Critique of Taste; but yet they may serve to elucidate its fundamental propositions. They are: 1° to think for oneself; 2° to put ourselves in thought in the place of every one else; 3° always to think consistently. The first is the maxim of unprejudiced thought; the second of enlarged thought; the third of consecutive thought.72 The first is the maxim of a Reason never passive. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of the Reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice of all is to represent nature as not subject to the rules that the Understanding places at its basis by means of its own essential law, i.e. is superstition. Deliverance from superstition is called enlightenment;73 because although this name belongs to deliverance from prejudices in general, yet superstition specially (in sensu eminenti) deserves to be called a prejudice. For the blindness in which superstition places us, which it even imposes on us as an obligation, makes the need of being guided by others, and the consequent passive state of our Reason, peculiarly noticeable. As regards the second maxim of the mind, we are otherwise wont to call him limited (borné, the opposite of enlarged) whose talents attain to no great use (especially as regards intensity). But here we are not speaking of the faculty of cognition, but of the mode of thought which makes a purposive use thereof. However small may be the area or the degree to which a man’s natural gifts reach, yet it indicates a man of enlarged thought if he disregards the subjective private conditions of his own judgement, by which so many others are confined, and reflects upon it from a universal standpoint (which he can only determine by placing himself at the standpoint of others). The third maxim, viz. that of consecutive thought, is the most difficult to attain, and can only be attained by the combination of both the former, and after the constant observance of them has grown into a habit. We may say that the first of these maxims is the maxim of Understanding, the second of Judgement, and the third of Reason.

I take up again the threads interrupted by this digression, and I say that Taste can be called sensus communis with more justice than sound Understanding can; and that the aesthetical Judgement rather than the intellectual may bear the name of a communal sense,74 if we are willing to use the word “sense” of an effect of mere reflection upon the mind: for then we understand by sense the feeling of pleasure. We could even define Taste as the faculty of judging of that which makes universally communicable, without the mediation of a concept, our feeling in a given representation.

The skill that men have in communicating their thoughts requires also a relation between the Imagination and the Understanding in order to associate intuitions with concepts, and concepts again with those concepts, which then combine in a cognition. But in that case the agreement of the two mental powers is according to law, under the constraint of definite concepts. Only where the Imagination in its freedom awakens the Understanding, and is put by it into regular play without the aid of concepts, does the representation communicate itself not as a thought but as an internal feeling of a purposive state of the mind.

Taste is then the faculty of judging a priori of the communicability of feelings that are bound up with a given representation (without the mediation of a concept).

If we could assume that the mere universal communicability of a feeling must carry in itself an interest for us with it (which, however, we are not justified in concluding from the character of a merely reflective Judgement), we should be able to explain why the feeling in the judgement of taste comes to be imputed to every one, so to speak, as a duty.

§ 41. Of the empirical interest in the Beautiful

That the judgement of taste by which something is declared beautiful must have no interest as its determining ground has been sufficiently established above. But it does not follow that after it has been given as a pure aesthetical judgement, no interest can be combined with it. This combination, however, can only be indirect, i.e. taste must first of all be represented as combined with something else, in order that we may unite with the satisfaction of mere reflection upon an object a pleasure in its existence (as that wherein all interest consists). For here also in aesthetical judgements what we say in cognitive judgements (of things in general) is valid; a posse ad esse non valet consequentia. This something else may be empirical, viz. an inclination proper to human nature, or intellectual, as the property of the Will of being capable of a priori determination by Reason. Both these involve a satisfaction in the presence of an Object, and so can lay the foundation for an interest in what has by itself pleased without reference to any interest whatever.

Empirically the Beautiful interests only in society. If we admit the impulse to society as natural to man, and his fitness for it, and his propension towards it, i.e. sociability, as a requisite for man as a being destined for society, and so as a property belonging to humanity, we cannot escape from regarding taste as a faculty for judging everything in respect of which we can communicate our feeling to all other men, and so as a means of furthering that which every one’s natural inclination desires.

A man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor would he seek for flowers, still less would he plant them, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is only in society that it occurs to him to be not merely a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning of civilisation). For such do we judge him to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others, and who is not contented with an Object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others. Again, every one expects and requires from every one else this reference to universal communication [of pleasure], as it were from an original compact dictated by humanity itself. Thus, doubtless, in the beginning only those things which attracted the senses, e.g. colours for painting oneself (roucou among the Carabs and cinnabar among the Iroquois), flowers, mussel shells, beautiful feathers, etc.,—but in time beautiful forms also (e.g. in their canoes, and clothes, etc.), which bring with them no gratification, or satisfaction of enjoyment—were important in society, and were combined with great interest. Until at last civilisation, having reached its highest point, makes out of this almost the main business of refined inclination; and sensations are only regarded as of worth in so far as they can be universally communicated. Here, although the pleasure which every one has in such an object is inconsiderable and in itself without any marked interest, yet the Idea of its universal communicability increases its worth in an almost infinite degree.

But this interest that indirectly attaches to the Beautiful through our inclination to society, and consequently is empirical, is of no importance for us here; because we have only to look to what may have a reference, although only indirectly, to the judgement of taste a priori. For if even in this form an interest bound up therewith should discover itself, taste would discover a transition of our judging faculty from sense-enjoyment to moral feeling; and so not only would we be the better guided in employing taste purposively, but there would be thus presented a link in the chain of the human faculties a priori, on which all legislation must depend. We can only say thus much about the empirical interest in objects of taste and in taste itself. Since it is subservient to inclination, however refined the latter may be, it may easily be confounded with all the inclinations and passions, which attain their greatest variety and highest degree in society; and the interest in the Beautiful, if it is grounded thereon, can only furnish a very ambiguous transition from the Pleasant to the Good. But whether this can or cannot be furthered by taste, taken in its purity, is what we now have to investigate.

§ 42. Of the intellectual interest in the Beautiful

With the best intentions those persons who refer all activities, to which their inner natural dispositions impel men, to the final purpose of humanity, viz. the morally good, have regarded the taking an interest in the Beautiful in general as a mark of good moral character. But it is not without reason that they have been contradicted by others who rely on experience; for this shows that connoisseurs in taste, not only often but generally, are given up to idle, capricious, and mischievous passions, and that they could perhaps make less claim than others to any pre-eminent attachment to moral principles. Thus it would seem that the feeling for the Beautiful is not only (as actually is the case) specifically different from the Moral feeling; but that the interest which can be bound up with it is hardly compatible with moral interest, and certainly has no inner affinity therewith.

Now I admit at once that the interest in the Beautiful of Art (under which I include the artificial use of natural beauties for adornment and so for vanity) furnishes no proof whatever of a disposition attached to the morally good or even inclined thereto. But on the other hand, I maintain that to take an immediate interest in the Beauty of Nature (not merely to have taste in judging it) is always a mark of a good soul; and that when this interest is habitual it at least indicates a frame of mind favourable to the moral feeling, if it is voluntarily bound up with the contemplation of nature. It is to be remembered, however, that I here speak strictly of the beautiful forms of Nature, and I set aside the charms, that she is wont to combine so abundantly with them; because, though the interest in the latter is indeed immediate, it is only empirical.

He who by himself (and without any design of communicating his observations to others) regards the beautiful figure of a wild flower, a bird, an insect, etc., with admiration and love—who would not willingly miss it in Nature, although it may bring him some hurt, who still less wants any advantage from it—he takes an immediate and also an intellectual interest in the beauty of Nature. I.e. it is not merely the form of the product of nature which pleases him, but its very presence pleases him, the charms of sense having no share in this pleasure and no purpose whatever being combined with it.

But it is noteworthy that if we secretly deceived this lover of the beautiful by planting in the ground artificial flowers (which can be manufactured exactly like natural ones), or by placing artificially carved birds on the boughs of trees, and he discovered the deceit, the immediate interest that he previously took in them would disappear at once; though, perhaps, a different interest, viz. the interest of vanity in adorning his chamber with them for the eyes of others, would take its place. This thought then must accompany our intuition and reflection on beauty, viz. that nature has produced it; and on this alone is based the immediate interest that we take in it. Otherwise, there remains a mere judgement of taste, either devoid of all interest, or bound up with a mediate interest, viz. in that it has reference to society; which latter [interest] furnishes no certain indications of a morally good disposition.

This superiority of natural to artificial beauty in that it alone arouses an immediate interest, although as regards form the first may be surpassed by the second, harmonises with the refined and well-grounded habit of thought of all men who have cultivated their moral feeling. If a man who has taste enough to judge of the products of beautiful Art with the greatest accuracy and refinement willingly leaves a chamber where are to be found those beauties that minister to vanity or to any social joys, and turns to the beautiful in Nature in order to find, as it were, delight for his spirit in a train of thought that he can never completely evolve, we will regard this choice of his with veneration, and attribute to him a beautiful soul, to which no connoisseur or lover [of Art] can lay claim on account of the interest he takes in his [artistic] objects.—What now is the difference in our estimation of these two different kinds of Objects, which in the judgement of mere taste it is hard to compare in point of superiority?

We have a faculty of mere aesthetical Judgement by which we judge forms without the aid of concepts, and find a satisfaction in this mere act of judgement; this we make into a rule for every one, without this judgement either being based on or producing any interest.—On the other hand, we have also a faculty of intellectual Judgement which determines an a priori satisfaction for the mere forms of practical maxims (so far as they are in themselves qualified for universal legislation); this we make into a law for every one, without our judgement being based on any interest whatever, though in this case it produces such an interest. The pleasure or pain in the former judgement is called that of taste, in the latter, that of moral feeling.

But it also interests Reason that the Ideas (for which in moral feeling it arouses an immediate interest) should have objective reality; i.e. that nature should at least show a trace or give an indication that it contains in itself some ground for assuming a regular agreement of its products with our entirely disinterested satisfaction (which we recognise a priori as a law for every one, without being able to base it upon proofs). Hence Reason must take an interest in every expression on the part of nature of an agreement of this kind. Consequently, the mind cannot ponder upon the beauty of Nature without finding itself at the same time interested therein. But this interest is akin to moral, and he who takes such an interest in the beauties of nature can do so only in so far as he previously has firmly established his interest in the morally good. If, therefore, the beauty of Nature interests a man immediately we have reason for attributing to him, at least, a basis for a good moral disposition.

It will be said that this account of aesthetical judgements, as akin to the moral feeling, seems far too studied to be regarded as the true interpretation of that cipher through which Nature speaks to us figuratively in her beautiful forms. However, in the first place, this immediate interest in the beautiful is actually not common; but is peculiar to those whose mental disposition either has already been cultivated in the direction of the good or is eminently susceptible of such cultivation. In that case the analogy between the pure judgement of taste which, independently of any interest, causes us to feel a satisfaction, and also represents it a priori as suitable to humanity in general, and the moral judgement that does the same thing from concepts without any clear, subtle, and premeditated reflection—this analogy leads to a similar immediate interest in the objects of the former as in those of the latter; only that in the one case the interest is free, in the other it is based on objective laws. To this is to be added our admiration for Nature, which displays itself in its beautiful products as Art, not merely by chance, but as it were designedly, in accordance with a regular arrangement, and as purposiveness without purpose. This latter, as we never meet with it outside ourselves, we naturally seek in ourselves; and, in fact, in that which constitutes the ultimate purpose of our being, viz. our moral destination. (Of this question as to the ground of the possibility of such natural purposiveness we shall first speak in the Teleology.)

It is easy to explain why the satisfaction in the pure aesthetical judgement in the case of beautiful Art is not combined with an immediate interest as it is in the case of beautiful Nature. For the former is either such an imitation of the latter that it reaches the point of deception and then produces the same effect as natural beauty (for which it is taken); or it is an art obviously directed designedly to our satisfaction. In the latter case the satisfaction in the product would, it is true, be brought about immediately by taste, but it would be only a mediate interest in the cause lying at its root, viz. an art that can only interest by means of its purpose and never in itself. It will, perhaps, be said that this is also the case, if an Object of nature interests us by its beauty only so far as it is associated with a moral Idea. But it is not the Object itself which immediately interests us, but its character in virtue of which it is qualified for such association, which therefore essentially belongs to it.

The charms in beautiful Nature, which are so often found, as it were, blended with beautiful forms, may be referred to modifications either of light (colours) or of sound (tones). For these are the only sensations that imply not merely a sensible feeling but also reflection upon the form of these modifications of Sense; and thus they involve in themselves as it were a language by which nature speaks to us, which thus seems to have a higher sense. Thus the white colour of lilies seems to determine the mind to Ideas of innocence; and the seven colours in order from the red to the violet seem to suggest the Ideas of (1) Sublimity, (2) Intrepidity, (3) Candour, (4) Friendliness, (5) Modesty, (6) Constancy, (7) Tenderness. The song of birds proclaims gladsomeness and contentment with existence. At least so we interpret nature, whether it have this design or not. But the interest which we here take in beauty has only to do with the beauty of Nature; it vanishes altogether as soon as we notice that we are deceived and that it is only Art—vanishes so completely that taste can no longer find the thing beautiful or sight find it charming. What is more highly praised by poets than the bewitching and beautiful note of the nightingale in a lonely copse on a still summer evening by the soft light of the moon? And yet we have instances of a merry host, where no such songster was to be found, deceiving to their great contentment the guests who were staying with him to enjoy the country air, by hiding in a bush a mischievous boy who knew how to produce this sound exactly like nature (by means of a reed or a tube in his mouth). But as soon as we are aware that it is a cheat, no one will remain long listening to the song which before was counted so charming. And it is just the same with the songs of all other birds. It must be Nature or be regarded as Nature, if we are to take an immediate interest in the Beautiful as such; and still more is this the case if we can require that others should take an interest in it too. This happens as a matter of fact when we regard as coarse and ignoble the mental attitude of those persons who have no feeling for beautiful Nature (for thus we describe a susceptibility to interest in its contemplation), and who confine themselves to eating and drinking—to the mere enjoyments of sense.

§ 43. Of Art in general

(1). Art is distinguished from Nature, as doing (facere) is distinguished from acting or working generally (agere), and as the product or result of the former is distinguished as work (opus) from the working (effectus) of the latter.

By right we ought only to describe as Art, production through freedom, i.e. through a will that places Reason at the basis of its actions. For although we like to call the product of bees (regularly built cells of wax) a work of art, this is only by way of analogy: as soon as we feel that this work of theirs is based on no proper rational deliberation, we say that it is a product of Nature (of instinct), and as Art only ascribe it to their Creator.

If, as sometimes happens, in searching through a bog we come upon a bit of shaped wood, we do not say: this is a product of Nature, but, of Art. Its producing cause has conceived a purpose to which the bit of wood owes its form. Elsewhere too we should see art in everything which is made so that a representation of it in its cause must have preceded its actuality (as even in the case of the bees), though the effect could not have been thought by the cause. But if we call anything absolutely a work of art in order to distinguish it from a natural effect, we always understand by that a work of man.

(2). Art regarded as human skill differs from science (as can from know) as a practical faculty does from a theoretical, as Technic does from Theory (as mensuration from geometry). And so what we can do, as soon as we merely know what ought to be done and therefore are sufficiently cognisant of the desired effect, is not called Art. Only that which a man, even if he knows it completely, may not therefore have the skill to accomplish, belongs to Art. Camper75 describes very exactly how the best shoes must be made, but he certainly could not make one.76

(3). Art also differs from handicraft; the first is called free, the other may be called mercenary. We regard the first as if it could only prove purposive as play, i.e. as occupation that is pleasant in itself. But the second is regarded as if it could only be compulsorily imposed upon one as work, i.e. as occupation which is unpleasant (a trouble) in itself, and which is only attractive on account of its effect (e.g. the wage). Whether or not in the graded list of the professions we ought to count watchmakers as artists, but smiths only as handicraftsmen, would require another point of view from which to judge than that which we are here taking up; viz. [we should have to consider] the proportion of talents which must be assumed requisite in these several occupations. Whether or not, again, under the so-called seven free arts some may be included which ought to be classed as sciences, and many that are akin rather to handicraft, I shall not here discuss. But it is not inexpedient to recall that in all free arts there is yet requisite something compulsory, or, as it is called, mechanism, without which the spirit, which must be free in art and which alone inspires the work, would have no body and would evaporate altogether; e.g. in poetry there must be an accuracy and wealth of language, and also prosody and metre. [It is not inexpedient, I say, to recall this], for many modern educators believe that the best way to produce a free art is to remove it from all constraint, and thus to change it from work into mere play.

§ 44. Of beautiful Art

There is no Science of the Beautiful, but only a Critique of it; and there is no such thing as beautiful Science, but only beautiful Art. For as regards the first point, if it could be decided scientifically, i.e. by proofs, whether a thing was to be regarded as beautiful or not, the judgement upon beauty would belong to science and would not be a judgement of taste. And as far as the second point is concerned, a science which should be beautiful as such is a nonentity. For if in such a science we were to ask for grounds and proofs, we would be put off with tasteful phrases (bon-mots).—The source of the common expression, beautiful science, is without doubt nothing else than this, as it has been rightly remarked, that for beautiful art in its entire completeness much science is requisite; e.g. a knowledge of ancient languages, a learned familiarity with classical authors, history, a knowledge of antiquities, etc. And hence these historical sciences, because they form the necessary preparation and basis for beautiful art, and also partly because under them is included the knowledge of the products of beautiful art (rhetoric and poetry), have come to be called beautiful sciences by a confusion of words.

If art which is adequate to the cognition of a possible object performs the actions requisite therefore merely in order to make it actual, it is mechanical art; but if it has for its immediate design the feeling of pleasure, it is called aesthetical art. This is again either pleasant or beautiful. It is the first, if its purpose is that the pleasure should accompany the representations [of the object] regarded as mere sensations; it is the second if they are regarded as modes of cognition.

Pleasant arts are those that are directed merely to enjoyment. Of this class are all those charming arts that can gratify a company at table; e.g. the art of telling stories in an entertaining way, of starting the company in frank and lively conversation, of raising them by jest and laugh to a certain pitch of merriment;77 when, as people say, there may be a great deal of gossip at the feast, but no one will be answerable for what he says, because they are only concerned with momentary entertainment, and not with any permanent material for reflection or subsequent discussion. (Among these are also to be reckoned the way of arranging the table for enjoyment, and, at great feasts, the management of the music. This latter is a wonderful thing. It is meant to dispose to gaiety the minds of the guests, regarded solely as a pleasant noise, without any one paying the least attention to its composition; and it favours the free conversation of each with his neighbour.) Again, to this class belong all games which bring with them no further interest than that of making the time pass imperceptibly.

On the other hand, beautiful art is a mode of representation which is purposive for itself, and which, although devoid of [definite] purpose, yet furthers the culture of the mental powers in reference to social communication.

The universal communicability of a pleasure carries with it in its very concept that the pleasure is not one of enjoyment, from mere sensation, but must be derived from reflection; and thus aesthetical art, as the art of beauty, has for standard the reflective Judgement and not sensation.

§ 45. Beautiful Art is an art, in so far as it seems like nature

In a product of beautiful art we must become conscious that it is Art and not Nature; but yet the purposiveness in its form must seem to be as free from all constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a product of mere nature. On this feeling of freedom in the play of our cognitive faculties, which must at the same time be purposive, rests that pleasure which alone is universally communicable, without being based on concepts. Nature is beautiful because it looks like Art; and Art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as Art while yet it looks like Nature.

For whether we are dealing with natural or with artificial beauty we can say generally: That is beautiful which pleases in the mere act of judging it (not in the sensation of it, or by means of a concept). Now art has always a definite design of producing something. But if this something were bare sensation (something merely subjective), which is to be accompanied with pleasure, the product would please in the act of judgement only by mediation of sensible feeling. And again, if the design were directed towards the production of a definite Object, then, if this were attained by art, the Object would only please by means of concepts. But in both cases the art would not please in the mere act of judging; i.e. it would not please as beautiful, but as mechanical.

Hence the purposiveness in the product of beautiful art, although it is designed, must not seem to be designed; i.e. beautiful art must look like nature, although we are conscious of it as art. But a product of art appears like nature when, although its agreement with the rules, according to which alone the product can become what it ought to be, is punctiliously observed, yet this is not painfully apparent; [the form of the schools does not obtrude itself]78—it shows no trace of the rule having been before the eyes of the artist and having fettered his mental powers.

§ 46. Beautiful Art is the art of genius

Genius is the talent (or natural gift) which gives the rule to Art. Since talent, as the innate productive faculty of the artist, belongs itself to Nature, we may express the matter thus: Genius is the innate mental disposition (ingenium) through which Nature gives the rule to Art.

Whatever may be thought of this definition, whether it is merely arbitrary or whether it is adequate to the concept that we are accustomed to combine with the word genius (which is to be examined in the following paragraphs), we can prove already beforehand that according to the signification of the word here adopted, beautiful arts must necessarily be considered as arts of genius.

For every art presupposes rules by means of which in the first instance a product, if it is to be called artistic, is represented as possible. But the concept of beautiful art does not permit the judgement upon the beauty of a product to be derived from any rule, which has a concept as its determining ground, and therefore has at its basis a concept of the way in which the product is possible. Therefore, beautiful art cannot itself devise the rule according to which it can bring about its product. But since at the same time a product can never be called Art without some precedent rule, Nature in the subject must (by the harmony of its faculties) give the rule to Art; i.e. beautiful Art is only possible as a product of Genius.

We thus see (1) that genius is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given; it is not a mere aptitude for what can be learnt by a rule. Hence originality must be its first property. (2) But since it also can produce original nonsense, its products must be models, i.e. exemplary; and they consequently ought not to spring from imitation, but must serve as a standard or rule of judgement for others. (3) It cannot describe or indicate scientifically how it brings about its products, but it gives the rule just as nature does. Hence the author of a product for which he is indebted to his genius does not himself know how he has come by his Ideas; and he has not the power to devise the like at pleasure or in accordance with a plan, and to communicate it to others in precepts that will enable them to produce similar products. (Hence it is probable that the word genius is derived from genius, that peculiar guiding and guardian spirit given to a man at his birth, from whose suggestion these original Ideas proceed.) (4) Nature by the medium of genius does not prescribe rules to Science, but to Art; and to it only in so far as it is to be beautiful Art.

§ 47. Elucidation and confirmation of the above explanation of Genius

Every one is agreed that genius is entirely opposed to the spirit of imitation. Now since learning is nothing but imitation, it follows that the greatest ability and teachableness (capacity) regarded quâ teachableness, cannot avail for genius. Even if a man thinks or invents for himself, and does not merely take in what others have taught, even if he discovers many things in art and science, this is not the right ground for calling such a (perhaps great) head, a genius (as opposed to him who because he can only learn and imitate is called a shallow-pate). For even these things could be learned, they lie in the natural path of him who investigates and reflects according to rules; and they do not differ specifically from what can be acquired by industry through imitation. Thus we can readily learn all that Newton has set forth in his immortal work on the Principles of Natural Philosophy, however great a head was required to discover it; but we cannot learn to write spirited poetry, however express may be the precepts of the art and however excellent its models. The reason is that Newton could make all his steps, from the first elements of geometry to his own great and profound discoveries, intuitively plain and definite as regards consequence, not only to himself but to every one else. But a Homer or a Wieland cannot show how his Ideas, so rich in fancy and yet so full of thought, come together in his head, simply because he does not know and therefore cannot teach others. In Science then the greatest discoverer only differs in degree from his laborious imitator and pupil; but he differs specifically from him whom Nature has gifted for beautiful Art. And in this there is no depreciation of those great men to whom the human race owes so much gratitude, as compared with nature’s favourites in respect of the talent for beautiful art. For in the fact that the former talent is directed to the ever-advancing greater perfection of knowledge and every advantage depending on it, and at the same time to the imparting this same knowledge to others—in this it has a great superiority over [the talent of] those who deserve the honour of being called geniuses. For art stands still at a certain point; a boundary is set to it beyond which it cannot go, which presumably has been reached long ago and cannot be extended further. Again, artistic skill cannot be communicated; it is imparted to every artist immediately by the hand of nature; and so it dies with him, until nature endows another in the same way, so that he only needs an example in order to put in operation in a similar fashion the talent of which he is conscious.

If now it is a natural gift which must prescribe its rule to art (as beautiful art), of what kind is this rule? It cannot be reduced to a formula and serve as a precept, for then the judgement upon the beautiful would be determinable according to concepts; but the rule must be abstracted from the fact, i.e. from the product, on which others may try their own talent by using it as a model, not to be copied but to be imitated. How this is possible is hard to explain. The Ideas of the artist excite like Ideas in his pupils if nature has endowed them with a like proportion of their mental powers. Hence models of beautiful art are the only means of handing down these Ideas to posterity. This cannot be done by mere descriptions, especially not in the case of the arts of speech, and in this latter classical models are only to be had in the old dead languages, now preserved only as “the learned languages.”

Although mechanical and beautiful art are very different, the first being a mere art of industry and learning and the second of genius, yet there is no beautiful art in which there is not a mechanical element that can be comprehended by rules and followed accordingly, and in which therefore there must be something scholastic as an essential condition. For [in every art] some purpose must be conceived; otherwise we could not ascribe the product to art at all, and it would be a mere product of chance. But in order to accomplish a purpose, definite rules from which we cannot dispense ourselves are requisite. Now since the originality of the talent constitutes an essential (though not the only) element in the character of genius, shallow heads believe that they cannot better show themselves to be full-blown geniuses than by throwing off the constraint of all rules; they believe, in effect, that one could make a braver show on the back of a wild horse than on the back of a trained animal. Genius can only furnish rich material for products of beautiful art; its execution and its form require talent cultivated in the schools, in order to make such a use of this material as will stand examination by the Judgement. But it is quite ridiculous for a man to speak and decide like a genius in things which require the most careful investigation by Reason. One does not know whether to laugh more at the impostor who spreads such a mist round him that we cannot clearly use our Judgement and so use our Imagination the more, or at the public which naïvely imagines that his inability to cognise clearly and to comprehend the masterpiece before him arises from new truths crowding in on him in such abundance that details (duly weighed definitions and accurate examination of fundamental propositions) seem but clumsy work.

§ 48. Of the relation of Genius to Taste

For judging of beautiful objects as such, taste is requisite; but for beautiful art, i.e. for the production of such objects, genius is requisite.

If we consider genius as the talent for beautiful art (which the special meaning of the word implies) and in this point of view analyse it into the faculties which must concur to constitute such a talent, it is necessary in the first instance to determine exactly the difference between natural beauty, the judging of which requires only Taste, and artificial beauty, whose possibility (to which reference must be made in judging such an object) requires Genius.

A natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artificial beauty is a beautiful representation of a thing.

In order to judge of a natural beauty as such I need not have beforehand a concept of what sort of thing the object is to be; i.e. I need not know its material purposiveness (the purpose), but its mere form pleases by itself in the act of judging it without any knowledge of the purpose. But if the object is given as a product of art, and as such is to be declared beautiful, then, because art always supposes a purpose in the cause (and its causality), there must be at bottom in the first instance a concept of what the thing is to be. And as the agreement of the manifold in a thing with its inner destination, its purpose, constitutes the perfection of the thing, it follows that in judging of artificial beauty the perfection of the thing must be taken into account; but in judging of natural beauty (as such) there is no question at all about this.—It is true that in judging of objects of nature, especially objects endowed with life, e.g. a man or a horse, their objective purposiveness also is commonly taken into consideration in judging of their beauty; but then the judgement is no longer purely aesthetical, i.e. a mere judgement of taste. Nature is no longer judged inasmuch as it appears like art, but in so far as it is actual (although superhuman) art; and the teleological judgement serves as the basis and condition of the aesthetical, as a condition to which the latter must have respect. In such a case, e.g. if it is said “that is a beautiful woman,” we think nothing else than this: nature represents in her figure the purposes in view in the shape of a woman’s figure. For we must look beyond the mere form to a concept, if the object is to be thought in such a way by means of a logically conditioned aesthetical judgement.

Beautiful art shows its superiority in this, that it describes as beautiful things which may be in nature ugly or displeasing.79 The Furies, diseases, the devastations of war, etc., may [even regarded as calamitous],80 be described as very beautiful, and even represented in a picture. There is only one kind of ugliness which cannot be represented in accordance with nature, without destroying all aesthetical satisfaction and consequently artificial beauty; viz. that which excites disgust. For in this peculiar sensation, which rests on mere imagination, the object is represented as it were obtruding itself for our enjoyment while we strive against it with all our might. And the artistic representation of the object is no longer distinguished from the nature of the object itself in our sensation, and thus it is impossible that it can be regarded as beautiful. The art of sculpture again, because in its products art is almost interchangeable with nature, excludes from its creations the immediate representation of ugly objects; e.g. it represents death by a beautiful genius, the warlike spirit by Mars, and permits [all such things] to be represented only by an allegory or attribute81 that has a pleasing effect, and thus only indirectly by the aid of the interpretation of Reason, and not for the mere aesthetical Judgement.

So much for the beautiful representation of an object, which is properly only the form of the presentation of a concept, and the means by which the latter is communicated universally.—But to give this form to the product of beautiful art, mere taste is requisite. By taste, after he has exercised and corrected it by manifold examples from art or nature, the artist checks his work; and after many, often toilsome, attempts to content taste he finds the form which satisfies him. Hence this form is not, as it were, a thing of inspiration or the result of a free swing of the mental powers, but of a slow and even painful process of improvement, by which he seeks to render it adequate to his thought, without detriment to the freedom of the play of his powers.

But taste is merely a judging and not a productive faculty; and what is appropriate to it is not therefore a work of beautiful art. It may be only a product belonging to useful and mechanical art or even to science, produced according to definite rules that can be learned and must be exactly followed. But the pleasing form that is given to it is only the vehicle of communication, and a mode, as it were, of presenting it, in respect of which we remain free to a certain extent, although it is combined with a definite purpose. Thus we desire that table appointments, a moral treatise, even a sermon, should have in themselves this form of beautiful art, without it seeming to be sought: but we do not therefore call these things works of beautiful art. Under the latter class are reckoned a poem, a piece of music, a picture gallery, etc.; and in some would-be works of beautiful art we find genius without taste, while in others we find taste without genius.

§ 49. Of the faculties of the mind that constitute Genius

We say of certain products of which we expect that they should at least in part appear as beautiful art, they are without spirit82; although we find nothing to blame in them on the score of taste. A poem may be very neat and elegant, but without spirit. A history may be exact and well arranged, but without spirit. A festal discourse may be solid and at the same time elaborate, but without spirit. Conversation is often not devoid of entertainment, but yet without spirit: even of a woman we say that she is pretty, an agreeable talker, and courteous, but without spirit. What then do we mean by spirit?

Spirit, in an aesthetical sense, is the name given to the animating principle of the mind. But that whereby this principle animates the soul, the material which it applies to that [purpose], is that which puts the mental powers purposively into swing, i.e. into such a play as maintains itself and strengthens the [mental] powers in their exercise.

Now I maintain that this principle is no other than the faculty of presenting aesthetical Ideas. And by an aesthetical Idea I understand that representation of the Imagination which occasions much thought, without, however, any definite thought, i.e. any concept, being capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed and made intelligible by language.—We easily see that it is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational Idea, which conversely is a concept to which no intuition (or representation of the Imagination) can be adequate.

The Imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is very powerful in creating another nature, as it were, out of the material that actual nature gives it. We entertain ourselves with it when experience proves too commonplace, and by it we remould experience, always indeed in accordance with analogical laws, but yet also in accordance with principles which occupy a higher place in Reason (laws too which are just as natural to us as those by which Understanding comprehends empirical nature). Thus we feel our freedom from the law of association (which attaches to the empirical employment of Imagination), so that the material which we borrow from nature in accordance with this law can be worked up into something different which surpasses nature.

Such representations of the Imagination we may call Ideas, partly because they at least strive after something which lies beyond the bounds of experience, and so seek to approximate to a presentation of concepts of Reason (intellectual Ideas), thus giving to the latter the appearance of objective reality,—but especially because no concept can be fully adequate to them as internal intuitions. The poet ventures to realise to sense, rational Ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc.; or even if he deals with things of which there are examples in experience,—e.g. death, envy and all vices, also love, fame, and the like,—he tries, by means of Imagination, which emulates the play of Reason in its quest after a maximum, to go beyond the limits of experience and to present them to Sense with a completeness of which there is no example in nature. It is, properly speaking, in the art of the poet, that the faculty of aesthetical Ideas can manifest itself in its full measure. But this faculty, considered in itself, is properly only a talent (of the Imagination).

If now we place under a concept a representation of the Imagination belonging to its presentation, but which occasions solely by itself more thought than can ever be comprehended in a definite concept, and which therefore enlarges aesthetically the concept itself in an unbounded fashion,—the Imagination is here creative, and it brings the faculty of intellectual Ideas (the Reason) into movement; i.e. a movement, occasioned by a representation, towards more thought (though belonging, no doubt, to the concept of the object) than can be grasped in the representation or made clear.

Those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given concept itself but only, as approximate representations of the Imagination, express the consequences bound up with it and its relationship to other concepts, are called (aesthetical) attributes of an object, whose concept as a rational Idea cannot be adequately presented. Thus Jupiter’s eagle with the lightning in its claws is an attribute of the mighty king of heaven, as the peacock is of its magnificent queen. They do not, like logical attributes, represent what lies in our concepts of the sublimity and majesty of creation, but something different, which gives occasion to the Imagination to spread itself over a number of kindred representations, that arouse more thought than can be expressed in a concept determined by words. They furnish an aesthetical Idea, which for that rational Idea takes the place of logical presentation; and thus as their proper office they enliven the mind by opening out to it the prospect into an illimitable field of kindred representations. But beautiful art does this not only in the case of painting or sculpture (in which the term “attribute” is commonly employed): poetry and rhetoric also get the spirit that animates their works simply from the aesthetical attributes of the object, which accompany the logical and stimulate the Imagination, so that it thinks more by their aid, although in an undeveloped way, than could be comprehended in a concept and therefore in a definite form of words.— For the sake of brevity I must limit myself to a few examples only.

When the great King83 in one of his poems expresses himself as follows:

“Oui, finissons sans trouble et mourons sans regrets,

En laissant l’univers comblé de nos bienfaits.

Ainsi l’astre du jour au bout de sa carrière,

Répand sur l’horizon une douce lumière;

Et les derniers rayons qu’il darde dans les airs,

Sont les derniers soupirs qu’il donne à l’univers;”

he quickens his rational Idea of a cosmopolitan disposition at the end of life by an attribute which the Imagination (in remembering all the pleasures of a beautiful summer day that are recalled at its close by a serene evening) associates with that representation, and which excites a number of sensations and secondary representations for which no expression is found. On the other hand, an intellectual concept may serve conversely as an attribute for a representation of sense and so can quicken this latter by means of the Idea of the supersensible; but only by the aesthetical [element], that subjectively attaches to the concept of the latter, being here employed. Thus, for example, a certain poet84 says, in his description of a beautiful morning:

“The sun arose

As calm from virtue springs.”

The consciousness of virtue, even if one only places oneself in thought in the position of a virtuous man, diffuses in the mind a multitude of sublime and restful feelings and a boundless prospect of a joyful future, to which no expression measured by a definite concept completely attains.85

In a word the aesthetical Idea is a representation of the Imagination associated with a given concept, which is bound up with such a multiplicity of partial representations in its free employment, that for it no expression marking a definite concept can be found; and such a representation, therefore, adds to a concept much ineffable thought, the feeling of which quickens the cognitive faculties, and with language, which is the mere letter, binds up spirit also.

The mental powers, therefore, whose union (in a certain relation) constitutes genius are Imagination and Understanding. In the employment of the Imagination for cognition it submits to the constraint of the Understanding and is subject to the limitation of being conformable to the concept of the latter. On the other hand, in an aesthetical point of view it is free to furnish unsought, over and above that agreement with a concept, abundance of undeveloped material for the Understanding; to which the Understanding paid no regard in its concept, but which it applies, though not objectively for cognition, yet subjectively to quicken the cognitive powers and therefore also indirectly to cognitions. Thus genius properly consists in the happy relation [between these faculties], which no science can teach and no industry can learn, by which Ideas are found for a given concept; and on the other hand, we thus find for these Ideas the expression, by means of which the subjective state of mind brought about by them, as an accompaniment of the concept, can be communicated to others. The latter talent is properly speaking what is called spirit; for to express the ineffable element in the state of mind implied by a certain representation and to make it universally communicable—whether the expression be in speech or painting or statuary—this requires a faculty of seizing the quickly passing play of Imagination and of unifying it in a concept (which is even on that account original and discloses a new rule that could not have been inferred from any preceding principles or examples), that can be communicated without any constraint [of rules].86

* * * * *

If after this analysis we look back to the explanation given above of what is called genius, we find: first, that it is a talent for Art, not for Science, in which clearly known rules must go beforehand and determine the procedure. Secondly, as an artistic talent it presupposes a definite concept of the product, as the purpose, and therefore Understanding; but it also presupposes a representation (although an indeterminate one) of the material, i.e. of the intuition, for the presentment of this concept; and, therefore, a relation between the Imagination and the Understanding. Thirdly, it shows itself not so much in the accomplishment of the proposed purpose in a presentment of a definite concept, as in the enunciation or expression of aesthetical Ideas, which contain abundant material for that very design; and consequently it represents the Imagination as free from all guidance of rules and yet as purposive in reference to the presentment of the given concept. Finally, in the fourth place, the unsought undesigned subjective purposiveness in the free accordance of the Imagination with the legality of the Understanding presupposes such a proportion and disposition of these faculties as no following of rules, whether of science or of mechanical imitation, can bring about, but which only the nature of the subject can produce.

In accordance with these suppositions genius is the exemplary originality of the natural gifts of a subject in the free employment of his cognitive faculties. In this way the product of a genius (as regards what is to be ascribed to genius and not to possible learning or schooling) is an example, not to be imitated (for then that which in it is genius and constitutes the spirit of the work would be lost), but to be followed, by another genius; whom it awakens to a feeling of his own originality and whom it stirs so to exercise his art in freedom from the constraint of rules, that thereby a new rule is gained for art, and thus his talent shows itself to be exemplary. But because a genius is a favourite of nature and must be regarded by us as a rare phenomenon, his example produces for other good heads a school, i.e. a methodical system of teaching according to rules, so far as these can be derived from the peculiarities of the products of his spirit. For such persons beautiful art is so far imitation, to which nature through the medium of a genius supplied the rule.

But this imitation becomes a mere aping, if the scholar copies everything down to the deformities, which the genius must have let pass only because he could not well remove them without weakening his Idea. This mental characteristic is meritorious only in the case of a genius. A certain audacity in expression—and in general many a departure from common rules—becomes him well, but it is in no way worthy of imitation; it always remains a fault in itself which we must seek to remove, though the genius is as it were privileged to commit it, because the inimitable rush of his spirit would suffer from over-anxious carefulness. Mannerism is another kind of aping, viz. of mere peculiarity (originality) in general; by which a man separates himself as far as possible from imitators, without however possessing the talent to be at the same time exemplary.—There are indeed in general two ways (modi) in which such a man may put together his notions of expressing himself; the one is called a manner (modus aestheticus), the other a method (modus logicus). They differ in this, that the former has no other standard than the feeling of unity in the presentment, but the latter follows definite principles; hence the former alone avails for beautiful art. But an artistic product is said to show mannerism only when the exposition of the artist’s Idea is founded on its very singularity, and is not made appropriate to the Idea itself. The ostentatious (précieux), contorted, and affected [manner, adopted] to differentiate oneself from ordinary persons (though devoid of spirit) is like the behaviour of a man of whom we say, that he hears himself talk, or who stands and moves about as if he were on a stage in order to be stared at; this always betrays a bungler.

§ 50. Of the combination of Taste with Genius in the products of beautiful Art

To ask whether it is more important for the things of beautiful art that Genius or Taste should be displayed, is the same as to ask whether in it more depends on Imagination or on Judgement. Now, since in respect of the first an art is rather said to be full of spirit, but only deserves to be called a beautiful art on account of the second; this latter is at least, as its indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non), the most important thing to which one has to look in the judging of art as beautiful art. Abundance and originality of Ideas are less necessary to beauty than the accordance of the Imagination in its freedom with the conformity to law of the Understanding. For all the abundance of the former produces in lawless freedom nothing but nonsense; on the other hand, the Judgement is the faculty by which it is adjusted to the Understanding.

Taste, like the Judgement in general, is the discipline (or training) of Genius; it clips its wings closely, and makes it cultured and polished; but, at the same time, it gives guidance as to where and how far it may extend itself, if it is to remain purposive. And while it brings clearness and order into the multitude of the thoughts, it makes the Ideas susceptible of being permanently and, at the same time, universally assented to, and capable of being followed by others, and of an ever-progressive culture. If, then, in the conflict of these two properties in a product something must be sacrificed, it should be rather on the side of genius; and the Judgement, which in the things of beautiful art gives its decision from its own proper principles, will rather sacrifice the freedom and wealth of the Imagination than permit anything prejudicial to the Understanding.

For beautiful art, therefore, Imagination, Understanding, Spirit, and Taste are requisite.87

§ 51. Of the division of the beautiful arts

We may describe beauty in general (whether natural or artificial) as the expression of aesthetical Ideas; only that in beautiful Art this Idea must be occasioned by a concept of the Object; whilst in beautiful Nature the mere reflection upon a given intuition, without any concept of what the object is to be, is sufficient for the awakening and communicating of the Idea of which that Object is regarded as the expression.

If, then, we wish to make a division of the beautiful arts, we cannot choose a more convenient principle, at least tentatively, than the analogy of art with the mode of expression of which men avail themselves in speech, in order to communicate to one another as perfectly as possible not merely their concepts but also their sensations.88—This is done by word, deportment, and tone (articulation, gesticulation, and modulation). It is only by the combination of these three kinds of expression that communication between the speaker [and his hearers] can be complete. For thus thought, intuition, and sensation are transmitted to others simultaneously and conjointly.

There are, therefore, only three kinds of beautiful arts; the arts of speech, the formative arts, and the art of the play of sensations (as external sensible impressions). We may also arrange a division by dichotomy; thus beautiful art may be divided into the art of expression of thoughts and of intuitions; and these further subdivided in accordance with their form or their matter (sensation). But this would appear to be too abstract, and not so accordant with ordinary concepts.

(1) The arts of SPEECH are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of carrying on a serious business of the Understanding as if it were a free play of the Imagination; poetry, the art of conducting a free play of the Imagination as if it were a serious business of the Understanding.

The orator, then, promises a serious business, and in order to entertain his audience conducts it as if it were a mere play with Ideas. The poet merely promises an entertaining play with Ideas, and yet it has the same effect upon the Understanding as if he had only intended to carry on its business. The combination and harmony of both cognitive faculties, Sensibility and Understanding, which cannot dispense with one another, but which yet cannot well be united without constraint and mutual prejudice, must appear to be undesigned and so to be brought about by themselves: otherwise it is not beautiful art. Hence, all that is studied and anxious must be avoided in it, for beautiful art must be free art in a double sense. It is not a work like that of a tradesman, the magnitude of which can be judged, exacted, or paid for, according to a definite standard; and again, though the mind is occupied, still it feels itself contented and stimulated, without looking to any other purpose (independently of reward.)

The orator therefore gives something which he does not promise, viz. an entertaining play of the Imagination; but he also fails to supply what he did promise, which is indeed his announced business, viz. the purposive occupation of the Understanding. On the other hand, the poet promises little and announces a mere play with Ideas; but he supplies something which is worth occupying ourselves with, because he provides in this play food for the Understanding, and by the aid of Imagination gives life to his concepts. [Thus the orator on the whole gives less, the poet more, than he promises.]89

(2) The FORMATIVE arts, or those by which expression is found for Ideas in sensible intuition (not by representations of mere Imagination that are aroused by words), are either arts of sensible truth or of sensible illusion. The former is called Plastic, the latter Painting. Both express Ideas by figures in space; the former makes figures cognisable by two senses, sight and touch (although not by the latter as far as beauty is concerned); the latter only by one, the first of these. The aesthetical Idea (the archetype or original image) is fundamental for both in the Imagination, but the figure which expresses this (the ectype or copy) is either given in its bodily extension (as the object itself exists), or as it paints itself on the eye (according to its appearance when projected on a flat surface). In the first case90 the condition given to reflection may be either the reference to an actual purpose or only the semblance of it.

To Plastic, the first kind of beautiful formative Art, belong Sculpture and Architecture. The first presents corporeally concepts of things, as they might have existed in nature (though as beautiful art it has regard to aesthetical purposiveness). The second is the art of presenting concepts of things that are possible only through Art, and whose form has for its determining ground not nature but an arbitrary purpose, with the view of presenting them with aesthetical purposiveness. In the latter the chief point is a certain use of the artistic object, by which condition the aesthetical Ideas are limited. In the former the main design is the mere expression of aesthetical Ideas. Thus statues of men, gods, animals, etc., are of the first kind; but temples, splendid buildings for public assemblies, even dwelling-houses, triumphal arches, columns, mausoleums, and the like, erected in honourable remembrance, belong to Architecture. Indeed all house furniture (upholsterer’s work and such like things which are for use) may be reckoned under this art; because the suitability of a product for a certain use is the essential thing in an architectural work. On the other hand, a mere piece of sculpture, which is simply made for show and which is to please in itself, is as a corporeal presentation a mere imitation of nature, though with a reference to aesthetical Ideas; in it sensible truth is not to be carried so far that the product ceases to look like art and looks like a product of the elective will.

Painting, as the second kind of formative art, which presents a sensible illusion artificially combined with Ideas, I would divide into the art of the beautiful depicting of nature and that of the beautiful arrangement of its products. The first is painting proper, the second is the art of landscape gardening. The first gives only the illusory appearance of corporeal extension; the second gives this in accordance with truth, but only the appearance of utility and availableness for other purposes than the mere play of the Imagination in the contemplation of its forms.91 This latter is nothing else than the ornamentation of the soil with a variety of those things (grasses, flowers, shrubs, trees, even ponds, hillocks, and dells) which nature presents to an observer, only arranged differently and in conformity with certain Ideas. But, again, the beautiful arrangement of corporeal things is only apparent to the eye, like painting; the sense of touch cannot supply any intuitive presentation of such a form. Under painting in the wide sense I would reckon the decoration of rooms by the aid of tapestry, bric-a-brac, and all beautiful furniture which is merely available to be looked at; and the same may be said of the art of tasteful dressing (with rings, snuff-boxes, etc.). For a bed of various flowers, a room filled with various ornaments (including under this head even ladies’ finery), make at a fête a kind of picture; which, like pictures properly so-called (that are not intended to teach either history or natural science), has in view merely the entertainment of the Imagination in free play with Ideas, and the occupation of the aesthetical Judgement without any definite purpose. The detailed work in all this decoration may be quite distinct in the different cases and may require very different artists; but the judgement of taste upon whatever is beautiful in these various arts is always determined in the same way: viz. it only judges the forms (without any reference to a purpose) as they present themselves to the eye either singly or in combination, according to the effect they produce upon the Imagination.—But that formative art may be compared (by analogy) with deportment in speech is justified by the fact that the spirit of the artist supplies by these figures a bodily expression to his thought and its mode, and makes the thing itself as it were speak in mimic language. This is a very common play of our fancy, which attributes to lifeless things a spirit suitable to their form by which they speak to us.

(3) The art of the BEAUTIFUL PLAY OF SENSATIONS (externally stimulated), which admits at the same time of universal communication, can be concerned with nothing else than the proportion of the different degrees of the disposition (tension) of the sense, to which the sensation belongs, i.e. with its tone. In this far-reaching signification of the word it may be divided into the artistic play of the sensations of hearing and sight, i.e. into Music and the Art of colour.—It is noteworthy that these two senses, besides their susceptibility for impressions so far as these are needed to gain concepts of external objects, are also capable of a peculiar sensation bound up therewith, of which we cannot strictly decide whether it is based on sense or reflection. This susceptibility may sometimes be wanting, although in other respects the sense, as regards its use for the cognition of Objects, is not at all deficient but is peculiarly fine. That is, we cannot say with certainty whether colours or tones (sounds) are merely pleasant sensations or whether they form in themselves a beautiful play of sensations, and as such bring with them in aesthetical judgement a satisfaction in their form. If we think of the velocity of the vibrations of light, or in the second case of the air, which probably far surpasses all our faculty of judging immediately in perception the time interval between them, we must believe that it is only the effect of these vibrations upon the elastic parts of our body that is felt, but that the time interval between them is not remarked or brought into judgement; and thus that only pleasantness and not beauty of composition is bound up with colours and tones. But on the other hand, first, we think of the mathematical [element] which enables us to pronounce on the proportion between these oscillations in music and thus to judge of them; and by analogy with which we easily may judge of the distinctions between colours. Secondly, we recall instances (although they are rare) of men who with the best sight in the world cannot distinguish colours, and with the sharpest hearing cannot distinguish tones; whilst for those who can do this the perception of an altered quality (not merely of the degree of sensation) in the different intensities in the scale of colours and tones is definite; and further, the very number of these is fixed by intelligible differences. Thus we may be compelled to see that both kinds of sensations are to be regarded not as mere sensible impressions, but as the effects of a judgement passed upon the form in the play of divers sensations. The difference in our definition, according as we adopt the one or the other opinion in judging of the grounds of Music, would be just this: either, as we have done, we must explain it as the beautiful play of sensations (of hearing), or else as a play of pleasant sensations. According to the former mode of explanation music is represented altogether as a beautiful art; according to the latter, as a pleasant art (at least in part).

§ 52. Of the combination of beautiful arts in one and the same product

Rhetoric may be combined with a pictorial presentation of its subjects and objects in a theatrical piece; poetry may be combined with music in a song, and this again with pictorial (theatrical) presentation in an opera; the play of sensations in music may be combined with the play of figures in the dance, and so on. Even the presentation of the sublime, so far as it belongs to beautiful art, may combine with beauty in a tragedy in verse, in a didactic poem, in an oratorio; and in these combinations beautiful art is yet more artistic. Whether it is also more beautiful may in some of these cases be doubted (since so many different kinds of satisfaction cross one another). Yet in all beautiful art the essential thing is the form, which is purposive as regards our observation and judgement, where the pleasure is at the same time cultivation and disposes the spirit to Ideas, and consequently makes it susceptible of still more of such pleasure and entertainment. The essential element is not the matter of sensation (charm or emotion), which has only to do with enjoyment; this leaves behind nothing in the Idea, and it makes the spirit dull, the object gradually distasteful, and the mind, on account of its consciousness of a disposition that conflicts with purpose in the judgement of Reason, discontented with itself and peevish.

If the beautiful arts are not brought into more or less close combination with moral Ideas, which alone bring with them a self-sufficing satisfaction, this latter fate must ultimately be theirs. They then serve only as a distraction, of which we are the more in need the more we avail ourselves of them to disperse the discontent of the mind with itself; so that we thus render ourselves ever more useless and ever more discontented. The beauties of nature are generally of most benefit in this point of view, if we are early accustomed to observe, appreciate, and admire them.

§ 53. Comparison of the respective aesthetical worth of the beautiful arts

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank. It expands the mind by setting the Imagination at liberty; and by offering within the limits of a given concept amid the unbounded variety of possible forms accordant therewith, that which unites the presentment of this concept with a wealth of thought, to which no verbal expression is completely adequate; and so rising aesthetically to Ideas. It strengthens the mind by making it feel its faculty—free, spontaneous and independent of natural determination—of considering and judging nature as a phenomenon in accordance with aspects which it does not present in experience either for Sense or Understanding, and therefore of using it on behalf of, and as a sort of schema for, the supersensible. It plays with illusion, which it produces at pleasure, but without deceiving by it; for it declares its exercise to be mere play, which however can be purposively used by the Understanding.—Rhetoric, in so far as this means the art of persuasion, i.e. of deceiving by a beautiful show (ars oratoria), and not mere elegance of speech (eloquence and style), is a Dialectic, which borrows from poetry only so much as is needful to win minds to the side of the orator before they have formed a judgement, and to deprive them of their freedom; it cannot therefore be recommended either for the law courts or for the pulpit. For if we are dealing with civil law, with the rights of individual persons, or with lasting instruction and determination of people’s minds to an accurate knowledge and a conscientious observance of their duty, it is unworthy of so important a business to allow a trace of any exuberance of wit and imagination to appear, and still less any trace of the art of talking people over and of captivating them for the advantage of any chance person. For although this art may sometimes be directed to legitimate and praiseworthy designs, it becomes objectionable, when in this way maxims and dispositions are spoiled in a subjective point of view, though the action may objectively be lawful. It is not enough to do what is right; we should practise it solely on the ground that it is right. Again, the mere concept of this species of matters of human concern, when clear and combined with a lively presentation of it in examples, without any offence against the rules of euphony of speech or propriety of expression, has by itself for Ideas of Reason (which collectively constitute eloquence), sufficient influence upon human minds; so that it is not needful to add the machinery of persuasion, which, since it can be used equally well to beautify or to hide vice and error, cannot quite lull the secret suspicion that one is being artfully overreached. In poetry everything proceeds with honesty and candour. It declares itself to be a mere entertaining play of the Imagination, which wishes to proceed as regards form in harmony with the laws of the Understanding; and it does not desire to steal upon and ensnare the Understanding by the aid of sensible presentation.92

After poetry, if we are to deal with charm and mental movement, I would place that art which comes nearest to the art of speech and can very naturally be united with it, viz. the art of tone. For although it speaks by means of mere sensations without concepts, and so does not, like poetry, leave anything over for reflection, it yet moves the mind in a greater variety of ways and more intensely, although only transitorily. It is, however, rather enjoyment than culture (the play of thought that is incidentally excited by its means is merely the effect of a kind of mechanical association); and in the judgement of Reason it has less worth than any other of the beautiful arts. Hence, like all enjoyment, it desires constant change, and does not bear frequent repetition without producing weariness. Its charm, which admits of universal communication, appears to rest on this, that every expression of speech has in its context a tone appropriate to the sense. This tone indicates more or less an affection of the speaker, and produces it also in the hearer; which affection excites in its turn in the hearer the Idea that is expressed in speech by the tone in question. Thus as modulation is as it were a universal language of sensations intelligible to every man, the art of tone employs it by itself alone in its full force, viz. as a language of the affections, and thus communicates universally according to the laws of association the aesthetical Ideas naturally combined therewith. Now these aesthetical Ideas are not concepts or determinate thoughts. Hence the form of the composition of these sensations (harmony and melody) only serves instead of the form of language, by means of their proportionate accordance, to express the aesthetical Idea of a connected whole of an unspeakable wealth of thought, corresponding to a certain theme which produces the dominating affection in the piece. This can be brought mathematically under certain rules, because it rests in the case of tones on the relation between the number of vibrations of the air in the same time, so far as these tones are combined simultaneously or successively. To this mathematical form, although not represented by determinate concepts, alone attaches the satisfaction that unites the mere reflection upon such a number of concomitant or consecutive sensations with this their play, as a condition of its beauty valid for every man. It is this alone which permits Taste to claim in advance a rightful authority over every one’s judgement.

But in the charm and mental movement produced by Music, Mathematic has certainly not the slightest share. It is only the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non) of that proportion of the impressions in their combination and in their alternation by which it becomes possible to gather them together and prevent them from destroying one another, and to harmonise them so as to produce a continual movement and animation of the mind, by means of affections consonant therewith, and thus a delightful personal enjoyment.

If, on the other hand, we estimate the worth of the Beautiful Arts by the culture they supply to the mind, and take as a standard the expansion of the faculties which must concur in the Judgement for cognition, Music will have the lowest place among them (as it has perhaps the highest among those arts which are valued for their pleasantness), because it merely plays with sensations. The formative arts are far before it in this point of view; for in putting the Imagination in a free play, which is also accordant with the Understanding, they at the same time carry on a serious business. This they do by producing a product that serves for concepts as a permanent self-commendatory vehicle for promoting their union with sensibility and thus, as it were, the urbanity of the higher cognitive powers. These two species of art take quite different courses; the first proceeds from sensations to indeterminate Ideas, the second from determinate Ideas to sensations. The latter produce permanent, the former only transitory impressions. The Imagination can recall the one and entertain itself pleasantly therewith; but the other either vanish entirely, or if they are recalled involuntarily by the Imagination they are rather wearisome than pleasant.93 Besides, there attaches to Music a certain want of urbanity from the fact that, chiefly from the character of its instruments, it extends its influence further than is desired (in the neighbourhood), and so as it were obtrudes itself, and does violence to the freedom of others who are not of the musical company. The Arts which appeal to the eyes do not do this; for we need only turn our eyes away, if we wish to avoid being impressed. The case of music is almost like that of the delight derived from a smell that diffuses itself widely. The man who pulls his perfumed handkerchief out of his pocket attracts the attention of all round him, even against their will, and he forces them, if they are to breathe at all, to enjoy the scent; hence this habit has gone out of fashion.94

Among the formative arts I would give the palm to painting; partly because as the art of delineation it lies at the root of all the other formative arts, and partly because it can penetrate much further into the region of Ideas, and can extend the field of intuition in conformity with them further than the others can.

§ 54. Remark

As we have often shown, there is an essential difference between what satisfies simply in the act of judging it, and that which gratifies (pleases in sensation). We cannot ascribe the latter to every one, as we can the former. Gratification (the causes of which may even be situate in Ideas) appears always to consist in a feeling of the furtherance of the whole life of the man, and consequently, also of his bodily well-being, i.e. his health; so that Epicurus, who gave out that all gratification was at bottom bodily sensation, may, perhaps, not have been wrong, but only misunderstood himself when he reckoned intellectual and even practical satisfaction under gratification. If we have this distinction in view we can explain how a gratification may dissatisfy the man who sensibly feels it (e.g. the joy of a needy but well-meaning man at becoming the heir of an affectionate but penurious father); or how a deep grief may satisfy the person experiencing it (the sorrow of a widow at the death of her excellent husband); or how a gratification can in addition satisfy (as in the sciences that we pursue); or how a grief (e.g. hatred, envy, revenge) can moreover dissatisfy. The satisfaction or dissatisfaction here depends on Reason, and is the same as approbation or disapprobation; but gratification and grief can only rest on the feeling or prospect of a possible (on whatever grounds) well-being or its opposite.

All changing free play of sensations (that have no design at their basis) gratifies, because it promotes the feeling of health. In the judgement of Reason we may or may not have any satisfaction in its object or even in this gratification; and this latter may rise to the height of an affection, although we take no interest in the object, at least none that is proportionate to the degree of the affection. We may subdivide this free play of sensations into the play of fortune [games of chance], the play of tone [music], and the play of thought [wit]. The first requires an interest, whether of vanity or of selfishness; which, however, is not nearly so great as the interest that attaches to the way in which we are striving to procure it. The second requires merely the change of sensations, all of which have a relation to affection, though they have not the degree of affection, and excite aesthetical Ideas. The third springs merely from the change of representations in the Judgement; by it, indeed, no thought that brings an interest with it is produced, but yet the mind is animated thereby.

How much gratification games must afford, without any necessity of placing at their basis an interested design, all our evening parties show; for hardly any of them can be carried on without a game. But the affections of hope, fear, joy, wrath, scorn, are put in play by them, alternating every moment; and they are so vivid that by them, as by a kind of internal motion, all the vital processes of the body seem to be promoted, as is shown by the mental vivacity excited by them, although nothing is gained or learnt thereby. But as the beautiful does not enter into games of chance, we will here set them aside. On the other hand, music and that which excites laughter are two different kinds of play with aesthetical Ideas, or with representations of the Understanding through which ultimately nothing is thought; and yet they can give lively gratification merely by their changes. Thus we recognise pretty clearly that the animation in both cases is merely bodily, although it is excited by Ideas of the mind; and that the feeling of health produced by a motion of the intestines corresponding to the play in question makes up that whole gratification of a gay party, which is regarded as so refined and so spiritual. It is not the judging the harmony in tones or sallies of wit,—which serves only in combination with their beauty as a necessary vehicle,—but the furtherance of the vital bodily processes, the affection that moves the intestines and the diaphragm, in a word, the feeling of health (which without such inducements one does not feel) that makes up the gratification felt by us; so that we can thus reach the body through the soul and use the latter as the physician of the former.

In music this play proceeds from bodily sensations to aesthetical Ideas (the Objects of our affections), and then from these back again to the body with redoubled force. In the case of jokes (the art of which, just like music, should rather be reckoned as pleasant than beautiful) the play begins with the thoughts which together occupy the body, so far as they admit of sensible expression; and as the Understanding stops suddenly short at this presentment, in which it does not find what it expected, we feel the effect of this slackening in the body by the oscillation of the organs, which promotes the restoration of equilibrium and has a favourable influence upon health.

In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something absurd (in which the Understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction). Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.95 This transformation, which is certainly not enjoyable by the Understanding, yet indirectly gives it very active enjoyment for a moment. Therefore its cause must consist in the influence of the representation upon the body, and the reflex effect of this upon the mind; not, indeed, through the representation being objectively an object of gratification96 (for how could a delusive expectation gratify?), but simply through it as a mere play of representations bringing about an equilibrium of the vital powers in the body.

Suppose this story to be told: An Indian at the table of an Englishman in Surat, when he saw a bottle of ale opened and all the beer turned into froth and overflowing, testified his great astonishment with many exclamations. When the Englishman asked him, “What is there in this to astonish you so much?” he answered, “I am not at all astonished that it should flow out, but I do wonder how you ever got it in.” At this story we laugh, and it gives us hearty pleasure; not because we deem ourselves cleverer than this ignorant man, or because of anything else in it that we note as satisfactory to the Understanding, but because our expectation was strained [for a time] and then was suddenly dissipated into nothing. Again: The heir of a rich relative wished to arrange for an imposing funeral, but he lamented that he could not properly succeed; “for” (said he) “the more money I give my mourners to look sad, the more cheerful they look!”97 When we hear this story we laugh loud, and the reason is that an expectation is suddenly transformed into nothing. We must note well that it does not transform itself into the positive opposite of an expected object—for then there would still be something, which might even be a cause of grief—but it must be transformed into nothing. For if a man arouses great expectations in us when telling a story, and at the end we see its falsehood immediately, it displeases us; e.g. the story of the people whose hair in consequence of great grief turned gray in one night. But if a wag, to repair the effect of this story, describes very circumstantially the grief of the merchant returning from India to Europe with all his wealth in merchandise who was forced to throw it overboard in a heavy storm, and who grieved thereat so much that his wig turned gray the same night—we laugh and it gives us gratification. For we treat our own mistake in the case of an object otherwise indifferent to us, or rather the Idea which we are following out, as we treat a ball which we knock to and fro for a time, though our only serious intention is to seize it and hold it fast. It is not the mere rebuff of a liar or a simpleton that arouses our gratification; for the latter story told with assumed seriousness would set a whole company in a roar of laughter, while the former would ordinarily not be regarded as worth attending to.

It is remarkable that in all such cases the jest must contain something that is capable of deceiving for a moment. Hence, when the illusion is dissipated, the mind turns back to try it once again, and thus through a rapidly alternating tension and relaxation it is jerked back and put into a state of oscillation. This, because the strain on the cord as it were is suddenly (and not gradually) relaxed, must occasion a mental movement, and an inner bodily movement harmonising therewith, which continues involuntarily and fatigues, even while cheering us (the effects of a motion conducive to health).

For if we admit that with all our thoughts is harmonically combined a movement in the organs of the body, we shall easily comprehend how to this sudden transposition of the mind, now to one now to another standpoint in order to contemplate its object, may correspond an alternating tension and relaxation of the elastic portions of our intestines, which communicates itself to the diaphragm (like that which ticklish people feel). In connexion with this the lungs expel the air at rapidly succeeding intervals, and thus bring about a movement beneficial to health; which alone, and not what precedes it in the mind, is the proper cause of the gratification in a thought that at bottom represents nothing.—Voltaire said that heaven had given us two things to counterbalance the many miseries of life, hope and sleep.98 He could have added laughter, if the means of exciting it in reasonable men were only as easily attainable, and the requisite wit or originality of humour were not so rare, as the talent is common of imagining things which break one’s head, as mystic dreamers do, or which break one’s neck, as your genius does, or which break one’s heart, as sentimental romance-writers (and even moralists of the same kidney) do.

We may therefore, as it seems to me, readily concede to Epicurus that all gratification, even that which is occasioned through concepts, excited by aesthetical Ideas, is animal, i.e. bodily sensation; without the least prejudice to the spiritual feeling of respect for moral Ideas, which is not gratification at all but an esteem for self (for humanity in us), that raises us above the need of gratification, and even without the slightest prejudice to the less noble [feeling] of taste.

We find a combination of these two last in naiveté, which is the breaking out of the sincerity originally natural to humanity in opposition to that art of dissimulation which has become a second nature. We laugh at the simplicity that does not understand how to dissemble; and yet we are delighted with the simplicity of the nature which thwarts that art. We look for the commonplace manner of artificial utterance devised with foresight to make a fair show; and behold! it is the unspoiled innocent nature which we do not expect to find, and which he who displays it did not think of disclosing. That the fair but false show which generally has so much influence upon our judgement is here suddenly transformed into nothing, so that, as it were, the rogue in us is laid bare, produces a movement of the mind in two opposite directions, which gives a wholesome shock to the body. But the fact that something infinitely better than all assumed manner, viz. purity of disposition (or at least the tendency thereto), is not quite extinguished yet in human nature, blends seriousness and high esteem with this play of the Judgement. But because it is only a transitory phenomenon and the veil of dissimulation is soon drawn over it again, there is mingled therewith a compassion which is an emotion of tenderness; this, as play, readily admits of combination with a good-hearted laugh, and ordinarily is actually so combined, and withal is wont to compensate him who supplies its material for the embarrassment which results from not yet being wise after the manner of men.—An art that is to be naive is thus a contradiction; but the representation of naiveté in a fictitious personage is quite possible, and is a beautiful though a rare art. Naiveté must not be confounded with open-hearted simplicity, which does not artificially spoil nature solely because it does not understand the art of social intercourse.

The humorous manner again may be classified as that which, as exhilarating us, is near akin to the gratification that proceeds from laughter; and belongs to the originality of spirit, but not to the talent of beautiful art. Humour in the good sense means the talent of being able voluntarily to put oneself into a certain mental disposition, in which everything is judged quite differently from the ordinary method (reversed, in fact), and yet in accordance with certain rational principles in such a frame of mind. He who is involuntarily subject to such mutations is called a man of humours [launisch]; but he who can assume them voluntarily and purposively (on behalf of a lively presentment brought about by the aid of a contrast that excites a laugh)—he and his manner of speech are called humorous [launigt]. This manner, however, belongs rather to pleasant than to beautiful art, because the object of the latter must always exhibit intrinsic worth, and hence requires a certain seriousness in the presentation, as taste does in the act of judgement.

SECOND DIVISION

DIALECTIC OF THE AESTHETICAL JUDGEMENT

§ 55

A faculty of Judgement that is to be dialectical must in the first place be rationalising, i.e. its judgements must claim universality99 and that a priori; for it is in the opposition of such judgements that Dialectic consists. Hence the incompatibility of aesthetical judgements of Sense (about the pleasant and the unpleasant) is not dialectical. And again, the conflict between judgements of Taste, so far as each man depends merely on his own taste, forms no Dialectic of taste; because no one proposes to make his own judgement a universal rule. There remains therefore no other concept of a Dialectic which has to do with taste than that of a Dialectic of the Critique of taste (not of taste itself) in respect of its principles; for here concepts that contradict one another (as to the ground of the possibility of judgements of taste in general) naturally and unavoidably present themselves. The transcendental Critique of taste will therefore contain a part which can bear the name of a Dialectic of the aesthetical Judgement, only if and so far as there is found an antinomy of the principles of this faculty which renders its conformity to law, and consequently also its internal possibility, doubtful.

§ 56. Representation of the antinomy of Taste

The first commonplace of taste is contained in the proposition, with which every tasteless person proposes to avoid blame: every one has his own taste. That is as much as to say that the determining ground of this judgement is merely subjective (gratification or grief), and that the judgement has no right to the necessary assent of others.

The second commonplace invoked even by those who admit for judgements of taste the right to speak with validity for every one is: there is no disputing about taste. That is as much as to say that the determining ground of a judgement of taste may indeed be objective, but that it cannot be reduced to definite concepts, and that consequently about the judgement itself nothing can be decided by proofs, although much may rightly be contested. For contesting [quarrelling] and disputing [controversy] are doubtless the same in this, that by means of the mutual opposition of judgements they seek to produce their accordance; but different in that the latter hopes to bring this about according to definite concepts as determining grounds, and consequently assumes objective concepts as grounds of the judgement. But where this is regarded as impracticable, controversy is regarded as alike impracticable.

We easily see that between these two commonplaces there is a proposition wanting, which, though it has not passed into a proverb, is yet familiar to every one, viz. there may be a quarrel about taste (although there can be no controversy). But this proposition involves the contradictory of the former one. For wherever quarrelling is permissible, there must be a hope of mutual reconciliation; and consequently we can count on grounds of our judgement that have not merely private validity, and therefore are not merely subjective. And to this the proposition, every one has his own taste, is directly opposed.

There emerges therefore in respect of the principle of taste the following Antinomy:—

(1) Thesis. The judgement of taste is not based upon concepts; for otherwise it would admit of controversy (would be determinable by proofs).

(2) Antithesis. The judgement of taste is based on concepts; for otherwise, despite its diversity, we could not quarrel about it (we could not claim for our judgement the necessary assent of others).

§ 57. Solution of the antinomy of Taste

There is no possibility of removing the conflict between these principles that underlie every judgement of taste (which are nothing else than the two peculiarities of the judgement of taste exhibited above in the Analytic), except by showing that the concept to which we refer the Object in this kind of judgement is not taken in the same sense in both maxims of the aesthetical Judgement. This twofold sense or twofold point of view is necessary to our transcendental Judgement; but also the illusion which arises from the confusion of one with the other is natural and unavoidable.

The judgement of taste must refer to some concept; otherwise it could make absolutely no claim to be necessarily valid for every one. But it is not therefore capable of being proved from a concept; because a concept may be either determinable or in itself undetermined and undeterminable. The concepts of the Understanding are of the former kind; they are determinable through predicates of sensible intuition which can correspond to them. But the transcendental rational concept of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of all sensible intuition, is of the latter kind, and therefore cannot be theoretically determined further.

Now the judgement of taste is applied to objects of Sense, but not with a view of determining a concept of them for the Understanding; for it is not a cognitive judgement. It is thus only a private judgement, in which a singular representation intuitively perceived is referred to the feeling of pleasure; and so far would be limited as regards its validity to the individual judging. The object is for me an object of satisfaction; by others it may be regarded quite differently—every one has his own taste.

Nevertheless there is undoubtedly contained in the judgement of taste a wider reference of the representation of the Object (as well as of the subject), whereon we base an extension of judgements of this kind as necessary for every one. At the basis of this there must necessarily be a concept somewhere; though a concept which cannot be determined through intuition. But through a concept of this sort we know nothing, and consequently it can supply no proof for the judgement of taste. Such a concept is the mere pure rational concept of the supersensible which underlies the object (and also the subject judging it), regarded as an Object of sense and thus as phenomenon.100 For if we do not admit such a reference, the claim of the judgement of taste to universal validity would not hold good. If the concept on which it is based were only a mere confused concept of the Understanding, like that of perfection, with which we could bring the sensible intuition of the Beautiful into correspondence, it would be at least possible in itself to base the judgement of taste on proofs; which contradicts the thesis.

But all contradiction disappears if I say: the judgement of taste is based on a concept (viz. the concept of the general ground of the subjective purposiveness of nature for the Judgement); from which, however, nothing can be known and proved in respect of the Object, because it is in itself undeterminable and useless for knowledge. Yet at the same time and on that very account the judgement has validity for every one (though of course for each only as a singular judgement immediately accompanying his intuition); because its determining ground lies perhaps in the concept of that which may be regarded as the supersensible substrate of humanity.

The solution of an antinomy only depends on the possibility of showing that two apparently contradictory propositions do not contradict one another in fact, but that they may be consistent; although the explanation of the possibility of their concept may transcend our cognitive faculties. That this illusion is natural and unavoidable by human Reason, and also why it is so, and remains so, although it ceases to deceive after the analysis of the apparent contradiction, may be thus explained.

In the two contradictory judgements we take the concept, on which the universal validity of a judgement must be based, in the same sense; and yet we apply to it two opposite predicates. In the Thesis we mean that the judgement of taste is not based upon determinate concepts; and in the Antithesis that the judgement of taste is based upon a concept, but an indeterminate one (viz. of the supersensible substrate of phenomena). Between these two there is no contradiction.

We can do nothing more than remove this conflict between the claims and counter-claims of taste. It is absolutely impossible to give a definite objective principle of taste, in accordance with which its judgements could be derived, examined, and established; for then the judgement would not be one of taste at all. The subjective principle, viz. the indefinite Idea of the supersensible in us, can only be put forward as the sole key to the puzzle of this faculty whose sources are hidden from us: it can be made no further intelligible.

The proper concept of taste, that is of a merely reflective aesthetical Judgement, lies at the basis of the antinomy here exhibited and adjusted. Thus the two apparently contradictory principles are reconciled—both can be true; which is sufficient. If, on the other hand, we assume, as some do, pleasantness as the determining ground of taste (on account of the singularity of the representation which lies at the basis of the judgement of taste), or, as others will have it, the principle of perfection (on account of the universality of the same), and settle the definition of taste accordingly; then there arises an antinomy which it is absolutely impossible to adjust except by showing that both the contrary (though not contradictory) propositions are false. And this would prove that the concept on which they are based is self-contradictory. Hence we see that the removal of the antinomy of the aesthetical Judgement takes a course similar to that pursued by the Critique in the solution of the antinomies of pure theoretical Reason. And thus here, as also in the Critique of practical Reason, the antinomies force us against our will to look beyond the sensible and to seek in the supersensible the point of union for all our a priori faculties; because no other expedient is left to make our Reason harmonious with itself.

Remark I.

As we so often find occasion in Transcendental Philosophy for distinguishing Ideas from concepts of the Understanding, it may be of use to introduce technical terms to correspond to this distinction. I believe that no one will object if I propose some.—In the most universal signification of the word, Ideas are representations referred to an object, according to a certain (subjective or objective) principle, but so that they can never become a cognition of it. They are either referred to an intuition, according to a merely subjective principle of the mutual harmony of the cognitive powers (the Imagination and the Understanding), and they are then called aesthetical; or they are referred to a concept according to an objective principle, although they can never furnish a cognition of the object and are called rational Ideas. In the latter case the concept is a transcendent one, which is different from a concept of the Understanding, to which an adequately corresponding experience can always be supplied, and which therefore is called immanent.

An aesthetical Idea cannot become a cognition, because it is an intuition (of the Imagination) for which an adequate concept can never be found. A rational Idea can never become a cognition, because it involves a concept (of the supersensible), corresponding to which an intuition can never be given.

Now I believe we might call the aesthetical Idea an inexponible representation of the Imagination, and a rational Idea an indemonstrable concept of Reason. It is assumed of both that they are not generated without grounds, but (according to the above explanation of an Idea in general) in conformity with certain principles of the cognitive faculties to which they belong (subjective principles in the one case, objective in the other).

Concepts of the Understanding must, as such, always be demonstrable [if by demonstration we understand, as in anatomy, merely presentation];101 i.e. the object corresponding to them must always be capable of being given in intuition (pure or empirical); for thus alone could they become cognitions. The concept of magnitude can be given a priori in the intuition of space, e.g. of a right line, etc.; the concept of cause in impenetrability, in the collision of bodies, etc. Consequently both can be authenticated by means of an empirical intuition, i.e. the thought of them can be proved (demonstrated, verified) by an example; and this must be possible, for otherwise we should not be certain that the concept was not empty, i.e. devoid of any Object.

In Logic we ordinarily use the expressions demonstrable or indemonstrable only in respect of propositions, but these might be better designated by the titles respectively of mediately and immediately certain propositions; for pure Philosophy has also propositions of both kinds, i.e. true propositions, some of which are susceptible of proof and others not. It can, as philosophy, prove them on a priori grounds, but it cannot demonstrate them; unless we wish to depart entirely from the proper meaning of this word, according to which to demonstrate (ostendere, exhibere) is equivalent to presenting a concept in intuition (whether in proof or merely in definition). If the intuition is a priori this is called construction; but if it is empirical, then the Object is displayed by means of which objective reality is assured to the concept. Thus we say of an anatomist that he demonstrates the human eye, if by a dissection of this organ he makes intuitively evident the concept which he has previously treated discursively.

It hence follows that the rational concept of the supersensible substrate of all phenomena in general, or even of that which must be placed at the basis of our arbitrary will in respect of the moral law, viz. of transcendental freedom, is already, in kind, an indemonstrable concept and a rational Idea; while virtue is so, in degree. For there can be given in experience, as regards its quality, absolutely nothing corresponding to the former; whereas in the latter case no empirical product attains to the degree of that causality, which the rational Idea prescribes as the rule.

As in a rational Idea the Imagination with its intuitions does not attain to the given concept, so in an aesthetical Idea the Understanding by its concepts never attains completely to that internal intuition which the Imagination binds up with a given representation. Since, now, to reduce a representation of the Imagination to concepts is the same thing as to expound it, the aesthetical Idea may be called an inexponible representation of the Imagination (in its free play). I shall have occasion in the sequel to say something more of Ideas of this kind; now I only note that both kinds of Ideas, rational and aesthetical, must have their principles; and must have them in Reason—the one in the objective, the other in the subjective principles of its employment.

We can consequently explain genius as the faculty of aesthetical Ideas; by which at the same time is shown the reason why in the products of genius it is the nature (of the subject) and not a premeditated purpose that gives the rule to the art (of the production of the beautiful). For since the beautiful must not be judged by concepts, but by the purposive attuning of the Imagination to agreement with the faculty of concepts in general, it cannot be rule and precept which can serve as the subjective standard of that aesthetical but unconditioned purposiveness in beautiful art, that can rightly claim to please every one. It can only be that in the subject which is nature and cannot be brought under rules or concepts, i.e. the supersensible substrate of all his faculties (to which no concept of the Understanding extends), and consequently that with respect to which it is the final purpose given by the intelligible [part] of our nature to harmonise all our cognitive faculties. Thus alone is it possible that there should be a priori at the basis of this purposiveness, for which we can prescribe no objective principle, a principle subjective and yet of universal validity.

Remark II.

The following important remark occurs here: There are three kinds of Antinomies of pure Reason, which, however, all agree in this, that they compel us to give up the otherwise very natural hypothesis that objects of sense are things in themselves, and force us to regard them merely as phenomena, and to supply to them an intelligible substrate (something supersensible of which the concept is only an Idea, and supplies no proper knowledge). Without such antinomies Reason could never decide upon accepting a principle narrowing so much the field of its speculation, and could never bring itself to sacrifices by which so many otherwise brilliant hopes must disappear. For even now when, by way of compensation for these losses, a greater field in a practical aspect opens out before it, it appears not to be able without grief to part from those hopes, and disengage itself from its old attachment.

That there are three kinds of antinomies has its ground in this, that there are three cognitive faculties,—Understanding, Judgement, and Reason; of which each (as a superior cognitive faculty) must have its a priori principles. For Reason, in so far as it judges of these principles and their use, inexorably requires, in respect of them all, the unconditioned for the given conditioned; and this can never be found if we consider the sensible as belonging to things in themselves, and do not rather supply to it, as mere phenomenon, something supersensible (the intelligible substrate of nature both external and internal) as the reality in itself [Sache an sich selbst]. There are then: (1) For the cognitive faculty an antinomy of Reason in respect of the theoretical employment of the Understanding extended to the unconditioned; (2) for the feeling of pleasure and pain an antinomy of Reason in respect of the aesthetical employment of the Judgement; and (3) for the faculty of desire an antinomy in respect of the practical employment of the self-legislative Reason; so far as all these faculties have their superior principles a priori, and, in conformity with an inevitable requirement of Reason, must judge and be able to determine their Object, unconditionally according to those principles.

As for the two antinomies of the theoretical and practical employment of the superior cognitive faculties, we have already shown their unavoidableness, if judgements of this kind are not referred to a supersensible substrate of the given Objects, as phenomena; and also the possibility of their solution, as soon as this is done. And as for the antinomies in the employment of the Judgement, in conformity with the requirements of Reason, and their solution which is here given, there are only two ways of avoiding them. Either: we must deny that any a priori principle lies at the basis of the aesthetical judgement of taste; we must maintain that all claim to necessary universal agreement is a groundless and vain fancy, and that a judgement of taste only deserves to be regarded as correct because it happens that many people agree about it; and this, not because we assume an a priori principle behind this agreement, but because (as in the taste of the palate) of the contingent similar organisation of the different subjects. Or: we must assume that the judgement of taste is really a disguised judgement of Reason upon the perfection discovered in a thing and the reference of the manifold in it to a purpose, and is consequently only called aesthetical on account of the confusion here attaching to our reflection, although it is at bottom teleological. In the latter case we could declare the solution of the antinomies by means of transcendental Ideas to be needless and without point, and thus could harmonise these laws of taste with Objects of sense, not as mere phenomena but as things in themselves. But we have shown in several places in the exposition of judgements of taste how little either of these expedients will satisfy.

However, if it be granted that our deduction at least proceeds by the right method, although it be not yet plain enough in all its parts, three Ideas manifest themselves. First, there is the Idea of the supersensible in general, without any further determination of it, as the substrate of nature. Secondly, there is the Idea of the same as the principle of the subjective purposiveness of nature for our cognitive faculty. And thirdly, there is the Idea of the same as the principle of the purposes of freedom, and of the agreement of freedom with its purposes in the moral sphere.

§ 58. Of the Idealism of the purposiveness of both Nature and Art as the unique principle of the aesthetical Judgement

To begin with, we can either place the principle of taste in the fact that it always judges in accordance with grounds which are empirical and therefore are only given a posteriori by sense, or concede that it judges on a priori grounds. The former would be the empiricism of the Critique of Taste; the latter its rationalism. According to the former the Object of our satisfaction would not differ from the pleasant; according to the latter, if the judgement rests on definite concepts, it would not differ from the good. Thus all beauty would be banished from the world, and only a particular name, expressing perhaps a certain mingling of the two above-named kinds of satisfaction, would remain in its place. But we have shown that there are also a priori grounds of satisfaction which can subsist along with the principle of rationalism, although they cannot be comprehended in definite concepts.

On the other hand, the rationalism of the principle of taste is either that of the realism of the purposiveness, or of its idealism. Because a judgement of taste is not a cognitive judgement, and beauty is not a characteristic of the Object, considered in itself, the rationalism of the principle of taste can never be placed in the fact that the purposiveness in this judgement is thought as objective, i.e. that the judgement theoretically, and therefore also logically (although only in a confused way), refers to the perfection of the Object. It only refers aesthetically to the agreement of the representation of the Object in the Imagination with the essential principles of Judgement in general in the subject. Consequently, even according to the principle of rationalism, the judgement of taste and the distinction between its realism and idealism can only be settled thus. Either in the first case, this subjective purposiveness is assumed as an actual (designed) purpose of nature (or art) harmonising with our Judgement; or, in the second case, as a purposive harmony with the needs of Judgement, in respect of nature and its forms produced according to particular laws, which shows itself, without purpose, spontaneously, and contingently.

The beautiful formations in the kingdom of organised nature speak loudly for the realism of the aesthetical purposiveness of nature; since we might assume that behind the production of the beautiful there is an Idea of the beautiful in the producing cause, viz. a purpose in respect of our Imagination. Flowers, blossoms, even the shapes of entire plants; the elegance of animal formations of all kinds, unneeded for their proper use, but, as it were, selected for our taste; especially the charming variety so satisfying to the eye and the harmonious arrangement of colours (in the pheasant, in shell-fish, in insects, even in the commonest flowers), which, as it only concerns the surface and not the figure of these creations (though perhaps requisite in regard of their internal purposes), seems to be entirely designed for external inspection; these things give great weight to that mode of explanation which assumes actual purposes of nature for our aesthetical Judgement.

On the other hand, not only is Reason opposed to this assumption in its maxims, which bid us always avoid as far as possible unnecessary multiplication of principles; but nature everywhere shows in its free formations much mechanical tendency to the productions of forms which seem, as it were, to be made for the aesthetical exercise of our Judgement, without affording the least ground for the supposition that there is need of anything more than its mechanism, merely as nature, according to which, without any Idea lying at their root, they can be purposive for our judgement. But I understand by free formations of nature those whereby from a fluid at rest, through the volatilisation or separation of a portion of its constituents (sometimes merely of caloric), the remainder in becoming solid assumes a definite shape or tissue (figure or texture), which is different according to the specific difference of the material, but in the same material is constant. Here it is always presupposed that we are speaking of a perfect fluid, i.e. that the material in it is completely dissolved, and that it is not a mere medley of solid particles in a state of suspension.

Formation, then, takes place by a shooting together, i.e. by a sudden solidification, not by a gradual transition from the fluid to the solid state, but all at once by a saltus; which transition is also called crystallisation. The commonest example of this kind of formation is the freezing of water, where first icicles are produced, which combine at angles of 60°, while others attach themselves to each vertex, until it all becomes ice; and so that, while this is going on, the water does not gradually become viscous, but is as perfectly fluid as if its temperature were far higher, although it is absolutely ice-cold. The matter that disengages itself, which is dissipated suddenly at the moment of solidification, is a considerable quantum of caloric, the disappearance of which, as it was only required for preserving fluidity, leaves the new ice not in the least colder than the water which shortly before was fluid.

Many salts, and also rocks, of a crystalline figure, are produced thus from a species of earth dissolved in water, we do not exactly know how. Thus are formed the glandular configurations of many minerals, the cubical sulphide of lead, the ruby silver ore, etc., in all probability in water and by the shooting together of particles, as they become forced by some cause to dispense with this vehicle and to unite in definite external shapes.

But also all kinds of matter, which have been kept in a fluid state by heat, and have become solid by cooling, show internally, when fractured, a definite texture. This makes us judge that if their own weight or the disturbance of the air had not prevented it, they would also have exhibited on the outer surface their specifically peculiar shapes. This has been observed in some metals on their inner surface, which have been hardened externally by fusion but are fluid in the interior, by the drawing off the internal fluid and the consequent undisturbed crystallisation of the remainder. Many of these mineral crystallisations, such as spars, hematite, arragonite, etc., often present beautiful shapes, the like of which art can only conceive; and the halo in the cavern of Antiparos102 is merely produced by water trickling down strata of gypsum.

The fluid state is, to all appearance, older than the solid state, and plants as well as animal bodies are fashioned out of fluid nutritive matter, so far as this forms itself in a state of rest. This last of course primarily combines and forms itself in freedom according to a certain original disposition directed towards purposes (which, as will be shown in Part II., must not be judged aesthetically but teleologically according to the principle of realism), but also perhaps in conformity with the universal law of the affinity of materials. Again, the watery fluids dissolved in an atmosphere that is a mixture of different gases, if they separate from the latter on account of cooling, produce snow figures, which in correspondence with the character of the special mixture of gases, often seem very artistic and are extremely beautiful. So, without detracting from the teleological principle by which we judge of organisation, we may well think that the beauty of flowers, of the plumage of birds, or of shell-fish, both in shape and colour, may be ascribed to nature and its faculty of producing forms in an aesthetically purposive way, in its freedom, without particular purposes adapted thereto, according to chemical laws by the arrangement of the material requisite for the organisation in question.

But what shows the principle of the Ideality of the purposiveness in the beauty of nature, as that which we always place at the basis of an aesthetical judgement, and which allows us to employ, as a ground of explanation for our representative faculty, no realism of purpose, is the fact that in judging beauty we invariably seek its gauge in ourselves a priori, and that our aesthetical Judgement is itself legislative in respect of the judgement whether anything is beautiful or not. This could not be, on the assumption of the Realism of the purposiveness of nature; because in that case we must have learned from nature what we ought to find beautiful, and the aesthetical judgement would be subjected to empirical principles. For in such an act of judging the important point is not, what nature is, or even, as a purpose, is in relation to us, but how we take it. There would be an objective purposiveness in nature if it had fashioned its forms for our satisfaction; and not a subjective purposiveness which depended upon the play of the Imagination in its freedom, where it is we who receive nature with favour, not nature which shows us favour. The property of nature that gives us occasion to perceive the inner purposiveness in the relation of our mental faculties in judging certain of its products—a purposiveness which is to be explained on supersensible grounds as necessary and universal—cannot be a natural purpose or be judged by us as such; for otherwise the judgement hereby determined would not be free, and would have at its basis heteronomy, and not, as beseems a judgement of taste, autonomy.

In beautiful Art the principle of the Idealism of purposiveness is still clearer. As in the case of the beautiful in Nature, an aesthetical Realism of this purposiveness cannot be perceived by sensations (for then the art would be only pleasant, not beautiful). But that the satisfaction produced by aesthetical Ideas must not depend on the attainment of definite purposes (as in mechanically designed art), and that consequently, in the very rationalism of the principle, the ideality of the purposes and not their reality must be fundamental, appears from the fact that beautiful Art, as such, must not be considered as a product of Understanding and Science, but of Genius, and therefore must get its rule through aesthetical Ideas, which are essentially different from rational Ideas of definite purposes.

Just as the ideality of the objects of sense as phenomena is the only way of explaining the possibility of their forms being susceptible of a priori determination, so the idealism of purposiveness, in judging the beautiful in nature and art, is the only hypothesis under which Criticism can explain the possibility of a judgement of taste which demands a priori validity for every one (without grounding on concepts the purposiveness that is represented in the Object).

§ 59. Of Beauty as the symbol of Morality

Intuitions are always required to establish the reality of our concepts. If the concepts are empirical, the intuitions are called examples. If they are pure concepts of Understanding, the intuitions are called schemata. If we desire to establish the objective reality of rational concepts, i.e. of Ideas, on behalf of theoretical cognition, then we are asking for something impossible, because absolutely no intuition can be given which shall be adequate to them.

All hypotyposis (presentation, subjectio sub adspectum), or sensible illustration, is twofold. It is either schematical, when to a concept comprehended by the Understanding the corresponding intuition is given a priori; or it is symbolical. In the latter case to a concept only thinkable by the Reason, to which no sensible intuition can be adequate, an intuition is supplied with which accords a procedure of the Judgement analogous to what it observes in schematism: it accords with it, that is, in respect of the rule of this procedure merely, not of the intuition itself; consequently in respect of the form of reflection merely, and not of its content.

There is a use of the word symbolical that has been adopted by modern logicians, which is misleading and incorrect, i.e. to speak of the symbolical mode of representation as if it were opposed to the intuitive; for the symbolical is only a mode of the intuitive. The latter (the intuitive), that is, may be divided into the schematical and the symbolical modes of representation. Both are hypotyposes, i.e. presentations (exhibitiones); not mere characterisations, or designations of concepts by accompanying sensible signs which contain nothing belonging to the intuition of the Object, and only serve as a means for reproducing the concepts, according to the law of association of the Imagination, and consequently in a subjective point of view. These are either words, or visible (algebraical, even mimetical) signs, as mere expressions for concepts.103

All intuitions, which we supply to concepts a priori, are therefore either schemata or symbols, of which the former contain direct, the latter indirect, presentations of the concept. The former do this demonstratively; the latter by means of an analogy (for which we avail ourselves even of empirical intuitions) in which the Judgement exercises a double function; first applying the concept to the object of a sensible intuition, and then applying the mere rule of the reflection made upon that intuition to a quite different object of which the first is only the symbol. Thus a monarchical state is represented by a living body, if it is governed by national laws, and by a mere machine (like a hand-mill) if governed by an individual absolute will; but in both cases only symbolically. For between a despotic state and a hand-mill there is, to be sure, no similarity; but there is a similarity in the rules according to which we reflect upon these two things and their causality. This matter has not been sufficiently analysed hitherto, for it deserves a deeper investigation; but this is not the place to linger over it. Our language [i.e. German] is full of indirect presentations of this sort, in which the expression does not contain the proper schema for the concept, but merely a symbol for reflection. Thus the words ground (support, basis), to depend (to be held up from above), to flow from something (instead of, to follow), substance (as Locke expresses it, the support of accidents), and countless others, are not schematical but symbolical hypotyposes and expressions for concepts, not by means of a direct intuition, but only by analogy with it, i.e. by the transference of reflection upon an object of intuition to a quite different concept to which perhaps an intuition can never directly correspond. If we are to give the name of cognition to a mere mode of representation (which is quite permissible if the latter is not a principle of the theoretical determination of what an object is in itself, but of the practical determination of what the Idea of it should be for us and for its purposive use), then all our knowledge of God is merely symbolical; and he who regards it as schematical, along with the properties of Understanding, Will, etc., which only establish their objective reality in beings of this world, falls into Anthropomorphism, just as he who gives up every intuitive element falls into Deism, by which nothing at all is cognised, not even in a practical point of view.

Now I say the Beautiful is the symbol of the morally Good, and that it is only in this respect (a reference which is natural to every man and which every man postulates in others as a duty) that it gives pleasure with a claim for the agreement of every one else. By this the mind is made conscious of a certain ennoblement and elevation above the mere sensibility to pleasure received through sense, and the worth of others is estimated in accordance with a like maxim of their Judgement. That is the intelligible, to which, as pointed out in the preceding paragraph, Taste looks; with which our higher cognitive faculties are in accord; and without which a downright contradiction would arise between their nature and the claims made by taste. In this faculty the Judgement does not see itself, as in empirical judging, subjected to a heteronomy of empirical laws; it gives the law to itself in respect of the objects of so pure a satisfaction, just as the Reason does in respect of the faculty of desire. Hence, both on account of this inner possibility in the subject and of the external possibility of a nature that agrees with it, it finds itself to be referred to something within the subject as well as without him, something which is neither nature nor freedom, but which yet is connected with the supersensible ground of the latter. In this supersensible ground, therefore, the theoretical faculty is bound together in unity with the practical, in a way which though common is yet unknown. We shall indicate some points of this analogy, while at the same time we shall note the differences.

(1) The beautiful pleases immediately (but only in reflective intuition, not, like morality, in its concept). (2) It pleases apart from any interest (the morally good is indeed necessarily bound up with an interest, though not with one which precedes the judgement upon the satisfaction, but with one which is first of all produced by it). (3) The freedom of the Imagination (and therefore of the sensibility of our faculty) is represented in judging the beautiful as harmonious with the conformity to law of the Understanding (in the moral judgement the freedom of the will is thought as the harmony of the latter with itself according to universal laws of Reason). (4) The subjective principle in judging the beautiful is represented as universal, i.e. as valid for every man, though not cognisable through any universal concept. (The objective principle of morality is also expounded as universal, i.e. for every subject and for every action of the same subject, and thus as cognisable by means of a universal concept). Hence the moral judgement is not only susceptible of definite constitutive principles, but is possible only by grounding its maxims on these in their universality.

A reference to this analogy is usual even with the common Understanding [of men], and we often describe beautiful objects of nature or art by names that seem to put a moral appreciation at their basis. We call buildings or trees majestic and magnificent, landscapes laughing and gay; even colours are called innocent, modest, tender, because they excite sensations which have something analogous to the consciousness of the state of mind brought about by moral judgements. Taste makes possible the transition, without any violent leap, from the charm of Sense to habitual moral interest; for it represents the Imagination in its freedom as capable of purposive determination for the Understanding, and so teaches us to find even in objects of sense a free satisfaction apart from any charm of sense.

APPENDIX

§ 60. Of the method of Taste

The division of a Critique into Elementology and Methodology, as preparatory to science, is not applicable to the Critique of taste, because there neither is nor can be a science of the Beautiful, and the judgement of taste is not determinable by means of principles. As for the scientific element in every art, which regards truth in the presentation of its Object, this is indeed the indispensable condition (conditio sine qua non) of beautiful art, but not beautiful art itself. There is therefore for beautiful art only a manner (modus), not a method of teaching (methodus). The master must show what the pupil is to do and how he is to do it; and the universal rules, under which at last he brings his procedure, serve rather for bringing the main points back to his remembrance when occasion requires, than for prescribing them to him. Nevertheless regard must be had here to a certain ideal, which art must have before its eyes, although it cannot be completely attained in practice. It is only through exciting the Imagination of the pupil to accordance with a given concept, by making him note the inadequacy of the expression for the Idea, to which the concept itself does not attain because it is an aesthetical Idea, and by severe criticism, that he can be prevented from taking the examples set before him as types and models for imitation, to be subjected to no higher standard or independent judgement. It is thus that genius, and with it the freedom of the Imagination, is stifled by its very conformity to law; and without these no beautiful art, and not even an accurately judging individual taste, is possible.

The propaedeutic to all beautiful art, regarded in the highest degree of its perfection, seems to lie, not in precepts, but in the culture of the mental powers by means of those elements of knowledge called humaniora, probably because humanity on the one side indicates the universal feeling of sympathy, and on the other the faculty of being able to communicate universally our inmost [feelings]. For these properties taken together constitute the characteristic social spirit104 of humanity by which it is distinguished from the limitations of animal life. The age and peoples, in which the impulse towards a law-abiding social life, by which a people becomes a permanent community, contended with the great difficulties presented by the difficult problem of uniting freedom (and therefore equality also) with compulsion (rather of respect and submission from a sense of duty than of fear)—such an age and such a people naturally first found out the art of reciprocal communication of Ideas between the cultivated and uncultivated classes and thus discovered how to harmonise the large-mindedness and refinement of the former with the natural simplicity and originality of the latter. In this way they first found that mean between the higher culture and simple nature which furnishes that true standard for taste as a sense common to all men which no universal rules can supply.

With difficulty will a later age dispense with those models, because it will be always farther from nature; and in fine, without having permanent examples before it, a concept will hardly be possible, in one and the same people, of the happy union of the law-abiding constraint of the highest culture with the force and truth of free nature which feels its own proper worth.

Now taste is at bottom a faculty for judging of the sensible illustration of moral Ideas (by means of a certain analogy involved in our reflection upon both these); and it is from this faculty also and from the greater susceptibility grounded thereon for the feeling arising from the latter (called moral feeling), that the pleasure is derived which taste regards as valid for mankind in general and not merely for the private feeling of each. Hence it appears plain that the true propaedeutic for the foundation of taste is the development of moral Ideas and the culture of the moral feeling; because it is only when sensibility is brought into agreement with this that genuine taste can assume a definite invariable form.

THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT

PART II

CRITIQUE OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT

§ 61. Of the objective purposiveness of Nature

We have on transcendental principles good ground to assume a subjective purposiveness in nature, in its particular laws, in reference to its comprehensibility by human Judgement and to the possibility of the connexion of particular experiences in a system. This may be expected as possible in many products of nature, which, as if they were devised quite specially for our Judgement, contain a specific form conformable thereto; which through their manifoldness and unity serve at once to strengthen and to sustain the mental powers (that come into play in the employment of this faculty); and to which therefore we give the name of beautiful forms.

But that the things of nature serve one another as means to purposes, and that their possibility is only completely intelligible through this kind of causality—for this we have absolutely no ground in the universal Idea of nature, as the complex of the objects of sense. In the above-mentioned case, the representation of things, because it is something in ourselves, can be quite well thought a priori as suitable and useful for the internally purposive determination of our cognitive faculties; but that purposes, which neither are our own nor belong to nature (for we do not regard nature as an intelligent being), could or should constitute a particular kind of causality, at least a quite special conformity to law,—this we have absolutely no a priori reason for presuming. Yet more, experience itself cannot prove to us the actuality of this; there must then have preceded a rationalising subtlety which only sportively introduces the concept of purpose into the nature of things, but which does not derive it from Objects or from their empirical cognition. To this latter it is of more service to make nature comprehensible according to analogy with the subjective ground of the connexion of our representations, than to cognise it from objective grounds.

Further, objective purposiveness, as a principle of the possibility of things of nature, is so far removed from necessary connexion with the concept of nature, that it is much oftener precisely that upon which one relies to prove the contingency of nature and of its form. When, e.g. we adduce the structure of a bird, the hollowness of its bones, the disposition of its wings for motion and of its tail for steering, etc., we say that all this is contingent in the highest degree according to the mere nexus effectivus of nature, without calling in the aid of a particular kind of causality, namely that of purpose (nexus finalis). In other words, nature, considered as mere mechanism, could have produced its forms in a thousand other ways without stumbling upon the unity which is in accordance with such a principle. It is not in the concept of nature but quite apart from it that we can hope to find the least ground a priori for this.

Nevertheless the teleological act of judgement is rightly brought to bear, at least problematically, upon the investigation of nature; but only in order to bring it under principles of observation and inquiry according to the analogy with the causality of purpose, without any pretence to explain it thereby. It belongs therefore to the reflective and not to the determinant judgement. The concept of combinations and forms of nature in accordance with purposes is then at least one principle more for bringing its phenomena under rules where the laws of simply mechanical causality do not suffice. For we bring in a teleological ground, where we attribute causality in respect of an Object to the concept of an Object, as if it were to be found in nature (not in ourselves); or rather when we represent to ourselves the possibility of the Object after the analogy of that causality which we experience in ourselves, and consequently think nature technically as through a special faculty. If we did not ascribe to it such a method of action, its causality would have to be represented as blind mechanism. If, on the contrary, we supply to nature causes acting designedly, and consequently place at its basis teleology, not merely as a regulative principle for the mere judging of phenomena, to which nature can be thought as subject in its particular laws, but as a constitutive principle of the derivation of its products from their causes; then would the concept of a natural purpose no longer belong to the reflective but to the determinant Judgement. Then, in fact, it would not belong specially to the Judgement (like the concept of beauty regarded as formal subjective purposiveness), but as a rational concept it would introduce into natural science a new causality, which we only borrow from ourselves and ascribe to other beings, without meaning to assume them to be of the same kind with ourselves.

FIRST DIVISION

ANALYTIC OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT

§ 62. Of the objective purposiveness which is merely formal as distinguished from that which is material

All geometrical figures drawn on a principle display a manifold, oft admired, objective purposiveness; i.e. in reference to their usefulness for the solution of several problems by a single principle, or of the same problem in an infinite variety of ways. The purposiveness is here obviously objective and intellectual, not merely subjective and aesthetical. For it expresses the suitability of the figure for the production of many intended figures, and is cognised through Reason. But this purposiveness does not make the concept of the object itself possible, i.e. it is not regarded as possible merely with reference to this use.

In so simple a figure as the circle lies the key to the solution of a multitude of problems, each of which would demand various appliances; whereas the solution results of itself, as it were, as one of the infinite number of elegant properties of this figure. Are we, for example, asked to construct a triangle, being given the base and vertical angle? The problem is indeterminate, i.e. it can be solved in an infinite number of ways. But the circle embraces them altogether as the geometrical locus of the vertices of triangles satisfying the given conditions. Again, suppose that two lines are to cut one another so that the rectangle under the segments of the one should be equal to the rectangle under the segments of the other; the solution of the problem from this point of view presents much difficulty. But all chords intersecting inside a circle divide one another in this proportion. Other curved lines suggest other purposive solutions of which nothing was thought in the rule that furnished their construction. All conic sections in themselves and when compared with one another are fruitful in principles for the solution of a number of possible problems, however simple is the definition which determines their concept.—It is a true joy to see the zeal with which the old geometers investigated the properties of lines of this class, without allowing themselves to be led astray by the questions of narrow-minded persons, as to what use this knowledge would be. Thus they worked out the properties of the parabola without knowing the law of gravitation, which would have suggested to them its application to the trajectory of heavy bodies (for the motion of a heavy body can be seen to be parallel to the curve of a parabola). Again, they found out the properties of an ellipse without surmising that any of the heavenly bodies had weight, and without knowing the law of force at different distances from the point of attraction, which causes it to describe this curve in free motion. While they thus unconsciously worked for the science of the future, they delighted themselves with a purposiveness in the [essential] being of things which yet they were able to present completely a priori in its necessity. Plato, himself master of this science, hinted at such an original constitution of things in the discovery of which we can dispense with all experience, and at the power of the mind to produce from its supersensible principle the harmony of beings (where the properties of number come in, with which the mind plays in music). This [he touches upon] in the inspiration that raised him above the concepts of experience to Ideas, which seem to him to be explicable only through an intellectual affinity with the origin of all beings. No wonder that he banished from his school the man who was ignorant of geometry, since he thought he could derive from pure intuition, which has its home in the human spirit, that which Anaxagoras drew from empirical objects and their purposive combination. For in the very necessity of that which is purposive, and is constituted just as if it were designedly intended for our use,—but at the same time seems to belong originally to the being of things without any reference to our use—lies the ground of our great admiration of nature, and that not so much external as in our own Reason. It is surely excusable that this admiration should through misunderstanding gradually rise to the height of fanaticism.

But this intellectual purposiveness, although no doubt objective (not subjective like aesthetical purposiveness), is in reference to its possibility merely formal (not real). It can only be conceived as purposiveness in general without any [definite] purpose being assumed as its basis, and consequently without teleology being needed for it. The figure of a circle is an intuition which is determined by means of the Understanding according to a principle. The unity of this principle which I arbitrarily assume and use as fundamental concept, applied to a form of intuition (space) which is met with in myself as a representation and yet a priori, renders intelligible the unity of many rules resulting from the construction of that concept, which are purposive for many possible designs. But this purposiveness does not imply a purpose or any other ground whatever. It is quite different if I meet with order and regularity in complexes of things, external to myself, enclosed within certain boundaries; as, e.g. in a garden, the order and regularity of the trees, flower-beds, and walks. These I cannot expect to derive a priori from my bounding of space made after a rule of my own; for this order and regularity are existing things which must be given empirically in order to be known, and not a mere representation in myself determined a priori according to a principle. So then the latter (empirical) purposiveness, as real, is dependent on the concept of a purpose.

But the ground of admiration for a perceived purposiveness, although it be in the being of things (so far as their concepts can be constructed), may very well be seen, and seen to be legitimate. The manifold rules whose unity (derived from a principle) excites admiration, are all synthetical and do not follow from the concept of the Object, e.g. of a circle; but require this Object to be given in intuition. Hence this unity gets the appearance of having empirically an external basis of rules distinct from our representative faculty; as if therefore the correspondence of the Object to that need of rules which is proper to the Understanding were contingent in itself, and therefore only possible by means of a purpose expressly directed thereto. Now because this harmony, notwithstanding all this purposiveness, is not cognised empirically but a priori, it should bring us of itself to this point—that space, through whose determination (by means of the Imagination, in accordance with a concept) the Object is alone possible, is not a characteristic of things external to me, but a mere mode of representation in myself. Hence, in the figure which I draw in conformity with a concept, i.e. in my own mode of representing that which is given to me externally, whatever it may be in itself, it is I that introduce the purposiveness; I get no empirical instruction from the Object about the purposiveness, and so I require in it no particular purpose external to myself. But because this consideration already calls for a critical employment of Reason, and consequently cannot be involved in the judging of the Object according to its properties; so this latter [judging] suggests to me immediately nothing but the unification of heterogeneous rules (even according to their very diversity) in a principle. This principle, without requiring any particular a priori basis external to my concept, or indeed, generally speaking, to my representation, is yet cognised a priori by me as true. Now wonder is a shock of the mind arising from the incompatibility of a representation, and the rule given by its means, with the principles already lying at its basis; which provokes a doubt as to whether we have rightly seen or rightly judged. Admiration, however, is wonder which ever recurs, despite the disappearance of this doubt. Consequently the latter is a quite natural effect of that observed purposiveness in the being of things (as phenomena). It cannot indeed be censured, whilst the unification of the form of sensible intuition (space)—with the faculty of concepts (the Understanding)—is inexplicable to us; and that not only on account of the union being just of the kind that it is, but because it is enlarging for the mind to surmise [the existence of] something lying outside our sensible representations in which, although unknown to us, the ultimate ground of that agreement may be met with. We are, it is true, not necessitated to cognise this if we have only to do a priori with the formal purposiveness of our representations; but the fact that we are compelled to look out beyond it inspires at the same time an admiration for the object that impels us thereto.

We are accustomed to speak of the above-mentioned properties of geometrical figures or of numbers as beautiful, on account of a certain a priori purposiveness they have for all kinds of cognitive uses, this purposiveness being quite unexpected on account of the simplicity of the construction. We speak, e.g. of this or that beautiful property of the circle, which was discovered in this or that way. But there is no aesthetical act of judgement through which we find it purposive, no act of judgement without a concept which renders noticeable a mere subjective purposiveness in the free play of our cognitive faculties; but an intellectual act according to concepts which enables us clearly to cognise an objective purposiveness, i.e. availableness for all kinds of (infinitely manifold) purposes. We must rather call this relative perfection than a beauty of the mathematical figure. To speak thus of an intellectual beauty cannot in general be permissible; for otherwise the word beauty would lose all determinate significance, or the intellectual satisfaction all superiority over the sensible. We should rather call a demonstration of such properties beautiful, because through it the Understanding as the faculty of concepts, and the Imagination as the faculty of presenting them, feel themselves strengthened a priori. (This, when viewed in connexion with the precision introduced by Reason, is spoken of as elegant.) Here, however, the satisfaction, although it is based on concepts, is subjective; while perfection brings with itself an objective satisfaction.

§ 63. Of the relative, as distinguished from the inner, purposiveness of nature

Experience leads our Judgement to the concept of an objective and material purposiveness, i.e. to the concept of a purpose of nature, only when105 we have to judge of a relation of cause to effect which we find ourselves able to apprehend as legitimate only by presupposing the Idea of the effect of the causality of the cause as the fundamental condition, in the cause, of the possibility of the effect. This can take place in two ways. We may regard the effect directly as an art product, or only as material for the art of other possible natural beings; in other words, either as a purpose or as a means towards the purposive employment of other causes. This latter purposiveness is called utility (for man) or mere advantage (for other creatures), and is merely relative; while the former is an inner purposiveness of the natural being.

For example, rivers bring down with them all kinds of earth serviceable for the growth of plants which sometimes is deposited inland, often also at their mouths. The tide brings this mud to many coasts over the land or deposits it on the shore; and so, more especially if men give their aid so that the ebb shall not carry it back again, the fruit-bearing land increases in area, and the vegetable kingdom gains the place which formerly was the habitation of fish and shells. In this way has nature itself brought about most of the extensions of the land, and still continues to do so, although very slowly.—Now the question is whether this is to be judged a purpose of nature, because it contains utility for men. We cannot put it down to the account of the vegetable kingdom, because just as much is subtracted from sea-life as is added to land-life.

Or, to give an example of the advantageousness of certain natural things as means for other creatures (if we suppose them to be means), no soil is more suitable to pine trees than a sandy soil. Now the deep sea, before it withdrew from the land, left behind large tracts of sand in our northern regions, so that on this soil, so unfavourable for all cultivation, widely extended pine forests were enabled to grow, for the unreasoning destruction of which we frequently blame our ancestors. We may ask if this original deposit of tracts of sand was a purpose of nature for the benefit of the possible pine forests? So much is clear, that if we regard this as a purpose of nature, we must also regard the sand as a relative purpose, in reference to which the ocean strand and its withdrawal were means: for in the series of the mutually subordinated members of a purposive combination, every member must be regarded as a purpose (though not as a final purpose), to which its proximate cause is the means. So too if cattle, sheep, horses, etc., are to exist, there must be grass on the earth, but there must also be saline plants in the desert if camels are to thrive; and again these and other herbivorous animals must be met with in numbers if there are to be wolves, tigers, and lions. Consequently the objective purposiveness, which is based upon advantage, is not an objective purposiveness of things in themselves; as if the sand could not be conceived for itself as an effect of a cause, viz. the sea, without attributing to the latter a purpose, and regarding the effect, namely, the sand, as a work of art. It is a merely relative purposiveness contingent upon the thing to which it is ascribed; and although in the examples we have cited, the different kinds of grass are to be judged as in themselves organised products of nature, and consequently as artificial, yet are they to be regarded, in reference to the beasts which feed upon them, as mere raw material.

But above all, though man, through the freedom of his causality, finds certain natural things of advantage for his designs—designs often foolish, such as using the variegated plumage of birds to adorn his clothes, or coloured earths and the juices of plants for painting his face; often again reasonable as when the horse is used for riding, the ox or (as in Minorca) the ass or pig for ploughing—yet we cannot even here assume a relative natural purpose. For his Reason knows how to give things a conformity with his own arbitrary fancies for which he was not at all predestined by nature. Only, if we assume that men are to live upon the earth, then the means must be there without which they could not exist as animals, and even as rational animals (in however low a degree of rationality); and thereupon those natural things, which are indispensable in this regard, must be considered as natural purposes.

We can hence easily see that external purposiveness (advantage of one thing in respect of others) can be regarded as an external natural purpose only under the condition, that the existence of that [being], to which it is immediately or distantly advantageous, is in itself a purpose of nature. Since that can never be completely determined by mere contemplation of nature, it follows that relative purposiveness, although it hypothetically gives indications of natural purposes, yet justifies no absolute teleological judgement.

Snow in cold countries protects the crops from the frost; it makes human intercourse easier (by means of sleighs). The Laplander finds in his country animals by whose aid this intercourse is brought about, i.e. reindeer, who find sufficient sustenance in a dry moss which they have to scratch out for themselves from under the snow, and who are easily tamed and readily permit themselves to be deprived of that freedom in which they could have remained if they chose. For other people in the same frozen regions marine animals afford rich stores; in addition to the food and clothing which are thus supplied, and the wood which is floated in by the sea to their dwellings, these marine animals provide material for fuel by which their huts are warmed. Here is a wonderful concurrence of many references of nature to one purpose; and all this applies to the cases of the Greenlander, the Lapp, the Samoyede, the inhabitant of Yakutsk, etc. But then we do not see why, generally, men must live there at all. Therefore to say that vapour falls out of the atmosphere in the form of snow, that the sea has its currents which float down wood that has grown in warmer lands, and that there are in it great sea monsters filled with oil, because the idea of advantage for certain poor creatures is fundamental for the cause which collects all these natural products, would be a very venturesome and arbitrary judgement. For even if there were none of this natural utility, we should miss nothing as regards the adequateness of natural causes to nature’s constitution; much more even to desire such a tendency in, and to attribute such a purpose to, nature would be the part of a presumptuous and inconsiderate fancy. For indeed it might be observed that it could only have been the greatest unsociability among men which thus scattered them into such inhospitable regions.

§ 64. Of the peculiar character of things as natural purposes

In order to see that a thing is only possible as a purpose, that is, to be forced to seek the causality of its origin not in the mechanism of nature but in a cause whose faculty of action is determined through concepts, it is requisite that its form be not possible according to mere natural laws, i.e. laws which can be cognised by us through the Understanding alone when applied to objects of Sense; but that even the empirical knowledge of it as regards its cause and effect presupposes concepts of Reason. This contingency of its form in all empirical natural laws in reference to Reason affords a ground for regarding its causality as possible only through Reason. For Reason, which must cognise the necessity of every form of a natural product in order to comprehend even the conditions of its genesis, cannot assume such [natural] necessity in that particular given form. The causality of its origin is then referred to the faculty of acting in accordance with purposes (a will); and the Object which can only thus be represented as possible is represented as a purpose.

If in a seemingly uninhabited country a man perceived a geometrical figure, say a regular hexagon, inscribed on the sand, his reflection busied with such a concept would attribute, although obscurely, the unity in the principle of its genesis to Reason, and consequently would not regard as a ground of the possibility of such a shape the sand, or the neighbouring sea, or the winds, or beasts with familiar footprints, or any other irrational cause. For the chance against meeting with such a concept, which is only possible through Reason, would seem so infinitely great, that it would be just as if there were no natural law, no cause in the mere mechanical working of nature capable of producing it; but as if only the concept of such an Object, as a concept which Reason alone can supply and with which it can compare the thing, could contain the causality for such an effect. This then would be regarded as a purpose, but as a product of art, not as a natural purpose (vestigium hominis video).106

But in order to regard a thing cognised as a natural product as a purpose also—consequently as a natural purpose, if this is not a contradiction—something more is required. I would say provisionally: a thing exists as a natural purpose, if it is [although in a double sense]107 both cause and effect of itself. For herein lies a causality the like of which cannot be combined with the mere concept of a nature without attributing to it a purpose; it can certainly be thought without contradiction, but cannot be comprehended. We shall elucidate the determination of this Idea of a natural purpose by an example, before we analyse it completely.

In the first place, a tree generates another tree according to a known natural law. But the tree produced is of the same genus; and so it produces itself generically. On the one hand, as effect it is continually self-produced; on the other hand, as cause it continually produces itself, and so perpetuates itself generically.

Secondly, a tree produces itself as an individual. This kind of effect no doubt we call growth; but it is quite different from any increase according to mechanical laws, and is to be reckoned as generation, though under another name. The matter that the tree incorporates it previously works up into a specifically peculiar quality, which natural mechanism external to it cannot supply; and thus it develops itself by aid of a material which, as compounded, is its own product. No doubt, as regards the constituents got from nature without, it must only be regarded as an educt; but yet in the separation and recombination of this raw material we see such an originality in the separating and formative faculty of this kind of natural being, as is infinitely beyond the reach of art, if the attempt is made to reconstruct such vegetable products out of elements obtained by their dissection or material supplied by nature for their sustenance.

Thirdly, each part of a tree generates itself in such a way that the maintenance of any one part depends reciprocally on the maintenance of the rest. A bud of one tree engrafted on the twig of another produces in the alien stock a plant of its own kind, and so also a scion engrafted on a foreign stem. Hence we may regard each twig or leaf of the same tree as merely engrafted or inoculated into it, and so as an independent tree attached to another and parasitically nourished by it. At the same time, while the leaves are products of the tree they also in turn give support to it; for the repeated defoliation of a tree kills it, and its growth thus depends on the action of the leaves upon the stem. The self-help of nature in case of injury in the vegetable creation, when the want of a part that is necessary for the maintenance of its neighbours is supplied by the remaining parts; and the abortions or malformations in growth, in which certain parts, on account of casual defects or hindrances, form themselves in a new way to maintain what exists, and so produce an anomalous creature, I shall only mention in passing, though they are among the most wonderful properties of organised creatures.

§ 65. Things regarded as natural purposes are organised beings

According to the character alleged in the preceding section, a thing, which, though a natural product, is to be cognised as only possible as a natural purpose, must bear itself alternately as cause and as effect. This, however, is a somewhat inexact and indeterminate expression which needs derivation from a determinate concept.

Causal combination as thought merely by the Understanding is a connexion constituting an ever-progressive series (of causes and effects); and things which as effects presuppose others as causes cannot be reciprocally at the same time causes of these. This sort of causal combination we call that of effective causes (nexus effectivus). But on the other hand, a causal combination according to a concept of Reason (of purposes) can also be thought, which regarded as a series would lead either forwards or backwards; in this the thing that has been called the effect may with equal propriety be termed the cause of that of which it is the effect. In the practical department of human art we easily find connexions such as this; e.g. a house, no doubt, is the cause of the money received for rent, but also conversely the representation of this possible income was the cause of building the house. Such a causal connexion we call that of final causes (nexus finalis). We may perhaps suitably name the first the connexion of real causes, the second of those which are ideal; because from this nomenclature it is at once comprehended that there can be no more than these two kinds of causality.

For a thing to be a natural purpose in the first place it is requisite that its parts (as regards their being and their form) are only possible through their reference to the whole. For the thing itself is a purpose and so is comprehended under a concept or an Idea which must determine a priori all that is to be contained in it. But so far as a thing is only thought as possible in this way, it is a mere work of art; i.e. a product of one rational cause distinct from the matter (of the parts), whose causality (in the collection and combination of the parts) is determined through its Idea of a whole possible by their means (and consequently not through external nature).

But if a thing as a natural product is to involve in itself and in its internal possibility a reference to purposes,—i.e. to be possible only as a natural purpose, and without the causality of the concepts of rational beings external to itself,—then it is requisite secondly that its parts should so combine in the unity of a whole that they are reciprocally cause and effect of each other’s form. Only in this way can the Idea of the whole conversely (reciprocally) determine the form and combination of all the parts; not indeed as cause—for then it would be an artificial product—but as the ground of cognition, for him who is judging it, of the systematic unity and combination of all the manifold contained in the given material.

For a body then which is to be judged in itself and its internal possibility as a natural purpose, it is requisite that its parts mutually depend upon each other both as to their form and their combination, and so produce a whole by their own causality; while conversely the concept of the whole may be regarded as its cause according to a principle (in a being possessing a causality according to concepts adequate to such a product). In this case then the connexion of effective causes may be judged as an effect through final causes.

In such a product of nature every part not only exists by means of the other parts, but is thought as existing for the sake of the others and the whole, that is as an (organic) instrument. Thus, however, it might be an artificial instrument, and so might be represented only as a purpose that is possible in general; but also its parts are all organs reciprocally producing each other. This can never be the case with artificial instruments, but only with nature which supplies all the material for instruments (even for those of art). Only a product of such a kind can be called a natural purpose, and this because it is an organised and self-organising being.

In a watch one part is the instrument for moving the other parts, but the wheel is not the effective cause of the production of the others; no doubt one part is for the sake of the others, but it does not exist by their means. In this case the producing cause of the parts and of their form is not contained in the nature (of the material), but is external to it in a being which can produce effects according to Ideas of a whole possible by means of its causality. Hence a watch wheel does not produce other wheels, still less does one watch produce other watches, utilising (organising) foreign material for that purpose; hence it does not replace of itself parts of which it has been deprived, nor does it make good what is lacking in a first formation by the addition of the missing parts, nor if it has gone out of order does it repair itself—all of which, on the contrary, we may expect from organised nature.—An organised being is then not a mere machine, for that has merely moving power, but it possesses in itself formative power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials though they have it not of themselves; it organises them, in fact, and this cannot be explained by the mere mechanical faculty of motion.

We say of nature and its faculty in organised products far too little if we describe it as an analogon of art; for this suggests an artificer (a rational being) external to it. Much rather does it organise itself and its organised products in every species, no doubt after one general pattern but yet with suitable deviations, which self-preservation demands according to circumstances. We perhaps approach nearer to this inscrutable property, if we describe it as an analogon of life; but then we must either endow matter, as mere matter, with a property which contradicts its very being (hylozoism), or associate therewith an alien principle standing in communion with it (a soul). But in the latter case we must, if such a product is to be a natural product, either presuppose organised matter as the instrument of that soul, which does not make the soul a whit more comprehensible; or regard the soul as artificer of this structure and so remove the product from (corporeal) nature. To speak strictly, then, the organisation of nature has in it nothing analogous to any causality we know.108 Beauty in nature can be rightly described as an analogon of art, because it is ascribed to objects only in reference to reflection upon their external aspect, and consequently only on account of the form of their external surface. But internal natural perfection, as it belongs to those things which are only possible as natural purposes, and are therefore called organised beings, is not analogous to any physical, i.e. natural, faculty known to us; nay even, regarding ourselves as, in the widest sense, belonging to nature, it is not even thinkable or explicable by means of any exactly fitting analogy to human art.

The concept of a thing as in itself a natural purpose is therefore no constitutive concept of Understanding or of Reason, but it can serve as a regulative concept for the reflective Judgement, to guide our investigation about objects of this kind by a distant analogy with our own causality according to purposes generally, and in our meditations upon their ultimate ground. This latter use, however, is not in reference to the knowledge of nature or of its original ground, but rather to our own practical faculty of Reason, in analogy with which we considered the cause of that purposiveness.

Organised beings are then the only beings in nature which, considered in themselves and apart from any relation to other things, can be thought as possible only as purposes of nature. Hence they first afford objective reality to the concept of a purpose of nature, as distinguished from a practical purpose; and so they give to the science of nature the basis for a teleology, i.e. a mode of judgement about natural Objects according to a special principle which otherwise we should in no way be justified in introducing (because we cannot see a priori the possibility of this kind of causality).

§ 66. Of the principle of judging of internal purposiveness in organised beings

This principle, which is at the same time a definition, is as follows: An organised product of nature is one in which every part is reciprocally purpose, [end] and means. In it nothing is vain, without purpose, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature.

This principle, as regards its occasion, is doubtless derived from experience, viz. from that methodised experience called observation; but on account of the universality and necessity which it ascribes to such purposiveness it cannot rest solely on empirical grounds, but must have at its basis an a priori principle, although it be merely regulative and these purposes lie only in the idea of the judging [subject] and not in an effective cause. We may therefore describe the aforesaid principle as a maxim for judging of the internal purposiveness of organised beings.

It is an acknowledged fact that the dissectors of plants and animals, in order to investigate their structure and to find out the reasons, why and for what end such parts, such a disposition and combination of parts, and just such an internal form have been given them, assume as indisputably necessary the maxim that nothing in such a creature is vain; just as they lay down as the fundamental proposition of the universal science of nature, that nothing happens by chance. In fact, they can as little free themselves from this teleological proposition as from the universal physical proposition; for as without the latter we should have no experience at all, so without the former we should have no guiding thread for the observation of a species of natural things which we have thought teleologically under the concept of natural purposes.

Now this concept brings the Reason into a quite different order of things from that of a mere mechanism of nature, which is no longer satisfying here. An Idea is to be the ground of the possibility of the natural product. But because this is an absolute unity of representation, instead of the material being a plurality of things that can supply by itself no definite unity of composition,—if that unity of the Idea is to serve at all as the a priori ground of determination of a natural law of the causality of such a form of composition,—the purpose of nature must be extended to everything included in its product. For if we once refer action of this sort on the whole to any supersensible ground of determination beyond the blind mechanism of nature, we must judge of it altogether according to this principle; and we have then no reason to regard the form of such a thing as partly dependent on mechanism—for by such mixing up of disparate principles no certain rule of judging would be left.

For example, it may be that in an animal body many parts can be conceived as concretions according to mere mechanical laws (as the hide, the bones, the hair). And yet the cause which brings together the required matter, modifies it, forms it, and puts it in its appropriate place, must always be judged of teleologically; so that here everything must be considered as organised, and everything again in a certain relation to the thing itself is an organ.

§ 67. Of the principle of the teleological judging of nature in general as a system of purposes

We have already said above that the external purposiveness of natural things affords no sufficient warrant for using them as purposes of nature in order to explain their presence, and for regarding their contingently purposive effects as the grounds of their presence according to the principle of final causes. Thus we cannot take for natural purposes, rivers because they promote intercourse among inland peoples, mountains because they contain the sources of the rivers and for their maintenance in rainless seasons have a store of snow, or the slope of the land which carries away the water and leaves the country dry; because although this shape of the earth’s surface be very necessary for the origin and maintenance of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, it has nothing in itself for the possibility of which we are forced to assume a causality according to purposes. The same is true of plants which man uses for his needs or his pleasures; of beasts, the camel, the ox, the horse, dog, etc., which are indispensable to him as well for food as because they are used in his service in many different ways. In the case of things which we have no reason for regarding in themselves as purposes, such external relation can only be hypothetically judged as purposive.

To judge of a thing as a natural purpose on account of its internal form is something very different from taking the existence of that thing to be a purpose of nature. For the latter assertion we require not merely the concept of a possible purpose, but the knowledge of the final purpose (scopus) of nature. But this requires a reference of such knowledge to something supersensible far transcending all our teleological knowledge of nature, for the purpose of [the existence of]109 nature must itself be sought beyond nature. The internal form of a mere blade of grass is sufficient to show that for our human faculty of judgement its origin is possible only according to the rule of purposes. But if we change our point of view and look to the use which other natural beings make of it, abandon the consideration of its internal organisation and only look to its externally purposive references, we shall arrive at no categorical purpose; all this purposive reference rests on an ever more distant condition, which, as unconditioned (the presence of a thing as final purpose), lies quite outside the physico-teleological view of the world. For example, grass is needful for the ox, which again is needful for man as a means of existence, but then we do not see why it is necessary that men should exist (a question this, which we shall not find so easy to answer if we sometimes cast our thoughts on the New Hollanders or the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego). So conceived, the thing is not even a natural purpose, for neither it (nor its whole genus) is to be regarded as a natural product.

Hence it is only so far as matter is organised that it necessarily carries with it the concept of a natural purpose, because this its specific form is at the same time a product of nature. But this concept leads necessarily to the Idea of collective nature as a system in accordance with the rule of purposes, to which Idea all the mechanism of nature must be subordinated according to principles of Reason (at least in order to investigate natural phenomena therein). The principle of Reason belongs to it only as a subjective principle or a maxim: viz. everything in the World is some way good for something; nothing is vain in it. By the example that nature gives us in its organic products we are justified, nay called upon, to expect of it and of its laws nothing that is not purposive on the whole.

It is plain that this is not a principle for the determinant but only for the reflective Judgement; that it is regulative and not constitutive; and that we derive from it a clue by which we consider natural things in reference to an already given ground of determination according to a new law-abiding order; and extend our natural science according to a different principle, viz. that of final causes, but yet without prejudice to the principle of mechanical causality. Furthermore, it is in no wise thus decided, whether anything of which we judge by this principle, is a designed purpose of nature; whether the grass is for the ox or the sheep, or whether these and the other things of nature are here for men. It is well also from this side to consider the things which are unpleasant to us and are contrary to purpose in particular references. Thus, for example, we can say: The vermin that torment men in their clothes, their hair, or their beds, may be, according to a wise appointment of nature, a motive to cleanliness which is in itself an important means for the preservation of health. Or again the mosquitoes and other stinging insects that make the wildernesses of America so oppressive to the savages, may be so many goads to activity for these primitive men, [inducing them] to drain the marshes and bring light into the forests which intercept every breath of air, and in this way, as well as by cultivating the soil, to make their habitations more healthy. The same thing, which appears to men contradictory to nature in its inner organisation, if viewed in this light gives an entertaining, sometimes an instructive, outlook into a teleological order of things, to which, without such a principle, mere physical observation would not lead us by itself. Thus some persons regard the tapeworm as given to the men or animals in whom it resides, as a kind of set-off for some defect in their vital organs; now I would ask if dreams (without which we never sleep, though we seldom remember them) may not be a purposive ordinance of nature? For during the relaxation of all the moving powers of the body, they serve to excite internally the vital organs by the medium of the Imagination and its great activity (which in this state generally rises to the height of affection). During sleep the Imagination commonly is more actively at play when the stomach is overloaded, in which case this excitement is the more necessary. Consequently, then, without this internal power of motion and this fatiguing unrest, on account of which we complain about our dreams (though in fact they are rather remedial), sleep even in a sound state of health would be a complete extinction of life.

Also the beauty of nature, i.e. its connexion with the free play of our cognitive faculties in apprehending and judging of its appearance, can be regarded as a kind of objective purposiveness of nature in its whole [content] as a system of which man is a member; if once the teleological judging of the same by means of the natural purposes which organised beings suggest to us, has justified for us the Idea of a great system of purposes of nature. We can regard it as a favour110 which nature has felt for us, that in addition to what is useful it has so profusely dispensed beauty and charm; and we can therefore love it, as well as regard it with respect on account of its immensity, and feel ourselves ennobled by such regard; just as if nature had established and adorned its splendid theatre precisely with this view.

We shall say only one thing more in this paragraph. If we have once discovered in nature a faculty of bringing forth products that can only be thought by us in accordance with the concept of final causes, we go further still. We venture to judge that things belong to a system of purposes, which yet do not (either in themselves or in their purposive relations) necessitate our seeking for any principle of their possibility beyond the mechanism of causes working blindly. For the first Idea, as concerns its ground, already brings us beyond the world of sense; since the unity of the supersensible principle must be regarded as valid in this way not merely for certain species of natural beings, but for the whole of nature as a system.

§ 68. Of the principle of Teleology as internal principle of natural science

The principles of a science are either internal to it and are then called domestic (principia domestica), or are based on concepts that can only find their place outside it and so are foreign principles (peregrina). Sciences that contain the latter, place at the basis of their doctrines auxiliary propositions (lemmata), i.e. they borrow some concept, and with it a ground of arrangement, from another science.

Every science is in itself a system, and it is not enough in it to build in accordance with principles and thus to employ a technical procedure, but we must go to work with it architectonically, as a building subsisting for itself; we must not treat it as an additional wing or part of another building, but as a whole in itself, although we may subsequently make a passage from it into that other or conversely.

If then we introduce into the context of natural science the concept of God in order to explain the purposiveness in nature, and subsequently use this purposiveness to prove that there is a God, there is no internal consistency in either science [i.e. either in natural science or theology]; and a delusive circle brings them both into uncertainty, because they have allowed their boundaries to overlap.

The expression, a purpose of nature, already sufficiently prevents the confusion of mixing up natural science and the occasion that it gives for judging teleologically of its objects, with the consideration of God, and so of a theological derivation of them. We must not regard it as insignificant, if one interchanges this expression with that of a divine purpose in the ordering of nature, or gives out the latter as more suitable and proper for a pious soul, because it must come in the end to deriving these purposive forms in nature from a wise author of the world. On the contrary, we must carefully and modestly limit ourselves to the expression, a purpose of nature, which asserts exactly as much as we know. Before we ask after the cause of nature itself, we find in nature, and in the course of its development, products of the same kind which are developed in it according to known empirical laws, in accordance with which natural science must judge of its objects, and, consequently, must seek in nature their causality according to the rule of purposes. So then it must not transgress its bounds in order to introduce into itself as a domestic principle that, to whose concept no experience can be commensurate, upon which we are only entitled to venture after the completion of natural science.

Natural characteristics which demonstrate themselves a priori, and consequently admit of insight into their possibility from universal principles without any admixture of experience, although they carry with them a technical purposiveness, yet cannot, because they are absolutely necessary, be referred to the Teleology of nature, as to a method belonging to Physic for solving its problems. Arithmetical or geometrical analogies, as well as universal mechanical laws,—however strange and admirable may seem to us the union of different rules, quite independent of one another according to all appearance, in a single principle,—possess on that account no claim to be teleological grounds of explanation in Physic. Even if they deserve to be brought into consideration in the universal theory of the purposiveness of things of nature, yet they belong to another [science], i.e. Metaphysic, and constitute no internal principle of natural science; as with the empirical laws of natural purposes in organised beings, it is not only permissible but unavoidable to use the teleological mode of judging as a principle of the doctrine of nature in regard to a particular class of its objects.

So to the end that Physic may keep within its own bounds, it abstracts itself entirely from the question, whether natural purposes are designed or undesigned; for that would be to meddle in an extraneous business, in Metaphysic. It is enough that there are objects, alone explicable according to natural laws which we can only think by means of the Idea of purposes as principle, and also alone internally cognisable as concerns their internal form, in this way. In order, therefore, to remove the suspicion of the slightest assumption,—as if we wished to mix with our grounds of cognition something not belonging to Physic at all, viz. a supernatural cause,—we speak in Teleology, indeed, of nature as if the purposiveness therein were designed, but in such a way that this design is ascribed to nature, i.e. to matter. Now in this way there can be no misunderstanding, because no design in the proper meaning of the word can possibly be ascribed to inanimate matter; we thus give notice that this word here only expresses a principle of the reflective not of the determinant Judgement, and so is to introduce no particular ground of causality; but only adds for the use of the Reason a different kind of investigation from that according to mechanical laws, in order to supplement the inadequacy of the latter even for empirical research into all particular laws of nature. Hence we speak quite correctly in Teleology, so far as it is referred to Physic, of the wisdom, the economy, the forethought, the beneficence of Nature, without either making an intelligent being of it, for that would be preposterous; or even without presuming to place another intelligent Being above it as its Architect, for that would be presumptuous.111 But there should be only signified thereby a kind of causality of nature after the analogy of our own in the technical use of Reason, in order to have before us the rule according to which certain products of nature must be investigated.

But now why is it that Teleology usually forms no proper part of theoretical natural science, but is regarded as a propaedeutic or transition to Theology? This is done in order to restrict the study of nature, mechanically considered, to that which we can so subject to observation or experiment that we are able to produce it ourselves as nature does, or at least by similar laws. For we see into a thing completely only so far as we can make it in accordance with our concepts and bring it to completion. But organisation, as an inner purpose of nature, infinitely surpasses all our faculty of presenting the like by means of art. And as concerns the external contrivances of nature regarded as purposive (wind, rain, etc.), Physic, indeed, considers their mechanism, but it cannot at all present their reference to purposes, so far as this is a condition necessarily belonging to cause; for this necessity of connexion has to do altogether with the combination of our concepts and not with the constitution of things.

SECOND DIVISION

DIALECTIC OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT

§ 69. What is an antinomy of the Judgement?

The determinant Judgement has for itself no principles which are the foundation of concepts of Objects. It has no autonomy, for it subsumes only under given laws or concepts as principles. Hence it is exposed to no danger of an antinomy of its own or to a conflict of its principles. So [we saw that] the transcendental Judgement which contains the conditions of subsuming under categories was for itself not nomothetic, but that it only indicated the conditions of sensuous intuition, under which reality (application) can be supplied to a given concept, as law of the Understanding, whereby the Judgement could never fall into discord with itself (at least as far as its principles are concerned).

But the reflective Judgement must subsume under a law, which is not yet given, and is therefore in fact only a principle of reflection upon objects, for which we are objectively quite in want of a law or of a concept of an Object that would be adequate as a principle for the cases that occur. Since now no use of the cognitive faculties can be permitted without principles, the reflective Judgement must in such cases serve as a principle for itself. This, because it is not objective and can supply no ground of cognition of the Object adequate for design, must serve as a mere subjective principle, for the purposive employment of our cognitive faculties, i.e. for reflecting upon a class of objects. Therefore in reference to such cases the reflective Judgement has its maxims—necessary maxims—on behalf of the cognition of natural laws in experience, in order to attain by their means to concepts, even concepts of Reason; since it has absolute need of such in order to learn merely to cognise nature according to its empirical laws.—Between these necessary maxims of the reflective Judgement there may be a conflict and consequently an antinomy, upon which a Dialectic bases itself. If each of two conflicting maxims has its ground in the nature of the cognitive faculties, this may be called a natural Dialectic, and an unavoidable illusion which we must expose and resolve in our Critique, to the end that it may not deceive us.

§ 70. Representation of this antinomy

So far as Reason has to do with nature, as the complex of objects of external sense, it can base itself partly upon laws which the Understanding itself prescribes a priori to nature, partly upon laws which it can extend indefinitely by means of the empirical determinations occurring in experience. To apply the former kind of laws, i.e. the universal laws of material nature in general, the Judgement needs no special principle of reflection, since it is there determinant because an objective principle is given to it through Understanding. But as regards the particular laws that can only be made known to us through experience, there can be under them such great manifoldness and diversity, that the Judgement must serve as its own principle in order to investigate and search into the phenomena of nature in accordance with a law. Such a guiding thread is needed, if we are only to hope for a connected empirical cognition according to a thoroughgoing conformity of nature to law, even its unity according to empirical laws. In this contingent unity of particular laws it may very well happen that the Judgement in its reflection proceeds from two maxims. One of these is suggested to it a priori by the mere Understanding; but the other is prompted by particular experiences, which bring the Reason into play in order to form a judgement upon corporeal nature and its laws in accordance with a particular principle. Hence it comes about that these two kinds of maxims seem to be incapable of existing together, and consequently a Dialectic arises which leads the Judgement into error in the principle of its reflection.

The first maxim of Judgement is the proposition: all production of material things and their forms must be judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws.

The second maxim is the counter-proposition: some products of material nature cannot be judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws. (To judge them requires quite a different law of causality, namely, that of final causes.)

If these regulative principles of investigation be converted into constitutive principles of the possibility of Objects, they will run thus:

Proposition: All production of material things is possible according to merely mechanical laws.

Counter-proposition: Some production of material things is not possible according to merely mechanical laws.

In this latter aspect, as objective principles for the determinant Judgement, they would contradict each other; and consequently one of the two propositions must necessarily be false. We shall then, it is true, have an antinomy, but not of Judgement; there will be a conflict in the legislation of Reason. Reason, however, can prove neither the one nor the other of these fundamental propositions, because we can have a priori no determinant principle of the possibility of things according to mere empirical laws of nature.

On the other hand, as regards the first-mentioned maxims of a reflective Judgement, they involve no contradiction in fact. For if I say, I must judge, according to merely mechanical laws, of the possibility of all events in material nature, and consequently of all forms regarded as its products, I do not therefore say: They are possible in this way alone (apart from any other kind of causality). All that is implied is: I must always reflect upon them according to the principle of the mere mechanism of nature, and consequently investigate this as far as I can; because unless this lies at the basis of investigation, there can be no proper knowledge of nature at all. But this does not prevent us, if occasion offers, from following out the second maxim in the case of certain natural forms (and even by occasion of these in the whole of nature), in order to reflect upon them according to the principle of final causes, which is quite a different thing from explaining them according to the mechanism of nature. Reflection in accordance with the first maxim is thus not abrogated; on the contrary, we are told to follow it as far as we can. Nor is it said that these forms would not be possible in accordance with the mechanism of nature. It is only asserted that human Reason in following up this maxim and in this way could never find the least ground for that which constitutes the specific [character] of a natural purpose, although it would increase its knowledge of natural laws. Thus it is left undecided whether or not in the unknown inner ground of nature, physico-mechanical and purposive combination may be united in the same things in one principle. We only say that our Reason is not in a position so to unite them; and that therefore the Judgement (as reflective—from subjective grounds, not as determinant, in consequence of an objective principle of the possibility of things in themselves) is compelled to think a different principle from that of natural mechanism as the ground of the possibility of certain forms in nature.

§ 71. Preliminary to the solution of the above antinomy

We can in no way prove the impossibility of the production of organised natural products by the mere mechanism of nature, because we cannot see into the first inner ground of the infinite multiplicity of the particular laws of nature, which are contingent for us since they are only empirically known; and so we cannot arrive at the inner all-sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature (a principle which lies in the supersensible). Whether therefore the productive faculty of nature is sufficient for that which we judge to be formed or combined in accordance with the Idea of purposes, as well as for that which we believe to require merely a mechanical system [Maschinenwesen] of nature; or whether there lies at the basis of things which we must necessarily judge as properly natural purposes, a quite different kind of original causality, which cannot be contained in material nature or in its intelligible substrate, viz. an architectonic Understanding—this is a question to which our Reason, very narrowly limited in respect of the concept of causality if it is to be specified a priori, can give no answer whatever.—But it is just as certain and beyond doubt that, in regard to our cognitive faculties, the mere mechanism of nature can furnish no ground of explanation of the production of organised beings. For the reflective Judgement it is therefore a quite correct fundamental proposition, that for that connexion of things according to final causes which is so plain, there must be thought a causality distinct from that of mechanism, viz. that of an (intelligent) cause of the world acting in accordance with purposes; but for the determinant Judgement this would be a hasty and unprovable proposition. In the first case it is a mere maxim of the Judgement, wherein the concept of that causality is a mere Idea, to which we by no means undertake to concede reality, but which we use as a guide to reflection, which remains thereby always open to all mechanical grounds of explanation and does not withdraw out of the world of Sense. In the second case the proposition would be an objective principle prescribed by Reason, to which the determinant Judgement must subject itself, whereby however it withdraws beyond the world of Sense into the transcendent and perhaps is led into error.

All appearance of an antinomy between the maxims of the proper physical (mechanical) and the teleological (technical) methods of explanation rests therefore on this; that we confuse a fundamental proposition of the reflective with one of the determinant Judgement, and the autonomy of the first (which has mere subjective validity for our use of Reason in respect of particular empirical laws) with the heteronomy of the second, which must regulate itself according to laws (universal or particular) given to it by the Understanding.

§ 72. Of the different systems which deal with the purposiveness of nature

No one has ever doubted the correctness of the proposition that judgement must be passed upon certain things of nature (organised beings) and their possibility in accordance with the concept of final causes, even if we only desire a guiding thread to learn how to cognise their constitution through observation, without aspiring to an investigation into their first origin. The question therefore can only be: whether this fundamental proposition is merely subjectively valid, i.e. is a mere maxim of our Judgement; or whether it is an objective principle of nature, in accordance with which, apart from its mechanism (according to the mere laws of motion), quite a different kind of causality attaches to it, viz. that of final causes, under which these laws (of moving forces) stand only as intermediate causes.

We could leave this question or problem quite undecided and unsolved speculatively; because if we content ourselves with speculation within the bounds of mere natural knowledge, we have enough in these maxims for the study of nature and for the tracking out of its hidden secrets, as far as human powers reach. There is then indeed a certain presentiment of our Reason or a hint as it were given us by nature, that, by means of this concept of final causes, we go beyond nature, and could unite it to the highest point in the series of causes, if we were to abandon or at least to lay aside for a time the investigation of nature (although we may not have advanced far in it), and seek thenceforth to find out whither this stranger in natural science, viz. the concept of natural purposes, would lead us.

But here these undisputed maxims pass over into problems opening out a wide field for difficulties. Does purposive connexion in nature prove a particular kind of causality? Or is it not rather, considered in itself and in accordance with objective principles, similar to the mechanism of nature, resting on one and the same ground? Only, as this ground in many natural products is often hidden too deep for our investigation, we make trial of a subjective principle, that of art, i.e. of causality according to Ideas, and we ascribe it to nature by analogy. This expedient succeeds in many cases, but seems in some to mislead, and in no case does it justify us in introducing into natural science a particular kind of operation quite distinct from the causality according to the mere mechanical laws of nature. We give the name of Technic to the procedure (the causality) of nature, on account of the appearance of purpose that we find in its products; and we shall divide this into designed (technica intentionalis) and undesigned (technica naturalis). The first is meant to signify that the productive faculty of nature according to final causes must be taken for a particular kind of causality; the second that it is at bottom quite similar to the mechanism of nature, and that its contingent agreement with our artistic concepts and their rules should be explained as a mere subjective condition of judging it, and not, falsely, as a particular kind of natural production.

If we now speak of systems explanatory of nature in regard of final causes, it must be remarked that they all controvert each other dogmatically, i.e. as to objective principles of the possibility of things, whether there are causes which act designedly or whether they are quite without design. They do not dispute as to the subjective maxims, by which we merely judge of the causes of such purposive products. In this latter case disparate principles could very well be unified; but in the former, contradictorily opposed laws annul each other and cannot subsist together.

There are two sorts of systems as to the Technic of nature, i.e. its productive power in accordance with the rule of purposes; viz. Idealism or Realism of natural purposes. The first maintains that all purposiveness of nature is undesigned; the second that some (in organised beings) is designed. From this latter the hypothetical consequence can be deduced that the Technic of Nature, as concerns all its other products in reference to the whole of nature, is also designed, i.e. is a purpose.

(1) The Idealism of purposiveness (I always understand here by this, objective purposiveness) is either that of the casuality or the fatality of the determination of nature in the purposive form of its products. The former principle treats of the reference of matter to the physical basis of its form, viz. the laws of motion; the second, its reference to the hyperphysical basis of itself and of the whole of nature. The system of casuality that is ascribed to Epicurus or Democritus is, taken literally, so plainly absurd that it need not detain us. Opposed to this is the system of fatality, of which Spinoza is taken as the author, although it is much older according to all appearance. This, as it appeals to something supersensible to which our insight does not extend, is not so easy to controvert; but that is because its concept of the original Being is not possible to understand. But so much is clear, that on this theory the purposive combination in the world must be taken as undesigned; for although derived from an original Being, it is not derived from its Understanding or from any design on its part, but rather from the necessity of its nature and of the world-unity which emanates therefrom. Consequently the Fatalism of purposiveness is at the same time an Idealism.

(2) The Realism of the purposiveness of nature is also either physical or hyperphysical. The former bases the purposes in nature, by the analogy of a faculty acting with design, on the life of matter (either its own or the life of an inner principle in it, a world-soul) and is called Hylozoism. The latter derives them from the original ground of the universe, as from an intelligent Being (originally living), who produces them with design, and is Theism.112

§ 73. None of the above systems give what they pretend

What do all these systems desire? They desire to explain our teleological judgements about nature, and they go so to work therewith that some deny their truth and, consequently, explain them as an Idealism of Nature (represented as Art); others recognise them as true, and promise to establish the possibility of a nature in accordance with the Idea of final causes.

(1) The systems which defend the Idealism of final causes in nature grant, it is true, on the one hand to their principle a causality in accordance with the laws of motion (through which [causality] natural things exist purposively); but they deny to it intentionality, i.e. that it designedly determines itself to this its purposive production; in other words, they deny that the cause is a purpose. This is Epicurus’s method of explanation, according to which the distinction between a Technic of nature and mere mechanism is altogether denied. Blind chance is taken as the explanatory ground not only of the agreement of the developed products with our concepts of the purpose, and consequently of [nature’s] Technic; but also of the determination of the causes of this production in accordance with the laws of motion, and consequently of their mechanism. Thus nothing is explained, not even the illusion in our teleological judgements, and consequently, the would-be Idealism of these in no way established.

On the other hand, Spinoza wishes to dispense with all inquiries into the ground of the possibility of purposes of nature, and to take away all reality from this Idea. He allows their validity in general not as products but as accidents inhering in an original Being; and to this Being, as substrate of those natural things, he ascribes not causality in regard to them but mere subsistence. On account of its unconditioned necessity, and also that of all natural things as accidents inhering in it, he secures, it is true, to the forms of nature that unity of ground which is requisite for all purposiveness; but at the same time he tears away their contingence, without which no unity of purpose can be thought, and with it all design, inasmuch as he takes away all intelligence from the original ground of natural things.

But Spinozism does not furnish what it desires. It desires to afford an explanatory ground of the purposive connexion (which it does not deny) of the things of nature, and it merely speaks of the unity of the subject in which they all inhere. But even if we concede to it that the beings of the world exist in this way, such ontological unity is not therefore a unity of purpose, and does not make this in any way comprehensible. For this latter is a quite particular kind of unity which does not follow from the connexion of things (the beings of the world) in a subject (the original Being), but implies in itself reference to a cause which has Understanding; and even if we unite all these things in a simple subject, this never exhibits a purposive reference. For we do not think of them, first, as the inner effects of the substance, as if it were a cause; nor, secondly, of this cause as a cause producing effects by means of its Understanding. Without these formal conditions all unity is mere natural necessity; and, if it is ascribed as well to things which we represent as external to one another, blind necessity. But if we wish to give the name of purposiveness of nature to that which the schoolmen call the transcendental perfection of things (in reference to their proper being), according to which everything has in itself that which is requisite to make it one thing and not another, then we are only like children playing with words instead of concepts. For if all things must be thought as purposes, then to be a thing is the same as to be a purpose, and there is at bottom nothing which specially deserves to be represented as a purpose.

We hence see at once that Spinoza by his reducing our concepts of the purposive in nature to our own consciousness of existing in an all-embracing (though simple) Being, and by his seeking that form merely in the unity of this Being, must have intended to maintain not the realism, but the idealism of its purposiveness. Even this he was not able to accomplish, because the mere representation of the unity of the substrate cannot bring about the Idea of a purposiveness, even that which is only undesigned.

(2) Those who not only maintain the Realism of natural purposes, but also set about explaining it, believe that they can comprehend, at least as regards its possibility, a practical kind of causality, viz. that of causes working designedly; otherwise they could not undertake to supply this explanation. For to authorise even the most daring of hypotheses, at least the possibility of what we assume as basis must be certain, and we must be able to assure objective reality to its concept.

But the possibility of living matter cannot even be thought; its concept involves a contradiction because lifelessness, inertia, constitutes the essential character of matter. The possibility of matter endowed with life, and of collective nature regarded as an animal, can only be used in an inadequate way (in the interests of the hypothesis of purposiveness in the whole of nature), so far as it is manifested by experience in the organisation of nature on a small scale; but in no way can we have insight into its possibility a priori. There must then be a circle in the explanation, if we wish to derive the purposiveness of nature in organised beings from the life of matter, and yet only know this life in organised beings, and can form no concept of its possibility without experience of this kind. Hylozoism, therefore, does not furnish what it promises.

Finally, Theism can just as little establish dogmatically the possibility of natural purposes as a key to Teleology; although it certainly is superior to all other grounds of explanation in that, through the Understanding which it ascribes to the original Being, it rescues in the best way the purposiveness of nature from Idealism, and introduces a causality acting with design for its production.

But we must first prove satisfactorily to the determinant Judgement the impossibility of the unity of purpose in matter resulting from its mere mechanism, before we are justified in placing the ground of this beyond nature in a determinate way. We can, however, advance no further than this. In accordance with the constitution and limits of our cognitive faculties (whilst we do not comprehend even the first inner ground of this mechanism) we must in no wise seek in matter a principle of determinate purposive references; but no other way of judging of the origination of its products as natural purposes remains to us than that by means of a supreme Understanding as cause of the world. But this is only a ground for the reflective, not for the determinant Judgement, and can justify absolutely no objective assertion.

§ 74. The reason that we cannot treat the concept of a Technic of nature dogmatically is the fact that a natural purpose is inexplicable

We deal with a concept dogmatically (even though it should be empirically conditioned) if we consider it as contained under another concept of the Object which constitutes a principle113 of Reason, and determine it in conformity with this. But we deal with it merely critically, if we consider it only in reference to our cognitive faculties and consequently to the subjective conditions of thinking it, without undertaking to decide anything about its Object. Dogmatic procedure with a concept is then that which is conformable to law for the determinant Judgement, critical procedure for the reflective Judgement.

Now the concept of a thing as a natural purpose is a concept which subsumes nature under a causality only thinkable through Reason, in order to judge in accordance with this principle about that which is given of the Object in experience. But in order to use it dogmatically for the determinant Judgement, we must be assured first of the objective reality of this concept, because otherwise we could subsume no natural thing under it. Again, the concept of a thing as a natural purpose is, no doubt, empirically conditioned, i.e. only possible under certain conditions given in experience, though not to be abstracted therefrom; but it is a concept only possible in accordance with a rational principle in the judgement about the object. Its objective reality, therefore (i.e. that an object in conformity with it is possible), cannot be comprehended and dogmatically established as such a principle; and we do not know whether it is merely a sophistical and objectively empty concept (conceptus ratiocinans), or a rational concept, establishing a cognition and confirmed by Reason (conceptus ratiocinatus).114 Therefore it cannot be dogmatically treated for the determinant Judgement, i.e. it is not only impossible to decide whether or not things of nature considered as natural purposes require for their production a causality of a quite peculiar kind (that acting on design); but the question cannot even be put, because the concept of a natural purpose is simply not susceptible of proof through Reason as regards its objective reality. That is, it is not constitutive for the determinant Judgement, but merely regulative for the reflective.

That it is not susceptible of proof is clear because (as concept of a natural product) it embraces in itself natural necessity, and at the same time (as purpose) a contingency of the form of the Object (in reference to the mere laws of nature) in the very same thing. Hence, if there is to be no contradiction here it must contain a ground for the possibility of the thing in nature, and also a ground of the possibility of this nature itself and of its reference to something which, not being empirically cognisable nature (supersensible), is therefore for us not cognisable at all. [This is requisite] if it is to be judged according to a different kind of causality from that of natural mechanism when we wish to establish its possibility. The concept of a thing, then, as a natural purpose, is transcendent for the determinant Judgement, if we consider the Object through Reason (although for the reflective Judgement it certainly may be immanent in respect of the objects of experience). Hence for determinant judgements objective reality cannot be supplied to it; and so it is intelligible how all systems that one may project for the dogmatic treatment of the concept of natural purposes and of nature itself [considered] as a whole connected together by means of final causes, can decide nothing either by objective affirmation or by objective denial. For if things be subsumed under a concept that is merely problematical, its synthetical predicates (e.g. in the question whether the purpose of nature which we conceive for the production of things is designed or undesigned) can furnish only problematical judgements of the Object, whether affirmative or negative; and we do not know whether we are judging about something or about nothing. The concept of a causality through purposes (of art) has at all events objective reality, and also the concept of a causality according to the mechanism of nature. But the concept of a causality of nature according to the rule of purposes,—still more of a Being such as cannot be given us in experience, a Being who is the original cause of nature,—though it can be thought without contradiction, yet is of no avail for dogmatic determinations. For, since it cannot be derived from experience, and also is not requisite for the possibility thereof, its objective reality can in no way be assured. But even if this could be done, how can I number among the products of nature things which are definitely accounted products of divine art, when it is just the incapacity of nature to produce such things according to its own laws that made it necessary to invoke a cause different from it?

§ 75. The concept of an objective purposiveness of nature is a critical principle of Reason for the reflective Judgement

It is then one thing to say, “the production of certain things of nature or that of collective nature is only possible through a cause which determines itself to action according to design”; and quite another to say, “I can according to the peculiar constitution of my cognitive faculties judge concerning the possibility of these things and their production, in no other fashion than by conceiving for this a cause working according to design, i.e. a Being which is productive in a way analogous to the causality of an intelligence.” In the former case I wish to establish something concerning the Object, and am bound to establish the objective reality of an assumed concept; in the latter, Reason only determines the use of my cognitive faculties, conformably to their peculiarities and to the essential conditions of their range and their limits. Thus the former principle is an objective proposition for the determinant Judgement, the latter merely a subjective proposition for the reflective Judgement, i.e. a maxim which Reason prescribes to it.

We are in fact indispensably obliged to ascribe the concept of design to nature if we wish to investigate it, though only in its organised products, by continuous observation; and this concept is therefore an absolutely necessary maxim for the empirical use of our Reason. It is plain that once such a guiding thread for the study of nature is admitted and verified, we must at least try the said maxim of Judgement in nature as a whole; because thereby many of nature’s laws might discover themselves, which otherwise, on account of the limitation of our insight into its inner mechanism, would remain hidden. But though in regard to this latter employment that maxim of Judgement is certainly useful, it is not indispensable, for nature as a whole is not given as organised (in the narrow sense of the word above indicated). On the other hand, in regard to those natural products, which must be judged of as designed and not formed otherwise (if we are to have empirical knowledge of their inner constitution), this maxim of the reflective Judgement is essentially necessary; because the very thought of them as organised beings is impossible without combining therewith the thought of their designed production.

Now the concept of a thing whose existence or form we represent to ourselves as possible under the condition of a purpose is inseparably bound up with the concept of its contingency (according to natural laws). Hence the natural things that we find possible only as purposes supply the best proof of the contingency of the world-whole; to the common Understanding and to the philosopher alike they are the only valid ground of proof for its dependence on and origin from a Being existing outside the world—a Being who must also be intelligent on account of that purposive form. Teleology then finds the consummation of its investigations only in Theology.

But what now in the end does the most complete Teleology prove? Does it prove that there is such an intelligent Being? No. It only proves that according to the constitution of our cognitive faculties and in the consequent combination of experience with the highest principles of Reason, we can form absolutely no concept of the possibility of such a world [as this] save by thinking a designedly-working supreme cause thereof. Objectively we cannot therefore lay down the proposition, there is an intelligent original Being; but only subjectively, for the use of our Judgement in its reflection upon the purposes in nature, which can be thought according to no other principle than that of a designing causality of a highest cause.

If we wished to establish on teleological grounds the above proposition dogmatically we should be beset with difficulties from which we could not extricate ourselves. For then the proposition must at bottom be reduced to the conclusion, that the organised beings in the world are no otherwise possible than by a designedly-working cause. And we should unavoidably have to assert that, because we can follow up these things in their causal combination only under the Idea of purposes, and cognise them only according to their conformity to law, we are thereby justified in assuming this as a condition necessary for every thinking and cognising being—a condition consequently attaching to the Object and not merely to our subject. But such an assertion we do not succeed in sustaining. For, since we do not, properly speaking, observe the purposes in nature as designed, but only in our reflection upon its products think this concept as a guiding thread for our Judgement, they are not given to us through the Object. It is quite impossible for us a priori to vindicate, as capable of assumption, such a concept according to its objective reality. It remains therefore a proposition absolutely resting upon subjective conditions alone, viz. of the Judgement reflecting in conformity with our cognitive faculties. If we expressed this proposition dogmatically as objectively valid, it would be: “There is a God.” But for us men there is only permissible the limited formula: “We cannot otherwise think and make comprehensible the purposiveness which must lie at the bottom of our cognition of the internal possibility of many natural things, than by representing it and the world in general as a product of an intelligent cause, [a God].”115

Now if this proposition, based on an inevitably necessary maxim of our Judgement, is completely satisfactory from every human point of view for both the speculative and practical use of our Reason, I should like to know what we lose by not being able to prove it as also valid for higher beings, from objective grounds (which unfortunately are beyond our faculties). It is indeed quite certain that we cannot adequately cognise, much less explain, organised beings and their internal possibility, according to mere mechanical principles of nature; and we can say boldly it is alike certain that it is absurd for men to make any such attempt or to hope that another Newton will arise in the future, who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered.116 We must absolutely deny this insight to men. But then how do we know that in nature, if we could penetrate to the principle by which it specifies the universal laws known to us, there cannot lie hidden (in its mere mechanism) a sufficient ground of the possibility of organised beings without supposing any design in their production? would it not be judged by us presumptuous to say this? Probabilities here are of no account when we have to do with judgements of pure Reason.—We cannot therefore judge objectively, either affirmatively or negatively, concerning the proposition: “Does a Being acting according to design lie at the basis of what we rightly call natural purposes, as the cause of the world (and consequently as its author)?” So much only is sure, that if we are to judge according to what is permitted us to see by our own proper nature (the conditions and limitations of our Reason), we can place at the basis of the possibility of these natural purposes nothing else than an intelligent Being. This alone is in conformity with the maxim of our reflective Judgement and therefore with a ground which, though subjective, is inseparably attached to the human race.

§ 76. Remark

This consideration, which very well deserves to be worked out in detail in Transcendental Philosophy, can come in here only in passing, by way of elucidation (not as a proof of what is here proposed).

Reason is a faculty of principles and proceeds in its extremest advance to the unconditioned; on the other hand, the Understanding stands at its service always only under a certain condition which must be given. But without concepts of Understanding, to which objective reality must be given, the Reason cannot form any objective (synthetical) judgement; and contains in itself, as theoretical Reason, absolutely no constitutive but merely regulative principles. We soon see that where the Understanding cannot follow, the Reason is transcendent, and shows itself in Ideas formerly established (as regulative principles), but not in objectively valid concepts. But the Understanding which cannot keep pace with Reason but yet is requisite for the validity of Objects, limits the validity of these Ideas to the subject, although [extending it] generally to all [subjects] of this kind. That is, the Understanding limits their validity to the condition, that according to the nature of our (human) cognitive faculties, or, generally, according to the concept which we ourselves can make of the faculty of a finite intelligent being, nothing else can or must be thought; though this is not to assert that the ground of such a judgement lies in the Object. We shall adduce some examples which, though they are too important and difficult to impose them on the reader as proved propositions, yet will give him material for thought and may serve to elucidate what we are here specially concerned with.

It is indispensably necessary for the human Understanding to distinguish between the possibility and the actuality of things. The ground for this lies in the subject and in the nature of our cognitive faculties. Such a distinction (between the possible and the actual) would not be given were there not requisite for knowledge two quite different elements, Understanding for concepts and sensible intuition for Objects corresponding to them. If our Understanding were intuitive it would have no objects but those which are actual. Concepts (which merely extend to the possibility of an object) and sensible intuitions (which give us something without allowing us to cognise it thus as an object) would both disappear. But now the whole of our distinction between the merely possible and the actual rests on this, that the former only signifies the positing of the representation of a thing in respect of our concept, and, in general, in respect of the faculty of thought; while the latter signifies the positing of the thing in itself [outside this concept].117 The distinction, then, of possible things from actual is one which has merely subjective validity for the human Understanding, because we can always have a thing in our thoughts although it is [really] nothing, or we can represent a thing as given although we have no concept of it. The propositions therefore—that things can be possible without being actual, and that consequently no conclusion can be drawn as to actuality from mere possibility—are quite valid for human Reason, without thereby proving that this distinction lies in things themselves. That this does not follow, and that consequently these propositions, though valid of Objects (in so far as our cognitive faculty, as sensuously conditioned, busies itself with Objects of sense), do not hold for things in general, appears from the irrepressible demand of Reason to assume something (the original ground) necessarily existing as unconditioned, in which possibility and actuality should no longer be distinguished, and for which Idea our Understanding has absolutely no concept; i.e. it can find no way of representing such a thing and its manner of existence. For if the Understanding thinks such a thing (which it may do at pleasure), the thing is merely represented as possible. If it is conscious of it as given in intuition, then is it actual; but nothing as to its possibility is thus thought. Hence the concept of an absolutely necessary Being is no doubt an indispensable Idea of Reason, but yet it is a problematical concept unattainable by the human Understanding. It is indeed valid for the employment of our cognitive faculties in accordance with their peculiar constitution, but not valid of the Object. Nor is it valid for every knowing being, because I cannot presuppose in every such being thought and intuition as two distinct conditions of the exercise of its cognitive faculties, and consequently as conditions of the possibility and actuality of things. An Understanding into which this distinction did not enter, might say: All Objects that I know are, i.e. exist; and the possibility of some, which yet do not exist (i.e. the contingency or the contrasted necessity of those which do exist), might never come into the representation of such a being at all. But what makes it difficult for our Understanding to treat its concepts here as Reason does, is merely that for it, as human Understanding, that is transcendent (i.e. impossible for the subjective conditions of its cognition) which Reason makes into a principle appertaining to the Object.—Here the maxim always holds, that all Objects whose cognition surpasses the faculty of the Understanding are thought by us according to the subjective conditions of the exercise of that faculty which necessarily attach to our (human) nature. If judgements laid down in this way (and there is no other alternative in regard to transcendent concepts) cannot be constitutive principles determining the Object as it is, they will remain regulative principles adapted to the human point of view, immanent in their exercise and sure.

Just as Reason in the theoretical consideration of nature must assume the Idea of an unconditioned necessity of its original ground, so also it presupposes in the practical [sphere] its own (in respect of nature) unconditioned causality, or freedom, in that it is conscious of its own moral command. Here the objective necessity of the act, as a duty, is opposed to that necessity which it would have as an event, if its ground lay in nature and not in freedom (i.e. in the causality of Reason). The morally absolutely necessary act is regarded as physically quite contingent, since that which ought necessarily to happen often does not happen. It is clear then that it is owing to the subjective constitution of our practical faculty that the moral laws must be represented as commands, and the actions conforming to them as duties; and that Reason expresses this necessity not by an “is” (happens), but by an “ought to be.” This would not be the case were Reason considered as in its causality independent of sensibility (as the subjective condition of its application to objects of nature), and so as cause in an intelligible world entirely in agreement with the moral law. For in such a world there would be no distinction between “ought to do” and “does,” between a practical law of that which is possible through us, and the theoretical law of that which is actual through us. Though, therefore, an intelligible world in which everything would be actual merely because (as something good) it is possible, together with freedom as its formal condition, is for us a transcendent concept, not available as a constitutive principle to determine an Object and its objective reality; yet, because of the constitution of our (in part sensuous) nature and faculty it is, so far as we can represent it in accordance with the constitution of our Reason, for us and for all rational beings that have a connexion with the world of sense, a universal regulative principle. This principle does not objectively determine the constitution of freedom, as a form of causality, but it makes the rule of actions according to that Idea a command for every one, with no less validity than if it did so determine it.

In the same way we may concede thus much as regards the case in hand. Between natural mechanism and the Technic of nature, i.e. its purposive connexion, we should find no distinction, were it not that our Understanding is of the kind that must proceed from the universal to the particular. The Judgement then in respect of the particular can cognise no purposiveness and, consequently, can form no determinant judgements, without having a universal law under which to subsume that particular. Now the particular, as such, contains something contingent in respect of the universal, while yet Reason requires unity and conformity to law in the combination of particular laws of nature. This conformity of the contingent to law is called purposiveness; and the derivation of particular laws from the universal, as regards their contingent element, is impossible a priori through a determination of the concept of the Object. Hence, the concept of the purposiveness of nature in its products is necessary for human Judgement in respect of nature, but has not to do with the determination of Objects. It is, therefore, a subjective principle of Reason for the Judgement, which as regulative (not constitutive) is just as necessarily valid for our human Judgement as if it were an objective principle.

§ 77. Of the peculiarity of the human Understanding, by means of which the concept of a natural purpose is possible

We have brought forward in the Remark peculiarities of our cognitive faculties (even the higher ones) which we are easily led to transfer as objective predicates to the things themselves. But they concern Ideas, no object adequate to which can be given in experience, and they could only serve as regulative principles in the pursuit of experience. This is the case with the concept of a natural purpose, which concerns the cause of the possibility of such a predicate, which cause can only lie in the Idea. But the result corresponding to it (i.e. the product) is given in nature; and the concept of a causality of nature as of a being acting according to purposes seems to make the Idea of a natural purpose into a constitutive principle, which Idea has thus something different from all other Ideas.

This difference consists, however, in the fact that the Idea in question is not a rational principle for the Understanding but for the Judgement. It is, therefore, merely the application of an Understanding in general to possible objects of experience, in cases where the judgement can only be reflective, not determinant, and where, consequently, the object, although given in experience, cannot be determinately judged in conformity with the Idea (not to say with complete adequacy), but can only be reflected on.

There emerges, therefore, a peculiarity of our (human) Understanding in respect of the Judgement in its reflection upon things of nature. But if this be so, the Idea of a possible Understanding different from the human must be fundamental here. (Just so in the Critique of Pure Reason we must have in our thoughts another possible [kind of] intuition, if ours is to be regarded as a particular species for which objects are only valid as phenomena.) And so we are able to say: Certain natural products, from the special constitution of our Understanding, must be considered by us, in regard to their possibility, as if produced designedly and as purposes. But we do not, therefore, demand that there should be actually given a particular cause which has the representation of a purpose as its determining ground; and we do not deny that an Understanding, different from (i.e. higher than) the human, might find the ground of the possibility of such products of nature in the mechanism of nature, i.e. in a causal combination for which an Understanding is not explicitly assumed as cause.

We have now to do with the relation of our Understanding to the Judgement; viz. we seek for a certain contingency in the constitution of our Understanding, to which we may point as a peculiarity distinguishing it from other possible Understandings.

This contingency is found, naturally enough, in the particular, which the Judgement is to bring under the universal of the concepts of Understanding. For the universal of our (human) Understanding does not determine the particular, and it is contingent in how many ways different things which agree in a common characteristic may come before our perception. Our Understanding is a faculty of concepts, i.e. a discursive Understanding, for which it obviously must be contingent of what kind and how very different the particular may be that can be given to it in nature and brought under its concepts. But now intuition also belongs to knowledge, and a faculty of a complete spontaneity of intuition would be a cognitive faculty distinct from sensibility, and quite independent of it, in other words, an Understanding in the most general sense. Thus we can think an intuitive Understanding [negatively, merely as not discursive118], which does not proceed from the universal to the particular, and so to the individual (through concepts). For it that contingency of the accordance of nature in its products according to particular laws with the Understanding would not be met with; and it is this contingency that makes it so hard for our Understanding to reduce the manifold of nature to the unity of knowledge. This reduction our Understanding can only accomplish by bringing natural characteristics into a very contingent correspondence with our faculty of concepts, of which an intuitive Understanding would have no need.

Our Understanding has then this peculiarity as concerns the Judgement, that in cognition by it the particular is not determined by the universal and cannot therefore be derived from it; but at the same time this particular in the manifold of nature must accord with the universal (by means of concepts and laws) so that it may be capable of being subsumed under it. This accordance under such circumstances must be very contingent and without definite principle as concerns the Judgement.

In order now to be able at least to think the possibility of such an accordance of things of nature with our Judgement (which accordance we represent as contingent and consequently as only possible by means of a purpose directed thereto), we must at the same time think of another Understanding, by reference to which and apart from any purpose ascribed to it, we may represent as necessary that accordance of natural laws with our Judgement, which for our Understanding is only thinkable through the medium of purposes.

In fact our Understanding has the property of proceeding in its cognition, e.g. of the cause of a product, from the analytical-universal (concepts) to the particular (the given empirical intuition). Thus as regards the manifold of the latter it determines nothing, but must await this determination by the Judgement, which subsumes the empirical intuition (if the object is a natural product) under the concept. We can however think an Understanding which, being, not like ours, discursive, but intuitive, proceeds from the synthetical-universal (the intuition of a whole as such) to the particular, i.e. from the whole to the parts. The contingency of the combination of the parts, in order that a definite form of the whole shall be possible, is not implied by such an Understanding and its representation of the whole. Our Understanding requires this because it must proceed from the parts as universally conceived grounds to different forms possible to be subsumed under them, as consequences. According to the constitution of our Understanding a real whole of nature is regarded only as the effect of the concurrent motive powers of the parts. Suppose then that we wish not to represent the possibility of the whole as dependent on that of the parts (after the manner of our discursive Understanding), but according to the standard of the intuitive (original) Understanding to represent the possibility of the parts (according to their constitution and combination) as dependent on that of the whole. In accordance with the above peculiarity of our Understanding it cannot happen that the whole shall contain the ground of the possibility of the connexion of the parts (which would be a contradiction in discursive cognition), but only that the representation of a whole may contain the ground of the possibility of its form and the connexion of the parts belonging to it. Now such a whole would be an effect (product) the representation of which is regarded as the cause of its possibility; but the product of a cause whose determining ground is merely the representation of its effect is called a purpose. Hence it is merely a consequence of the particular constitution of our Understanding, that it represents products of nature as possible, according to a different kind of causality from that of the natural laws of matter, namely, that of purposes and final causes. Hence also this principle has not to do with the possibility of such things themselves (even when considered as phenomena) according to the manner of their production, but merely with the judgement upon them which is possible to our Understanding. Here we see at once why it is that in natural science we are not long contented with an explanation of the products of nature by a causality according to purposes. For there we desire to judge of natural production merely in a manner conformable to our faculty of judging, i.e. to the reflective Judgement, and not in reference to things themselves on behalf of the determinant Judgement. It is here not at all requisite to prove that such an intellectus archetypus is possible, but only that we are led to the Idea of it,—which contains no contradiction,—in contrast to our discursive Understanding which has need of images (intellectus ectypus) and to the contingency of its constitution.

If we consider a material whole, according to its form, as a product of the parts with their powers and faculties of combining with one another (as well as of bringing in foreign materials), we represent to ourselves a mechanical mode of producing it. But in this way no concept emerges of a whole as purpose, whose internal possibility presupposes throughout the Idea of a whole on which depend the constitution and mode of action of the parts, as we must represent to ourselves an organised body. It does not follow indeed, as has been shown, that the mechanical production of such a body is impossible; for to say so would be to say that it would be impossible (contradictory) for any Understanding to represent to itself such a unity in the connexion of the manifold, without the Idea of the unity being at the same time its producing cause, i.e. without designed production. This, however, would follow in fact if we were justified in regarding material beings as things in themselves. For then the unity that constitutes the ground of the possibility of natural formations would be simply the unity of space. But space is no real ground of the products, but only their formal condition, although it has this similarity to the real ground which we seek that in it no part can be determined except in relation to the whole (the representation of which therefore lies at the ground of the possibility of the parts). But now it is at least possible to consider the material world as mere phenomenon, and to think as its substrate something like a thing in itself (which is not phenomenon), and to attach to this a corresponding intellectual intuition (even though it is not ours). Thus there would be, although incognisable by us, a supersensible real ground for nature, to which we ourselves belong. In this we consider according to mechanical laws what is necessary in nature regarded as an object of Sense; but we consider according to teleological laws the agreement and unity of its particular laws and its forms—which in regard to mechanism we must judge contingent—regarded as objects of Reason (in fact the whole of nature as a system). Thus we should judge nature according to two different kinds of principles without the mechanical way of explanation being shut out by the teleological, as if they contradicted one another.

From this we are enabled to see what otherwise, though we could easily surmise it, could with difficulty be maintained with certainty and proved, viz. that the principle of a mechanical derivation of purposive natural products is consistent with the teleological, but in no way enables us to dispense with it. In a thing that we must judge as a natural purpose (an organised being) we can no doubt try all the known and yet to be discovered laws of mechanical production, and even hope to make good progress therewith; but we can never get rid of the call for a quite different ground of production for the possibility of such a product, viz. causality by means of purposes. Absolutely no human Reason (in fact no finite Reason like ours in quality, however much it may surpass it in degree) can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes. As regards the possibility of such an object, the teleological connexion of causes and effects is quite indispensable for the Judgement, even for studying it by the clue of experience. For external objects as phenomena an adequate ground related to purposes cannot be met with; this, although it lies in nature, must only be sought in the supersensible substrate of nature, from all possible insight into which we are cut off. Hence it is absolutely impossible for us to produce from nature itself grounds of explanation for purposive combinations; and it is necessary by the constitution of the human cognitive faculties to seek the supreme ground of these purposive combinations in an original Understanding as the cause of the world.

§ 78. Of the union of the principle of the universal mechanism of matter with the teleological principle in the Technic of nature

It is infinitely important for Reason not to let slip the mechanism of nature in its products, and in their explanation not to pass it by, because without it no insight into the nature of things can be attained. Suppose it admitted that a supreme Architect immediately created the forms of nature as they have been from the beginning, or that He predetermined those which in the course of nature continually form themselves on the same model. Our knowledge of nature is not thus in the least furthered, because we cannot know the mode of action of that Being and the Ideas which are to contain the principles of the possibility of natural beings, and we cannot by them explain nature as from above downwards (a priori). And if, starting from the forms of the objects of experience, from below upwards (a posteriori), we wish to explain the purposiveness, which we believe is met with in experience, by appealing to a cause working in accordance with purposes, then is our explanation quite tautological and we are only mocking Reason with words. Indeed when we lose ourselves with this way of explanation in the transcendent, whither natural knowledge cannot follow, Reason is seduced into poetical extravagance, which it is its peculiar destination to avoid.

On the other hand, it is just as necessary a maxim of Reason not to pass by the principle of purposes in the products of nature. For, although it does not make their mode of origination any more comprehensible, yet it is a heuristic principle for investigating the particular laws of nature; supposing even that we wish to make no use of it for explaining nature itself,—in which we still always speak only of natural purposes, although it apparently exhibits a designed unity of purpose,—i.e. without seeking beyond nature the ground of the possibility of these particular laws. But since we must come in the end to this latter question, it is just as necessary to think for nature a particular kind of causality which does not present itself in it, as the mechanism of natural causes which does. To the receptivity of several forms, different from those of which matter is susceptible by mechanism, must be added a spontaneity of a cause (which therefore cannot be matter), without which no ground can be assigned for those forms. No doubt Reason, before it takes this step, must proceed with caution, and not try to explain teleologically every Technic of nature, i.e. every productive faculty of nature which displays in itself (as in regular bodies) purposiveness of figure to our mere apprehension; but must always regard such as so far mechanically possible. But on that account to wish entirely to exclude the teleological principle, and to follow simple mechanism only—in cases where, in the rational investigation of the possibility of natural forms through their causes, purposiveness shows itself quite undeniably as the reference to a different kind of causality—to do this must make Reason fantastic, and send it wandering among chimeras of unthinkable natural faculties; just as a mere teleological mode of explanation which takes no account of natural mechanism makes it visionary.

In the same natural thing both principles cannot be connected as fundamental propositions of explanation (deduction) of one by the other, i.e. they do not unite for the determinant Judgement as dogmatical and constitutive principles of insight into nature. If I choose, e.g. to regard a maggot as the product of the mere mechanism of nature (of the new formation that it produces of itself, when its elements are set free by corruption), I cannot derive the same product from the same matter as from a causality that acts according to purposes. Conversely, if I regard the same product as a natural purpose, I cannot count on any mechanical mode of its production and regard this as the constitutive principle of my judgement upon its possibility, and so unite both principles. One method of explanation excludes the other; even supposing that objectively both grounds of the possibility of such a product rested on a single ground, to which we did not pay attention. The principle which should render possible the compatibility of both in judging of nature must be placed in that which lies outside both (and consequently outside the possible empirical representation of nature), but yet contains their ground, i.e. in the supersensible; and each of the two methods of explanation must be referred thereto. Now of this we can have no concept but the indeterminate concept of a ground, which makes the judging of nature by empirical laws possible, but which we cannot determine more nearly by any predicate. Hence the union of both principles cannot rest upon a ground of explanation of the possibility of a product according to given laws, for the determinant Judgement, but only upon a ground of its exposition for the reflective Judgement.—To explain is to derive from a principle, which therefore we must clearly know and of which we can give an account. No doubt the principle of the mechanism of nature and that of its causality in one and the same natural product must coalesce in a single higher principle, which is their common source, because otherwise they could not subsist side by side in the observation of nature. But if this principle, objectively common to the two, which therefore warrants the association of the maxims of natural investigation depending on both, be such that, though it can be pointed to, it cannot be determinately known nor clearly put forward for use in cases which arise, then from such a principle we can draw no explanation, i.e. no clear and determinate derivation of the possibility of a natural product in accordance with those two heterogeneous principles. But now the principle common to the mechanical and teleological derivations is the supersensible, which we must place at the basis of nature, regarded as phenomenon. And of this, in a theoretical point of view, we cannot form the smallest positive determinate concept. It cannot, therefore, in any way be explained how, according to it as principle, nature (in its particular laws) constitutes for us one system, which can be cognised as possible either by the principle of physical development or by that of final causes. If it happens that objects of nature present themselves which cannot be thought by us, as regards their possibility, according to the principle of mechanism (which always has a claim on a natural being), without relying on teleological propositions, we can only make an hypothesis. Namely, we suppose that we may hopefully investigate natural laws with reference to both (according as the possibility of its product is cognisable by our Understanding by one or the other principle), without stumbling at the apparent contradiction which comes into view between the principles by which they are judged. For at least the possibility is assured that both may be united objectively in one principle, since they concern phenomena that presuppose a supersensible ground.

Mechanism, then, and the teleological (designed) Technic of nature, in respect of the same product and its possibility, may stand under a common supreme principle of nature in particular laws. But since this principle is transcendent we cannot, because of the limitation of our Understanding, unite both principles in the explanation of the same production of nature even if the inner possibility of this product is only intelligible [verständlich] through a causality according to purposes (as is the case with organised matter). We revert then to the above fundamental proposition of Teleology. According to the constitution of the human Understanding, no other than designedly-working causes can be assumed for the possibility of organised beings in nature; and the mere mechanism of nature cannot be adequate to the explanation of these its products. But we do not attempt to decide anything by this fundamental proposition as to the possibility of such things themselves.

This is only a maxim of the reflective, not of the determinant Judgement; consequently only subjectively valid for us, not objectively for the possibility of things themselves of this kind (in which both kinds of production may well cohere in one and the same ground). Further, without any concept,—besides the teleologically conceived method of production,—of a simultaneously presented mechanism of nature, no judgement can be passed on this kind of production as a natural product. Hence the above maxim leads to the necessity of an unification of both principles in judging of things as natural purposes in themselves, but does not lead us to substitute one for the other either altogether or in certain parts. For in the place of what is thought (at least by us) as possible only by design we cannot set mechanism, and in the place of what is cognised as mechanically necessary we cannot set contingency, which would need a purpose as its determining ground; but we can only subordinate the one (Mechanism) to the other (designed Technic), which may quite well be the case according to the transcendental principle of the purposiveness of nature.

For where purposes are thought as grounds of the possibility of certain things, we must assume also means, whose law of working requires for itself nothing presupposing a purpose,—a mechanical law—and yet can be a subordinate cause of designed effects. Thus—in the organic products of nature, and specially when prompted by their infinite number, we assume (at least as a permissible hypothesis) design in the combination of natural causes by particular laws as a universal principle of the reflective Judgement for the whole of nature (the world),—we can think a great and indeed universal combination of mechanical with teleological laws in the productions of nature, without interchanging the principles by which they are judged or putting one in the place of the other. For, in a teleological judgement, the matter, even if the form that it assumes be judged possible only by design, can also, conformably to the mechanical laws of its nature, be subordinated as a means to the represented purpose. But, since the ground of this compatibility lies in that which is neither one nor the other (neither mechanism nor purposive combination), but is the supersensible substrate of nature of which we know nothing, the two ways of representing the possibility of such Objects are not to be blended together by our (human) Reason. However, we cannot judge of their possibility otherwise than by judging them as ultimately resting on a supreme Understanding by the connexion of final causes; and thus the teleological method of explanation is not eliminated.

Now it is quite indeterminate, and for our Understanding always indeterminable, how much the mechanism of nature does as a means towards each final design in nature. However, on account of the above-mentioned intelligible principle of the possibility of a nature in general, it may be assumed that it is possible throughout according to the two kinds of universally accordant laws (the physical and those of final causes), although we cannot see into the way how this takes place. Hence we do not know how far the mechanical method of explanation which is possible for us may extend. So much only is certain that, so far as we can go in this direction, it must always be inadequate for things that we once recognise as natural purposes; and therefore we must, by the constitution of our Understanding, subordinate these grounds collectively to a teleological principle.

Hereon is based a privilege, and on account of the importance which the study of nature by the principle of mechanism has for the theoretical use of our Reason, also an appeal. We should explain all products and occurrences in nature, even the most purposive, by mechanism as far as is in our power (the limits of which we cannot specify in this kind of investigation). But at the same time we are not to lose sight of the fact that those things which we cannot even state for investigation except under the concept of a purpose of Reason, must, in conformity with the essential constitution of our Reason, mechanical causes notwithstanding, be subordinated by us finally to causality in accordance with purposes.

METHODOLOGY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT.119

§ 79. Whether teleology must be treated as if it belonged to the doctrine of nature

Every science must have its definite position in the encyclopaedia of all the sciences. If it is a philosophical science its position must be either in the theoretical or practical part. If again it has its place in the former of these, it must be either in the doctrine of nature, so far as it concerns that which can be an object of experience (in the doctrine of bodies, the doctrine of the soul, or the universal science of the world), or in the doctrine of God (the original ground of the world as the complex of all objects of experience).

Now the question is, what place is due to Teleology? Does it belong to Natural Science (properly so called) or to Theology? One of the two it must be; for no science belongs to the transition from one to the other, because this transition only marks the articulation or organisation of the system, and not a place in it.

That it does not belong to Theology as a part thereof, although it may be made of the most important use therein, is self-evident. For it has as its objects, natural productions, and their cause, and although it refers at the same time to the latter as to a ground lying outside of and beyond nature (a Divine Author), yet it does not do this for the determinant but only for the reflective Judgement in the consideration of nature (in order to guide our judgement on things in the world by means of such an Idea as a regulative principle, in conformity with the human Understanding).

But it appears to belong just as little to Natural Science, which needs determinant and not merely reflective principles in order to supply objective grounds for natural effects. In fact, nothing is gained for the theory of nature or the mechanical explanation of its phenomena by means of its effective causes, by considering them as connected according to the relation of purposes. The exhibition of the purposes of nature in its products, so far as they constitute a system according to teleological concepts, properly belongs only to a description of nature which is drawn up in accordance with a particular guiding thread. Here Reason, no doubt, accomplishes a noble work, instructive and practically purposive in many points of view; but it gives no information as to the origin and the inner possibility of these forms, which is the special business of theoretical Natural Science. Teleology, therefore, as science, belongs to no Doctrine, but only to Criticism; and to the criticism of a special cognitive faculty, viz. Judgement. But so far as it contains principles a priori, it can and must furnish the method by which nature must be judged according to the principle of final causes. Hence its Methodology has at least negative influence upon the procedure in theoretical Natural Science, and also upon the relation which this can have in Metaphysic to Theology as its propaedeutic.

§ 80. Of the necessary subordination of the mechanical to the teleological principle in the explanation of a thing as a natural purpose

The privilege of aiming at a merely mechanical method of explanation of all natural products is in itself quite unlimited; but the faculty of attaining thereto is by the constitution of our Understanding, so far as it has to do with things as natural purposes, not only very much limited but also clearly bounded. For, according to a principle of the Judgement, by this process alone nothing can be accomplished towards an explanation of these things; and consequently the judgement upon such products must always be at the same time subordinated by us to a teleological principle.

It is therefore rational, even meritorious, to pursue natural mechanism, in respect of the explanation of natural products, so far as can be done with probability; and if we give up the attempt it is not because it is impossible in itself to meet in this path with the purposiveness of nature, but only because it is impossible for us as men. For there would be required for that an intuition other than sensuous, and a determinate knowledge of the intelligible substrate of nature from which a ground could be assigned for the mechanism of phenomena according to particular laws, which quite surpasses our faculties.

Hence if the naturalist would not waste his labour he must in judging of things, the concept of any of which is indubitably established as a natural purpose (organised beings), always lay down as basis an original organisation, which uses that very mechanism in order to produce fresh organised forms or to develop the existing ones into new shapes (which, however, always result from that purpose and conformably to it).

It is praiseworthy by the aid of comparative anatomy to go through the great creation of organised natures, in order to see whether there may not be in it something similar to a system and also in accordance with the principle of production. For otherwise we should have to be content with the mere principle of judgement (which gives no insight into their production) and, discouraged, to give up all claim to natural insight in this field. The agreement of so many genera of animals in a certain common schema, which appears to be fundamental not only in the structure of their bones but also in the disposition of their remaining parts,—so that with an admirable simplicity of original outline, a great variety of species has been produced by the shortening of one member and the lengthening of another, the involution of this part and the evolution of that,—allows a ray of hope, however faint, to penetrate into our minds, that here something may be accomplished by the aid of the principle of the mechanism of nature (without which there can be no natural science in general). This analogy of forms, which with all their differences seem to have been produced according to a common original type, strengthens our suspicions of an actual relationship between them in their production from a common parent, through the gradual approximation of one animal-genus to another—from those in which the principle of purposes seems to be best authenticated, i.e. from man, down to the polype, and again from this down to mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest stage of nature noticeable by us, viz. to crude matter. And so the whole Technic of nature, which is so incomprehensible to us in organised beings that we believe ourselves compelled to think a different principle for it, seems to be derived from matter and its powers according to mechanical laws (like those by which it works in the formation of crystals).

Here it is permissible for the archaeologist of nature to derive from the surviving traces of its oldest revolutions, according to all its mechanism known or supposed by him, that great family of creatures (for so we must represent them if the said thoroughgoing relationship is to have any ground). He can suppose the bosom of mother earth, as she passed out of her chaotic state (like a great animal), to have given birth in the beginning to creatures of less purposive form, that these again gave birth to others which formed themselves with greater adaptation to their place of birth and their relations to each other; until this womb becoming torpid and ossified, limited its births to definite species not further modifiable, and the manifoldness remained as it was at the end of the operation of that fruitful formative power.—Only he must still in the end ascribe to this universal mother an organisation purposive in respect of all these creatures; otherwise it would not be possible to think the possibility of the purposive form of the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.120 He has then only pushed further back the ground of explanation and cannot pretend to have made the development of those two kingdoms independent of the condition of final causes.

Even as concerns the variation to which certain individuals of organised genera are accidentally subjected, if we find that the character so changed is hereditary and is taken up into the generative power, then we cannot pertinently judge the variation to be anything else than an occasional development of purposive capacities originally present in the species with a view to the preservation of the race. For in the complete inner purposiveness of an organised being, the generation of its like is closely bound up with the condition of taking nothing up into the generative power which does not belong, in such a system of purposes, to one of its undeveloped original capacities. Indeed, if we depart from this principle, we cannot know with certainty whether several parts of the form which is now apparent in a species have not a contingent and unpurposive origin; and the principle of Teleology, to judge nothing in an organised being as unpurposive which maintains it in its propagation, would be very unreliable in its application and would be valid solely for the original stock (of which we have no further knowledge).

Hume121 takes exception to those who find it requisite to assume for all such natural purposes a teleological principle of judgement, i.e. an architectonic Understanding. He says that it may fairly be asked: how is such an Understanding possible? How can the manifold faculties and properties that constitute the possibility of an Understanding, which has at the same time executive force, be found so purposively together in one Being? But this objection is without weight. For the whole difficulty which surrounds the question concerning the first production of a thing containing in itself purposes and only comprehensible by means of them, rests on the further question as to the unity of the ground of the combination in this product of the various elements [des Mannichfaltigen] which are external to one another. For if this ground be placed in the Understanding of a producing cause as simple substance, the question, so far as it is teleological, is sufficiently answered; but if the cause be sought merely in matter as an aggregate of many substances external to one another, the unity of the principle is quite wanting for the internally purposive form of its formation, and the autocracy of matter in productions which can only be conceived by our Understanding as purposes is a word without meaning.

Hence it comes to pass that those who seek a supreme ground of possibility for the objectively-purposive forms of matter, without attributing to it Understanding, either make the world-whole into a single all-embracing substance (Pantheism), or (which is only a more determinate explanation of the former) into a complex of many determinations inhering in a single simple substance (Spinozism); merely in order to satisfy that condition of all purposiveness—the unity of ground. Thus they do justice indeed to one condition of the problem, viz. the unity in the purposive combination, by means of the mere ontological concept of a simple substance; but they adduce nothing for the other condition, viz. the relation of this substance to its result as purpose, through which relation that ontological ground is to be more closely determined in respect of the question at issue. Hence they answer the whole question in no way. It remains absolutely unanswerable (for our Reason) if we do not represent that original ground of things, as simple substance; its property which has reference to the specific constitution of the forms of nature grounded thereon, viz. its purposive unity, as the property of an intelligent substance; and the relation of these forms to this intelligence (on account of the contingency which we ascribe to everything that we think possible only as a purpose) as that of causality.

§ 81. Of the association of mechanism with the teleological principle in the explanation of a natural purpose as a natural product

According to the preceding paragraphs the mechanism of nature alone does not enable us to think the possibility of an organised being; but (at least according to the constitution of our cognitive faculty) it must be originally subordinated to a cause working designedly. But, just as little is the mere teleological ground of such a being sufficient for considering it and judging it as a product of nature, if the mechanism of the latter be not associated with the former, like the instrument of a cause working designedly, to whose purposes nature is subordinated in its mechanical laws. The possibility of such a unification of two quite different kinds of causality,—of nature in its universal conformity to law with an Idea which limits it to a particular form, for which it contains no ground in itself—is not comprehended by our Reason. It lies in the supersensible substrate of nature, of which we can determine nothing positively, except that it is the being in itself of which we merely know the phenomenon. But the principle, “all that we assume as belonging to this nature (phenomenon) and as its product, must be thought as connected therewith according to mechanical laws,” has none the less force, because without this kind of causality organised beings (as purposes of nature) would not be natural products.

Now if the teleological principle of the production of these beings be assumed (as is inevitable), we can place at the basis of the cause of their internally purposive form either Occasionalism or Pre-established Harmony. According to the former the Supreme Cause of the world would, conformably to its Idea, furnish immediately the organic formation on the occasion of every union of intermingling materials. According to the latter it would, in the original products of its wisdom, only have supplied the capacity by means of which an organic being produces another of like kind, and the species perpetually maintains itself; whilst the loss of individuals is continually replaced by that nature which at the same time works towards their destruction. If we assume the Occasionalism of the production of organised beings, all nature is quite lost, and with it all employment of Reason in judging of the possibility of such products; hence we may suppose that no one will adopt this system, who has anything to do with philosophy.

[The theory of] Pre-established Harmony may proceed in two different ways. It regards every organised being as generated by one of like kind, either as an educt or a product. The system which regards generations as mere educts is called the theory of individual preformation or the theory of evolution: that which regards them as products is entitled the system of epigenesis. This latter may also be entitled the system of generic preformation, because the productive faculty of the generator and consequently the specific form would be virtually performed according to the inner purposive capacities which are part of its stock. In correspondence with this the opposite theory of individual preformations would be better entitled the theory of involution.

The advocates of the theory of evolution, who remove every individual from the formative power of nature, in order to make it come immediately from the hand of the Creator, would, however, not venture to regard this as happening according to the hypothesis of Occasionalism. For according to this the copulation is a mere formality, à propos of which a supreme intelligent Cause of the world has concluded to form a fruit immediately by his hand, and only to leave to the mother its development and nourishment. They declare themselves for preformation; as if it were not all the same, whether a supernatural origin is assigned to these forms in the beginning or in the course of the world. On the contrary, a great number of supernatural arrangements would be spared by occasional creation, which would be requisite, in order that the embryo formed in the beginning of the world might not be injured throughout the long period of its development by the destructive powers of nature, and might keep itself unharmed; and there would also be requisite an incalculably greater number of such preformed beings than would ever be developed, and with them many creations would be made without need and without purpose. They would, however, be willing to leave at least something to nature, so as not to fall into a complete Hyperphysic which can dispense with all natural explanations. It is true, they hold so fast by their Hyperphysic that they find even in abortions (which it is quite impossible to take for purposes of nature) an admirable purposiveness; though it be only directed to the fact that an anatomist would take exception to it as a purposeless purposiveness, and would feel a disheartened wonder thereat. But the production of hybrids could absolutely not be accommodated with the system of preformation; and to the seeds of the male creature, to which they had attributed nothing but the mechanical property of serving as the first means of nourishment for the embryo, they must attribute in addition a purposive formative power, which in the case of the product of two creatures of the same genus they would concede to neither parent.

On the other hand, even if we do not recognise the great superiority which the theory of Epigenesis has over the former as regards the empirical grounds of its proof, still prior to proof Reason views this way of explanation with peculiar favour. For in respect of the things which we can only represent as possible originally according to the causality of purposes, at least as concerns their propagation, this theory regards nature as self-producing, not merely as self-evolving: and so with the least expenditure of the supernatural leaves to nature all that follows after the first beginning (though without determining anything about this first beginning by which Physic generally is thwarted, however it may essay its explanation by a chain of causes).

As regards this theory of Epigenesis, no one has contributed more either to its proof or to the establishment of the legitimate principles of its application,—partly by the limitation of a too presumptuous employment of it,—than Herr Hofr. Blumenbach.122 In all physical explanations of these formations he starts from organised matter. That crude matter should have originally formed itself according to mechanical laws, that life should have sprung from the nature of what is lifeless, that matter should have been able to dispose itself into the form of a self-maintaining purposiveness—this he rightly declares to be contradictory to Reason. But at the same time he leaves to natural mechanism under this to us indispensable principle of an original organisation, an undeterminable but yet unmistakeable element, in reference to which the faculty of matter in an organised body is called by him a formative impulse (in contrast to, and yet standing under the higher guidance and direction of, that merely mechanical formative power universally resident in matter).

§ 82. Of the teleological system in the external relations of organised beings

By external purposiveness I mean that by which one thing of nature serves another as means to a purpose. Now things which have no internal purposiveness and which presuppose none for their possibility, e.g. earth, air, water, etc., may at the same time be very purposive externally, i.e. in relation to other beings. But these latter must be organised beings, i.e. natural purposes, for otherwise the former could not be judged as means to them. Thus water, air, and earth cannot be regarded as means to the raising of mountains, because mountains contain nothing in themselves that requires a ground of their possibility according to purposes, in reference to which therefore their cause can never be represented under the predicate of a means (as useful therefor).

External purposiveness is a quite different concept from that of internal purposiveness, which is bound up with the possibility of an object irrespective of its actuality being itself a purpose. We can ask about an organised being the question: What is it for? But we cannot easily ask this about things in which we recognise merely the working of nature’s mechanism. For in the former, as regards their internal possibility, we represent a causality according to purposes, a creative Understanding, and we refer this active faculty to its determining ground, viz. design. There is only one external purposiveness which is connected with the internal purposiveness of organisation, and yet serves in the external relation of a means to a purpose, without the question necessarily arising, as to what end this being so organised must have existed for. This is the organisation of both sexes in their mutual relation for the propagation of their kind; since here we can always ask, as in the case of an individual, why must such a pair exist? The answer is: This pair first constitutes an organising whole, though not an organised whole in a single body.

If we now ask, wherefore anything is, the answer is either: Its presence and its production have no reference at all to a cause working according to design, and so we always refer its origin to the mechanism of nature, or: There is somewhere a designed ground of its presence (as a contingent natural being). This thought we can hardly separate from the concept of an organised thing; for, since we must place at the basis of its internal possibility a causality of final causes and an Idea lying at the ground of this, we cannot think the existence of this product except as a purpose. For the represented effect, the representation of which is at the same time the determining ground of the intelligent cause working towards its production, is called a purpose. In this case therefore we can either say: The purpose of the existence of such a natural being is in itself; i.e. it is not merely a purpose but a final purpose, or: This is external to it in another natural being, i.e. it exists purposively not as a final purpose, but necessarily as a means.

But if we go through the whole of nature we find in it, as nature, no being which could make claim to the eminence of being the final purpose of creation; and we can even prove a priori that what might be for nature an ultimate purpose, according to all the thinkable determinations and properties wherewith one could endow it, could yet as a natural thing never be a final purpose.

If we consider the vegetable kingdom we might at first sight, on account of the immeasurable fertility with which it spreads itself almost on every soil, be led to take it for a mere product of that mechanism which nature displays in the formations of the mineral kingdom. But a more intimate knowledge of its indescribably wise organisation does not permit us to hold to this thought, but prompts the question: What are these things created for? If it is answered: For the animal kingdom, which is thereby nourished and has thus been able to spread over the earth in genera so various, then the further question comes: What are these plant-devouring animals for? The answer would be something like this: For beasts of prey, which can only be nourished by that which has life. Finally we have the question: What are these last, as well as the first-mentioned natural kingdoms, good for? For man, in reference to the manifold use which his Understanding teaches him to make of all these creatures. He is the ultimate purpose of creation here on earth, because he is the only being upon it who can form a concept of purposes, and who can by his Reason make out of an aggregate of purposively formed things a system of purposes.

We might also with the chevalier Linnaeus123 go the apparently opposite way and say: The herbivorous animals are there to moderate the luxurious growth of the vegetable kingdom, by which many of its species are choked. The carnivora are to set bounds to the voracity of the herbivora. Finally man, by his pursuit of these and his diminution of their numbers, preserves a certain equilibrium between the producing and the destructive powers of nature. And so man, although in a certain reference he might be esteemed a purpose, yet in another has only the rank of a means.

If an objective purposiveness in the variety of the genera of creatures and their external relations to one another, as purposively constructed beings, be made a principle, then it is conformable to Reason to conceive in these relations a certain organisation and a system of all natural kingdoms according to final causes. Only here experience seems flatly to contradict the maxims of Reason, especially as concerns an ultimate purpose of nature, which is indispensable for the possibility of such a system and which we can put nowhere else but in man. For regarding him as one of the many animal genera, nature has not in the least excepted him from its destructive or its productive powers, but has subjected everything to a mechanism thereof without any purpose.

The first thing that must be designedly prepared in an arrangement for a purposive complex of natural beings on the earth would be their place of habitation, the soil and the element on and in which they are to thrive. But a more exact knowledge of the constitution of this basis of all organic production indicates no other causes than those working quite undesignedly, causes which rather destroy than favour production, order, and purposes. Land and sea not only contain in themselves memorials of ancient mighty desolations which have confounded them and all creatures that are in them; but their whole structure, the strata of the one and the boundaries of the other, have quite the appearance of being the product of the wild and violent forces of a nature working in a state of chaos. Although the figure, the structure, and the slope of the land might seem to be purposively ordered for the reception of water from the air, for the welling up of streams between strata of different kinds (for many kinds of products), and for the course of rivers—yet a closer investigation shows that they are merely the effects of volcanic eruptions or of inundations of the ocean, as regards not only the first production of this figure, but, above all, its subsequent transformation, as well as the disappearance of its first organic productions.124 Now if the place of habitation of all these creatures, the soil (of the land) or the bosom (of the sea), indicates nothing but a quite undesigned mechanism of its production, how and with what right can we demand and maintain a different origin for these latter products? The closest examination, indeed (in Camper’s125 judgement), of the remains of the aforesaid devastations of nature seems to show that man was not comprehended in these revolutions; but yet he is so dependent on the remaining creatures that, if a universally directing mechanism of nature be admitted in the case of the others, he must also be regarded as comprehended under it; even though his Understanding (for the most part at least) has been able to deliver him from these devastations.

But this argument seems to prove more than was intended by it. It seems to prove not merely that man cannot be the ultimate purpose of nature, and that on the same grounds the aggregate of the organised things of nature on the earth cannot be a system of purposes; but also that the natural products formerly held to be natural purposes have no other origin than the mechanism of nature.

But in the solution given above of the Antinomy of the principles of the mechanical and teleological methods of production of organic beings of nature, we have seen that they are merely principles of the reflective Judgement in respect of nature as it produces forms in accordance with particular laws (for the systematic connexion of which we have no key). They do not determine the origin of these beings in themselves; but only say that we, by the constitution of our Understanding and our Reason, cannot conceive it in this kind of being except according to final causes. The greatest possible effort, even audacity, in the attempt to explain them mechanically is not only permitted, but we are invited to it by Reason; notwithstanding that we know from the subjective grounds of the particular species and limitations of our Understanding (not e.g. because the mechanism of production would contradict in itself an origin according to purposes) that we can never attain thereto. Finally, the compatibility of both ways of representing the possibility of nature may lie in the supersensible principle of nature (external to us, as well as in us); whilst the method of representation according to final causes may be only a subjective condition of the use of our Reason, when it not merely wishes to form a judgement upon objects as phenomena, but desires to refer these phenomena together with their principles to their supersensible substrate, in order to find certain laws of their unity possible, which it cannot represent to itself except through purposes (of which the Reason also has such as are supersensible).

§ 83. Of the ultimate purpose of nature as a teleological system

We have shown in the preceding that, though not for the determinant but for the reflective Judgement, we have sufficient cause for judging man to be, not merely like all organised beings a natural purpose, but also the ultimate purpose of nature here on earth; in reference to whom all other natural things constitute a system of purposes according to fundamental propositions of Reason. If now that must be found in man himself, which is to be furthered as a purpose by means of his connexion with nature, this purpose must either be of a kind that can be satisfied by nature in its beneficence; or it is the aptitude and skill for all kinds of purposes for which nature (external and internal) can be used by him. The first purpose of nature would be man’s happiness, the second his culture.

The concept of happiness is not one that man derives by abstraction from his instincts and so deduces from his animal nature; but it is a mere Idea of a state, that he wishes to make adequate to the Idea under merely empirical conditions (which is impossible). This Idea he projects in such different ways on account of the complication of his Understanding with Imagination and Sense, and changes so often, that nature, even if it were entirely subjected to his elective will, could receive absolutely no determinate, universal and fixed law, so as to harmonise with this vacillating concept and thus with the purpose which each man arbitrarily sets before himself. And even if we reduce this to the true natural wants as to which our race is thoroughly agreed, or on the other hand, raise ever so high man’s skill to accomplish his imagined purposes; yet, even thus, what man understands by happiness, and what is in fact his proper, ultimate, natural purpose (not purpose of freedom), would never be attained by him. For it is not his nature to rest and be contented with the possession and enjoyment of anything whatever. On the other side, too, there is something wanting. Nature has not taken him for her special darling and favoured him with benefit above all animals. Rather, in her destructive operations,—plague, hunger, perils of waters, frost, assaults of other animals great and small, etc.,—in these things has she spared him as little as any other animal. Further, the inconsistency of his own natural dispositions drives him into self-devised torments, and also reduces others of his own race to misery, by the oppression of lordship, the barbarism of war, and so forth; he, himself, as far as in him lies, works for the destruction of his own race; so that even with the most beneficent external nature, its purpose, if it were directed to the happiness of our species, would not be attained in an earthly system, because our nature is not susceptible of it. Man is then always only a link in the chain of natural purposes; a principle certainly in respect of many purposes, for which nature seems to have destined him in her disposition, and towards which he sets himself, but also a means for the maintenance of purposiveness in the mechanism of the remaining links. As the only being on earth which has an Understanding and, consequently, a faculty of setting arbitrary purposes before itself, he is certainly entitled to be the lord of nature; and if it be regarded as a teleological system he is, by his destination, the ultimate purpose of nature. But this is subject to the condition of his having an Understanding and the Will to give to it and to himself such a reference to purposes, as can be self-sufficient independently of nature, and, consequently, can be a final purpose; which, however, must not be sought in nature itself.

But in order to find out where in man we have to place that ultimate purpose of nature, we must seek out what nature can supply to prepare him for what he must do himself in order to be a final purpose, and we must separate it from all those purposes whose possibility depends upon things that one can expect only from nature. Of the latter kind is earthly happiness, by which is understood the complex of all man’s purposes possible through nature, whether external nature or man’s nature; i.e. the matter of all his earthly purposes, which, if he makes it his whole purpose, renders him incapable of positing his own existence as a final purpose, and being in harmony therewith. There remains therefore of all his purposes in nature only the formal subjective condition; viz. the aptitude of setting purposes in general before himself, and (independent of nature in his purposive determination) of using nature, conformably to the maxims of his free purposes in general, as a means. This nature can do in regard to the final purpose that lies outside it, and it therefore may be regarded as its ultimate purpose. The production of the aptitude of a rational being for arbitrary purposes in general (consequently in his freedom) is culture. Therefore, culture alone can be the ultimate purpose which we have cause for ascribing to nature in respect to the human race (not man’s earthly happiness or the fact that he is the chief instrument of instituting order and harmony in irrational nature external to himself).

But all culture is not adequate to this ultimate purpose of nature. The culture of skill is indeed the chief subjective condition of aptitude for furthering one’s purposes in general; but it is not adequate to furthering the will126 in the determination and choice of purposes, which yet essentially belongs to the whole extent of an aptitude for purposes. The latter condition of aptitude, which we might call the culture of training (discipline), is negative, and consists in the freeing of the will from the despotism of desires. By these, tied as we are to certain natural things, we are rendered incapable even of choosing, while we allow those impulses to serve as fetters, which Nature has given us as guiding threads that we should not neglect or violate the destination of our animal nature—we being all the time free enough to strain or relax, to extend or diminish them, according as the purposes of Reason require.

Skill cannot be developed in the human race except by means of inequality among men; for the great majority provide the necessities of life, as it were, mechanically, without requiring any art in particular, for the convenience and leisure of others who work at the less necessary elements of culture, science and art. In an oppressed condition they have hard work and little enjoyment, although much of the culture of the higher classes gradually spreads to them. Yet with the progress of this culture (the height of which is called luxury, reached when the propensity to what can be done without begins to be injurious to what is indispensable), their calamities increase equally in two directions, on the one hand through violence from without, on the other hand through internal discontent; but still this splendid misery is bound up with the development of the natural capacities of the human race, and the purpose of nature itself, although not our purpose, is thus attained. The formal condition under which nature can alone attain this its final design, is that arrangement of men’s relations to one another, by which lawful authority in a whole, which we call a civil community, is opposed to the abuse of their conflicting freedoms; only in this can the greatest development of natural capacities take place. For this also there would be requisite,—if men were clever enough to find it out and wise enough to submit themselves voluntarily to its constraint,—a cosmopolitan whole, i.e. a system of all states that are in danger of acting injuriously upon each other.127 Failing this, and with the obstacles which ambition, lust of dominion, and avarice, especially in those who have the authority in their hands, oppose even to the possibility of such a scheme, there is, inevitably, war (by which sometimes states subdivide and resolve themselves into smaller states, sometimes a state annexes other smaller states and strives to form a greater whole). Though war is an undesigned enterprise of men (stirred up by their unbridled passions), yet is it [perhaps]128 a deep-hidden and designed enterprise of supreme wisdom for preparing, if not for establishing, conformity to law amid the freedom of states, and with this a unity of a morally grounded system of those states. In spite of the dreadful afflictions with which it visits the human race, and the perhaps greater afflictions with which the constant preparation for it in time of peace oppresses them, yet is it (although the hope for a restful state of popular happiness is ever further off) a motive for developing all talents serviceable for culture, to the highest possible pitch.129

As concerns the discipline of the inclinations,—for which our natural capacity in regard of our destination as an animal race is quite purposive, but which render the development of humanity very difficult,—there is manifest in respect of this second requirement for culture a purposive striving of nature to a cultivation which makes us receptive of higher purposes than nature itself can supply. We cannot strive against the preponderance of evil, which is poured out upon us by the refinement of taste pushed to idealisation, and even by the luxury of science as affording food for pride, through the insatiable number of inclinations thus aroused. But yet we cannot mistake the purpose of nature—ever aiming to win us away from the rudeness and violence of those inclinations (inclinations to enjoyment) which belong rather to our animality, and for the most part are opposed to the cultivation of our higher destiny, and to make way for the development of our humanity. The beautiful arts and the sciences which, by their universally-communicable pleasure, and by the polish and refinement of society, make man more civilised, if not morally better, win us in large measure from the tyranny of sense-propensions, and thus prepare men for a lordship, in which Reason alone shall have authority; whilst the evils with which we are visited, partly by nature, partly by the intolerant selfishness of men, summon, strengthen, and harden the powers of the soul not to submit to them, and so make us feel an aptitude for higher purposes, which lies hidden in us.130

§ 84. Of the final purpose of the existence of a world, i.e. of creation itself

A final purpose is that purpose which needs no other as condition of its possibility.

If the mere mechanism of nature be assumed as the ground of explanation of its purposiveness, we cannot ask: what are things in the world there for? For according to such an idealistic system it is only the physical possibility of things (to think which as purposes would be mere subtlety without any Object) that is under discussion; whether we refer this form of things to chance or to blind necessity, in either case the question would be vain. If, however, we assume the purposive combination in the world to be real and to be [brought about] by a particular kind of causality, viz. that of a designedly-working cause, we cannot stop at the question: why have things of the world (organised beings) this or that form? why are they placed by nature in this or that relation to one another? But once an Understanding is thought that must be regarded as the cause of the possibility of such forms as are actually found in things, it must be also asked on objective grounds: Who could have determined this productive Understanding to an operation of this kind? This being is then the final purpose in reference to which such things are there.

I have said above that the final purpose is not a purpose which nature would be competent to bring about and to produce in conformity with its Idea, because it is unconditioned. For there is nothing in nature (regarded as a sensible being) for which the determining ground present in itself would not be always conditioned; and this holds not merely of external (material) nature, but also of internal (thinking) nature—it being of course understood that I only am considering that in myself which is nature. But a thing that is to exist necessarily, on account of its objective constitution, as the final purpose of an intelligent cause, must be of the kind that in the order of purposes it is dependent on no further condition than merely its Idea.

Now we have in the world only one kind of beings whose causality is teleological, i.e. is directed to purposes and is at the same time so constituted that the law according to which they have to determine purposes for themselves is represented as unconditioned and independent of natural conditions, and yet as in itself necessary. The being of this kind is man, but man considered as noumenon; the only natural being in which we can recognise, on the side of its peculiar constitution, a supersensible faculty (freedom) and also the law of causality, together with its Object, which this faculty may propose to itself as highest purpose (the highest good in the world).

Now of man (and so of every rational creature in the World) as a moral being it can no longer be asked: why (quem in finem) he exists? His existence involves the highest purpose to which, as far as is in his power, he can subject the whole of nature; contrary to which at least he cannot regard himself as subject to any influence of nature.—If now things of the world, as beings dependent in their existence, need a supreme cause acting according to purposes, man is the final purpose of creation; since without him the chain of mutually subordinated purposes would not be complete as regards its ground. Only in man, and only in him as subject of morality, do we meet with unconditioned legislation in respect of purposes, which therefore alone renders him capable of being a final purpose, to which the whole of nature is teleologically subordinated.131

§ 85. Of Physico-theology

Physico-theology is the endeavour of Reason to infer the Supreme Cause of nature and its properties from the purposes of nature (which can only be empirically known). Moral theology (ethico-theology) would be the endeavour to infer that Cause and its properties from the moral purpose of rational beings in nature (which can be known a priori).

The former naturally precedes the latter. For if we wish to infer a World Cause teleologically from the things in the world, purposes of nature must first be given, for which we afterwards have to seek a final purpose, and for this the principle of the causality of this Supreme Cause.

Many investigations of nature can and must be conducted according to the teleological principle, without our having cause to inquire into the ground of the possibility of purposive working with which we meet in various products of nature. But if we wish to have a concept of this we have absolutely no further insight into it than the maxim of the reflective Judgement affords: viz. if only a single organic product of nature were given to us, by the constitution of our cognitive faculty we could think no other ground for it than that of a cause of nature itself (whether the whole of nature or only this bit of it) which contains the causality for it through Understanding. This principle of judging, though it does not bring us any further in the explanation of natural things and their origin, yet discloses to us an outlook over nature, by which perhaps we may be able to determine more closely the concept, otherwise so unfruitful, of an Original Being.

Now I say that Physico-theology, however far it may be pursued, can disclose to us nothing of a final purpose of creation; for it does not even extend to the question as to this. It can, it is true, justify the concept of an intelligent World Cause, as a subjective concept (only available for the constitution of our cognitive faculty) of the possibility of things that we can make intelligible to ourselves according to purposes; but it cannot determine this concept further, either in a theoretical or a practical point of view. Its endeavour does not come up to its design of being the basis of a Theology, but it always remains only a physical Teleology; because the purposive reference therein is and must be always considered only as conditioned in nature, and it consequently cannot inquire into the purpose for which nature itself exists (for which the ground must be sought outside nature),—notwithstanding that it is upon the determinate Idea of this that the determinate concept of that Supreme Intelligent World Cause, and the consequent possibility of a Theology, depend.

What the things in the world are mutually useful for; what good the manifold in a thing does for the thing; how we have ground to assume that nothing in the world is in vain, but that everything in nature is good for something,—the condition being granted that certain things are to exist (as purposes), whence our Reason has in its power for the Judgement no other principle of the possibility of the Object, which it inevitably judges teleologically, than that of subordinating the mechanism of nature to the Architectonic of an intelligent Author of the world—all this the teleological consideration of the world supplies us with excellently and to our extreme admiration. But because the data, and so the principles, for determining that concept of an intelligent World Cause (as highest artist) are merely empirical, they do not enable us to infer any of its properties beyond those which experience reveals in its effects. Now experience, since it can never embrace collective nature as a system, must often (apparently) happen upon this concept (and by mutually conflicting grounds of proof); but it can never, even if we had the power of surveying empirically the whole system as far as it concerns mere nature, raise us above nature to the purpose of its existence, and so to the determinate concept of that supreme Intelligence.

If we lessen the problem with the solution of which Physico-theology has to do, its solution appears easy. If we reduce the concept of a Deity to that of an intelligent being thought by us, of which there may be one or more, which possesses many and very great properties, but not all the properties which are requisite for the foundation of a nature in harmony with the greatest possible purpose; or if we do not scruple in a theory to supply by arbitrary additions what is deficient in the grounds of proof, and so, where we have only ground for assuming much perfection (and what is “much” for us?), consider ourselves entitled to presuppose all possible perfection; thus indeed physical Teleology may make weighty claims to the distinction of being the basis of a Theology. But if we are desired to point out what impels and moreover authorises us to add these supplements, then we shall seek in vain for a ground of justification in the principles of the theoretical use of Reason, which is ever desirous in the explanation of an Object of experience to ascribe to it no more properties than those for which empirical data of possibility are to be found. On closer examination we should see that properly speaking an Idea of a Supreme Being, which rests on a quite different use of Reason (the practical use), lies in us fundamentally a priori, impelling us to supplement, by the concept of a Deity, the defective representation, supplied by a physical Teleology, of the original ground of the purposes in nature; and we should not falsely imagine that we had worked out this Idea, and with it a Theology by means of the theoretical use of Reason in the physical cognition of the world—much less that we had proved its reality.

One cannot blame the ancients much, if they thought of their gods as differing much from each other both as regards their faculties and as regards their designs and volitions, but yet thought of all of them, the Supreme One not excepted, as always limited after human fashion. For if they considered the arrangement and the course of things in nature, they certainly found ground enough for assuming something more than mechanism as its cause, and for conjecturing behind the machinery of this world designs of certain higher causes, which they could not think otherwise than superhuman. But because they met with good and evil, the purposive and the unpurposive, mingled together (at least as far as our insight goes), and could not permit themselves to assume nevertheless that wise and benevolent purposes of which they saw no proof lay hidden at bottom, on behalf of the arbitrary Idea of a supremely perfect original Author, their judgement upon the supreme World Cause could hardly have been other than it was, so long as they proceeded consistently according to maxims of the mere theoretical use of Reason. Others, who wished to be theologians as well as physicists, thought to find contentment for the Reason by providing for the absolute unity of the principle of natural things which Reason demands, the Idea of a Being of which as sole Substance the things would be all only inherent determinations. This Substance would not be Cause of the World by means of intelligence, but in it all the intelligences of the beings in the world would be comprised. This Being consequently would produce nothing according to purposes; but in it all things, on account of the unity of the subject of which they are mere determinations, must necessarily relate themselves purposively to one another, though without purpose and design. Thus they introduced the Idealism of final causes, by changing the unity (so difficult to explain) of a number of purposively combined substances, from being the unity of causal dependence on one Substance to be the unity of inherence in one. This system—which in the sequel, considered on the side of the inherent world beings, becomes Pantheism, and (later) on the side of the Subject subsisting by itself as Original Being, becomes Spinozism,—does not so much resolve as explain away into nothing the question of the first ground of the purposiveness of nature; because this latter concept, bereft of all reality, must be taken for a mere misinterpretation of a universal ontological concept of a thing in general.

Hence the concept of a Deity, which would be adequate for our teleological judging of nature, can never be derived from mere theoretical principles of the use of Reason (on which Physico-theology alone is based). For as one alternative we may explain all Teleology as a mere deception of the Judgement in its judging of the causal combination of things, and fly to the sole principle of a mere mechanism of nature, which merely seems to us, on account of the unity of the Substance of whose determinations nature is but the manifold, to contain a universal reference to purposes. Or if, instead of this Idealism of final causes, we wish to remain attached to the principle of the Realism of this particular kind of causality, we may set beneath natural purposes many intelligent original beings or only a single one. But so far as we have for the basis of this concept [of Realism] only empirical principles derived from the actual purposive combination in the world, we cannot on the one hand find any remedy for the discordance that nature presents in many examples in respect of unity of purpose; and on the other hand, as to the concept of a single intelligent Cause, so far as we are authorised by mere experience, we can never draw it therefrom in a manner sufficiently determined for any serviceable Theology whatever (whether theoretical or practical).

Physical Teleology impels us, it is true, to seek a Theology; but it cannot produce one, however far we may investigate nature by means of experience and, in reference to the purposive combination apparent in it, call in Ideas of Reason (which must be theoretical for physical problems). What is the use, one might well complain, of placing at the basis of all these arrangements a great Understanding incommensurable by us, and supposing it to govern the world according to design, if nature does not and cannot tell us anything of the final design? For without this we cannot refer all these natural purposes to any common point, nor can we form any teleological principle, sufficient either for cognising the purposes collected in a system, or for forming a concept of the Supreme Understanding, as Cause of such a nature, that could serve as a standard for our Judgement reflecting teleologically thereon. I should thus have an artistic Understanding for scattered purposes, but no Wisdom for a final purpose, in which final purpose nevertheless must be contained the determining ground of the said Understanding. But in the absence of a final purpose which pure Reason alone can supply (because all purposes in the world are empirically conditioned, and can contain nothing absolutely good but only what is good for this or that regarded as a contingent design), and which alone would teach me what properties, what degree, and what relation of the Supreme Cause to nature I have to think in order to judge of nature as a teleological system; how and with what right do I dare to extend at pleasure my very limited concept of that original Understanding (which I can base on my limited knowledge of the world), of the Might of that original Being in actualising its Ideas, and of its Will to do so, and complete this into the Idea of an Allwise, Infinite Being? If this is to be done theoretically, it would presuppose omniscience in me, in order to see into the purposes of nature in their whole connexion, and in addition the power of conceiving all possible plans, in comparison with which the present plan would be judged on [sufficient] grounds as the best. For without this complete knowledge of the effect I can arrive at no determinate concept of the Supreme Cause, which can only be found in the concept of an Intelligence infinite in every respect, i.e. the concept of a Deity, and so I can supply no foundation for Theology.

Hence, with every possible extension of physical Teleology, according to the propositions above laid down we may say: By the constitution and the principles of our cognitive faculty we can think of nature, in its purposive arrangements which have become known to us, in no other way than as the product of an Understanding to which it is subject. But the theoretical investigation of nature can never reveal to us whether this Understanding may not also, with the whole of nature and its production, have had a final design (which would not lie in the nature of the sensible world). On the contrary, with all our knowledge of nature it remains undecided whether that Supreme Cause is its original ground according to a final purpose, or not rather by means of an Understanding determined by the mere necessity of its nature to produce certain forms (according to the analogy of what we call the art-instinct in animals); without it being necessary to ascribe to it even wisdom, much less the highest wisdom combined with all other properties requisite for the perfection of its product.

Hence Physico-theology is a misunderstood physical Teleology, only serviceable as a preparation (propaedeutic) for Theology; and it is only adequate to this design by the aid of a foreign principle on which it can rely, and not in itself, as its name would intimate.

§ 86. Of Ethico-theology

The commonest Understanding, if it thinks over the presence of things in the world, and the existence of the world itself, cannot forbear from the judgement that all the various creatures, no matter how great the art displayed in their arrangement, and how various their purposive mutual connexion,—even the complex of their numerous systems (which we incorrectly call worlds),—would be for nothing, if there were not also men (rational beings in general). Without men the whole creation would be a mere waste, in vain, and without final purpose. But it is not in reference to man’s cognitive faculty (theoretical Reason) that the being of everything else in the world gets its worth; he is not there merely that there may be some one to contemplate the world. For if the contemplation of the world only afforded a representation of things without any final purpose, no worth could accrue to its being from the mere fact that it is known; we must presuppose for it a final purpose, in reference to which its contemplation itself has worth. Again it is not in reference to the feeling of pleasure, or to the sum of pleasures, that we think a final purpose of creation as given; i.e. we do not estimate that absolute worth by well-being or by enjoyment (whether bodily or mental), or in a word, by happiness. For the fact that man, if he exists, takes this for his final design, gives us no concept as to why in general he should exist, and as to what worth he has in himself to make his existence pleasant. He must, therefore, be supposed to be the final purpose of creation, in order to have a rational ground for holding that nature must harmonise with his happiness, if it is considered as an absolute whole according to principles of purposes.—Hence there remains only the faculty of desire; not, however, that which makes man dependent (through sensuous impulses) upon nature, nor that in respect of which the worth of his being depends upon what he receives and enjoys. But the worth which he alone can give to himself, and which consists in what he does, how and according to what principles he acts, and that not as a link in nature’s chain but in the freedom of his faculty of desire—i.e. a good will—is that whereby alone his being can have an absolute worth, and in reference to which the being of the world can have a final purpose.

The commonest judgement of healthy human Reason completely accords with this, that it is only as a moral being that man can be a final purpose of creation; if we but direct men’s attention to the question and incite them to investigate it. What does it avail, one will say, that this man has so much talent, that he is so active therewith, and that he exerts thereby a useful influence over the community, thus having a great worth both in relation to his own happy condition and to the benefit of others, if he does not possess a good will? He is a contemptible Object considered in respect of his inner self; and if the creation is not to be without any final purpose at all, he, who as man belongs to it, must, in a world under moral laws, inasmuch as he is a bad man, forfeit his subjective purpose (happiness). This is the only condition under which his existence can accord with the final purpose.

If now we meet with purposive arrangements in the world and, as Reason inevitably requires, subordinate the purposes that are only conditioned to an unconditioned, supreme, i.e. final, purpose; then we easily see in the first place that we are thus concerned not with a purpose of nature (internal to itself), so far as it exists, but with the purpose of its existence along with all its ordinances, and, consequently, with the ultimate purpose of creation, and specially with the supreme condition under which can be posited a final purpose (i.e. the ground which determines a supreme Understanding to produce the beings of the world).

Since now it is only as a moral being that we recognise man as the purpose of creation, we have in the first place a ground (at least, the chief condition) for regarding the world as a whole connected according to purposes, and as a system of final causes. And, more especially, as regards the reference (necessary for us by the constitution of our Reason) of natural purposes to an intelligent World Cause, we have one principle enabling us to think the nature and properties of this First Cause as supreme ground in the kingdom of purposes, and to determine its concept. This physical Teleology could not do; it could only lead to indeterminate concepts thereof, unserviceable alike in theoretical and in practical use.

From the principle, thus determined, of the causality of the Original Being we must not think Him merely as Intelligence and as legislative for nature, but also as legislating supremely in a moral kingdom of purposes. In reference to the highest good, alone possible under His sovereignty, viz. the existence of rational beings under moral laws, we shall think this Original Being as all-knowing: thus our inmost dispositions (which constitute the proper moral worth of the actions of rational beings of the world) will not be hid from Him. We shall think Him as all-mighty: thus He will be able to make the whole of nature accord with this highest purpose. We shall think Him as all-good, and at the same time as just: because these two properties (which when united constitute Wisdom) are the conditions of the causality of a supreme Cause of the world, as highest good, under moral laws. So also all the other transcendental properties, such as Eternity, Omnipresence, etc. [for goodness and justice are moral properties132], which are presupposed in reference to such a final purpose, must be thought in Him.—In this way moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology, and first establishes a Theology; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology, which is incapable of any definite concept.

But the principle of the reference of the world to a supreme Cause, as Deity, on account of the moral purposive destination of certain beings in it, does not accomplish this by completing the physico-teleological ground of proof and so taking this necessarily as its basis. It is sufficient in itself and directs attention to the purposes of nature and the investigation of that incomprehensible great art lying hidden behind its forms, in order to confirm incidentally by means of natural purposes the Ideas that pure practical Reason furnishes. For the concept of beings of the world under moral laws is a principle (a priori) according to which man must of necessity judge himself. Further, if there is in general a World Cause acting designedly and directed towards a purpose, this moral relation must be just as necessarily the condition of the possibility of a creation, as that in accordance with physical laws (if, that is, this intelligent Cause has also a final purpose). This is regarded a priori by Reason as a necessary fundamental proposition for it in its teleological judging of the existence of things. It now only comes to this, whether we have sufficient ground for Reason (either speculative or practical) to ascribe to the supreme Cause, acting in accordance with purposes, a final purpose. For it may a priori be taken by us as certain that this, by the subjective constitution of our Reason and even of the Reason of other beings as far as we can think it, can be nothing else than man under moral laws: since otherwise the purposes of nature in the physical order could not be known a priori, especially as it can in no way be seen that nature could not exist without such purposes.

Remark

Suppose the case of a man at the moment when his mind is disposed to a moral sensation. If surrounded by the beauties of nature, he is in a state of restful, serene enjoyment of his being, he feels a want, viz. to be grateful for this to some being or other. Or if another time he finds himself in the same state of mind when pressed by duties that he can and will only adequately discharge by a voluntary sacrifice, he again feels in himself a want, viz. to have thus executed a command and obeyed a Supreme Lord. Or, again; if he has in some heedless way transgressed his duty, but without becoming answerable to men, his severe self-reproach will speak to him with the voice of a judge to whom he has to give account. In a word, he needs a moral Intelligence, in order to have a Being for the purpose of his existence, which may be, conformably to this purpose, the cause of himself and of the world. It is vain to assign motives behind these feelings, for they are immediately connected with the purest moral sentiment, because gratitude, obedience, and humiliation (submission to deserved chastisement) are mental dispositions that make for duty; and the mind which is inclined towards a widening of its moral sentiment here only voluntarily conceives an object that is not in the world in order where possible to render its duty before such an one. It is therefore at least possible and grounded too in our moral disposition to represent a pure moral need of the existence of a Being, by which our morality gains strength or even (at least according to our representation) more scope, viz. a new object for its exercise. That is, [there is a need] to assume a morally-legislating Being outside the world, without any reference to theoretical proofs, still less to self-interest, from pure moral grounds free from all foreign influence (and consequently only subjective), on the mere recommendation of a pure practical Reason legislating by itself alone. And although such a mental disposition might seldom occur or might not last long, but be transient and without permanent effect, or might even pass away without any meditation on the object represented in such shadowy outline, or without care to bring it under clear concepts—there is yet here unmistakably the ground why our moral capacity, as a subjective principle, should not be contented in its contemplation of the world with its purposiveness by means of natural causes, but should ascribe to it a supreme Cause governing nature according to moral principles.—In addition, we feel ourselves constrained by the moral law to strive for a universal highest purpose which yet we, in common with the rest of nature, are incapable of attaining; and it is only so far as we strive for it that we can judge ourselves to be in harmony with the final purpose of an intelligent World Cause (if such there be). Thus is found a pure moral ground of practical Reason for assuming this Cause (since it can be done without contradiction), in order that we may no more regard that effort of Reason as quite idle, and so run the risk of abandoning it from weariness.

With all this, so much only is to be said, that though fear first produces gods (demons), it is Reason by means of its moral principles that can first produce the concept of God (even when, as commonly is the case, one is unskilled in the Teleology of nature, or is very doubtful on account of the difficulty of adjusting by a sufficiently established principle its mutually contradictory phenomena). Also, the inner moral purposive destination of man’s being supplies that in which natural knowledge is deficient, by directing us to think, for the final purpose of the being of all things (for which no other principle than an ethical one is satisfactory to Reason), the supreme Cause [as endowed] with properties, whereby it is able to subject the whole of nature to that single design (for which nature is merely the instrument),—i.e. to think it as a Deity.

§ 87. Of the moral proof of the Being of God

There is a physical Teleology, which gives sufficient ground of proof to our theoretical reflective Judgement to assume the being of an intelligent World-Cause. But we find also in ourselves and still more in the concept of a rational being in general endowed with freedom (of his causality) a moral Teleology. However, as the purposive reference, together with its law, is determined a priori in ourselves and therefore can be cognised as necessary, this internal conformity to law requires no intelligent cause external to us; any more than we need look to a highest Understanding as the source of the purposiveness (for every possible exercise of art) that we find in the geometrical properties of figures. But this moral Teleology concerns us as beings of the world, and therefore as beings bound up with other things in the world; upon which latter, whether as purposes or as objects in respect of which we ourselves are final purpose, the same moral laws require us to pass judgement. This moral Teleology, then, has to do with the reference of our own causality to purposes and even to a final purpose that we must aim at in the world, as well as with the reciprocal reference of the world to that moral purpose, and the external possibility of its accomplishment (to which no physical Teleology can lead us). Hence the question necessarily arises, whether it compels our rational judgement to go beyond the world and seek an intelligent supreme principle for that reference of nature to the moral in us; in order to represent nature as purposive even in reference to our inner moral legislation and its possible accomplishment. There is therefore certainly a moral Teleology, which is connected on the one hand with the nomothetic of freedom and on the other with that of nature; just as necessarily as civil legislation is connected with the question where the executive authority is to be sought, and in general in every case [with the question] wherein Reason is to furnish a principle of the actuality of a certain regular order of things only possible according to Ideas.— We shall first set forth the progress of Reason from that moral Teleology and its reference to physical, to Theology; and then make some observations upon the possibility and the validity of this way of reasoning.

If we assume the being of certain things (or even only certain forms of things) to be contingent and so to be possible only through something else which is their cause, we may seek for the unconditioned ground of this causality of the supreme (and so of the conditioned) either in the physical or the teleological order (either according to the nexus effectivus or the nexus finalis). That is, we may either ask, what is the supreme productive cause of these things; or what is their supreme (absolutely unconditioned) purpose, i.e. the final purpose of that cause in its production of this or all its products generally? In the second case it is plainly presupposed that this cause is capable of representing purposes to itself, and consequently is an intelligent Being; at least it must be thought as acting in accordance with the laws of such a being.

If we follow the latter order, it is a Fundamental Proposition to which even the commonest human Reason is compelled to give immediate assent, that if there is to be in general a final purpose furnished a priori by Reason, this can be no other than man (every rational being of the world) under moral laws.133 For (and so every one judges) if the world consisted of mere lifeless, or even in part of living but irrational, beings, its existence would have no worth because in it there would be no being who would have the least concept of what worth is. Again, if there were intelligent beings, whose Reason were only able to place the worth of the existence of things in the relation of nature to themselves (their well-being), but not to furnish of itself an original worth (in freedom), then there would certainly be (relative) purposes in the world, but no (absolute) final purpose, because the existence of such rational beings would be always purposeless. But the moral laws have this peculiar characteristic that they prescribe to Reason something as a purpose without any condition, and consequently exactly as the concept of a final purpose requires. The existence of a Reason that can be for itself the supreme law in the purposive reference, in other words the existence of rational beings under moral laws, can therefore alone be thought as the final purpose of the being of a world. If on the contrary this be not so, there would be either no purpose at all in the cause of its being, or there would be purposes, but no final purpose.

The moral law as the formal rational condition of the use of our freedom obliges us by itself alone, without depending on any purpose as material condition; but it nevertheless determines for us, and indeed a priori, a final purpose towards which it obliges us to strive; and this purpose is the highest good in the world possible through freedom.

The subjective condition under which man (and, according to all our concepts, every rational finite being) can set a final purpose before himself under the above law is happiness. Consequently, the highest physical good possible in the world, to be furthered as a final purpose as far as in us lies, is happiness, under the objective condition of the harmony of man with the law of morality as worthiness to be happy.

But it is impossible for us in accordance with all our rational faculties to represent these two requirements of the final purpose proposed to us by the moral law, as connected by merely natural causes, and yet as conformable to the Idea of that final purpose. Hence the concept of the practical necessity of such a purpose through the application of our powers does not harmonise with the theoretical concept of the physical possibility of working it out, if we connect with our freedom no other causality (as a means) than that of nature.

Consequently, we must assume a moral World-Cause (an Author of the world), in order to set before ourselves a final purpose consistently with the moral law; and in so far as the latter is necessary, so far (i.e. in the same degree and on the same ground) the former also must be necessarily assumed; i.e. we must admit that there is a God.134

This proof, to which we can easily give the form of logical precision, does not say: it is as necessary to assume the Being of God as to recognise the validity of the moral law; and consequently he who cannot convince himself of the first, can judge himself free from the obligations of the second. No! there must in such case only be given up the aiming at the final purpose in the world, to be brought about by the pursuit of the second (viz. a happiness of rational beings in harmony with the pursuit of moral laws, regarded as the highest good). Every rational being would yet have to cognise himself as straitly bound by the precepts of morality, for its laws are formal and command unconditionally without respect to purposes (as the matter of volition). But the one requisite of the final purpose, as practical Reason prescribes it to beings of the world, is an irresistible purpose imposed on them by their nature (as finite beings), which Reason wishes to know as subject only to the moral law as inviolable condition, or even as universally set up in accordance with it. Thus Reason takes for final purpose the furthering of happiness in harmony with morality. To further this so far as is in our power (i.e. in respect of happiness) is commanded us by the moral law; be the issue of this endeavour what it may. The fulfilling of duty consists in the form of the earnest will, not in the intermediate causes of success.

Suppose then that partly through the weakness of all the speculative arguments so highly extolled, and partly through many irregularities in nature and the world of sense which come before him, a man is persuaded of the proposition, There is no God; he would nevertheless be contemptible in his own eyes if on that account he were to imagine the laws of duty as empty, invalid and inobligatory, and wished to resolve to transgress them boldly. Such an one, even if he could be convinced in the sequel of that which he had doubted at the first, would always be contemptible while having such a disposition, although he should fulfil his duty as regards its [external] effect as punctiliously as could be desired, for [he would be acting] from fear or from the aim at recompense, without the sentiment of reverence for duty. If, conversely, as a believer [in God] he performs his duty according to his conscience, uprightly and disinterestedly, and nevertheless believes that he is free from all moral obligation so soon as he is convinced that there is no God, this could accord but badly with an inner moral disposition.

We may then suppose the case of a righteous man [e.g. Spinoza],135 who holds himself firmly persuaded that there is no God, and also (because in respect of the Object of morality a similar consequence results) no future life; how is he to judge of his own inner purposive destination, by means of the moral law, which he reveres in practice? He desires no advantage to himself from following it, either in this or another world; he wishes, rather, disinterestedly to establish the good to which that holy law directs all his powers. But his effort is bounded; and from nature, although he may expect here and there a contingent accordance, he can never expect a regular harmony agreeing according to constant rules (such as his maxims are and must be, internally), with the purpose that he yet feels himself obliged and impelled to accomplish. Deceit, violence, and envy will always surround him, although he himself be honest, peaceable, and kindly; and the righteous men with whom he meets will, notwithstanding all their worthiness of happiness, be yet subjected by nature which regards not this, to all the evils of want, disease, and untimely death, just like the beasts of the earth. So it will be until one wide grave engulfs them together (honest or not, it makes no difference), and throws them back—who were able to believe themselves the final purpose of creation—into the abyss of the purposeless chaos of matter from which they were drawn.— The purpose, then, which this well-intentioned person had and ought to have before him in his pursuit of moral laws, he must certainly give up as impossible. Or else, if he wishes to remain dependent upon the call of his moral internal destination, and not to weaken the respect with which the moral law immediately inspires him, by assuming the nothingness of the single, ideal, final purpose adequate to its high demand (which cannot be brought about without a violation of moral sentiment), he must, as he well can—since there is at least no contradiction from a practical point of view in forming a concept of the possibility of a morally prescribed final purpose—assume the being of a moral author of the world, that is, a God.

§ 88. Limitation of the validity of the moral proof

Pure Reason, as a practical faculty, i.e. as the faculty of determining the free use of our causality by Ideas (pure rational concepts), not only comprises in the moral law a regulative principle of our actions, but supplies us at the same time with a subjective constitutive principle in the concept of an Object which Reason alone can think, and which is to be actualised by our actions in the world according to that law. The Idea of a final purpose in the employment of freedom according to moral laws has therefore subjective practical reality. We are a priori determined by Reason to promote with all our powers the summum bonum [Weltbeste] which consists in the combination of the greatest welfare of rational beings with the highest condition of the good in itself, i.e. in universal happiness conjoined with morality most accordant to law. In this final purpose the possibility of one part, happiness, is empirically conditioned, i.e. dependent on the constitution of nature (which may or may not agree with this purpose) and is in a theoretical aspect problematical; whilst the other part, morality, in respect of which we are free from the effects of nature, stands fast a priori as to its possibility, and is dogmatically certain. It is then requisite for the objective theoretical reality of the concept of the final purpose of rational beings, that we should not only have a priori presupposed a final purpose for ourselves, but also that the creation, i.e. the world itself, should have as regards its existence a final purpose, which if it could be proved a priori would add objectivity to the subjective reality of the final purpose [of rational beings]. For if the creation has on the whole a final purpose, we cannot think it otherwise than as harmonising with the moral purpose (which alone makes the concept of a purpose possible). Now we find without doubt purposes in the world, and physical Teleology exhibits them in such abundance, that if we judge in accordance with Reason, we have ground for assuming as a principle in the investigation of nature that nothing in nature is without a purpose; but the final purpose of nature we seek there in vain. This can and must therefore, as its Idea only lies in Reason, be sought as regards its objective possibility only in rational beings. And the practical Reason of these latter not only supplies this final purpose; it also determines this concept in respect of the conditions under which alone a final purpose of creation can be thought by us.

The question is now, whether the objective reality of the concept of a final purpose of creation cannot be exhibited adequately to the theoretical requirements of pure Reason—if not apodictically for the determinant Judgement yet adequately for the maxims of the theoretical reflective Judgement? This is the least one could expect from theoretical philosophy, which undertakes to combine the moral purpose with natural purposes by means of the Idea of one single purpose; but yet this little is far more than it can accomplish.

According to the principle of the theoretical reflective Judgement we should say: if we have ground for assuming for the purposive products of nature a supreme Cause of nature—whose causality in respect of the actuality of creation is of a different kind from that required for the mechanism of nature, i.e. must be thought as the causality of an Understanding—we have also sufficient ground for thinking in this original Being not merely the purposes everywhere in nature but also a final purpose. This is not indeed a final purpose by which we can explain the presence of such a Being, but one of which we may at least convince ourselves (as was the case in physical Teleology) that we can make the possibility of such a world conceivable, not merely according to purposes, but only through the fact that we ascribe to its existence a final purpose.

But a final purpose is merely a concept of our practical Reason, and can be inferred from no data of experience for the theoretical judging of nature, nor can it be applied to the cognition of nature. No use of this concept is possible except its use for practical Reason according to moral laws; and the final purpose of creation is that constitution of the world which harmonises with that which alone we can put forward definitely according to laws, viz. the final purpose of our pure practical Reason, in so far as it is to be practical.— Now we have in the moral law, which enjoins on us in a practical point of view the application of our powers to the accomplishment of this final purpose, a ground for assuming its possibility and practicability, and consequently too (because without the concurrence of nature with a condition not in our power, its accomplishment would be impossible) a nature of things harmonious with it. Hence we have a moral ground for thinking in a world also a final purpose of creation.

We have not yet advanced from moral Teleology to a Theology, i.e. to the being of a moral Author of the world, but only to a final purpose of creation which is determined in this way. But in order to account for this creation, i.e. the existence of things, in accordance with a final purpose, we must assume not only first an intelligent Being (for the possibility of things of nature which we are compelled to judge of as purposes), but also a moral Being, as author of the world, i.e. a God. This second conclusion is of such a character that we see it holds merely for the Judgement according to concepts of practical Reason, and as such for the reflective and not the determinant Judgement. It is true that in us morally practical Reason is essentially different in its principles from technically practical Reason. But we cannot assume that it must be so likewise in the supreme World-Cause, regarded as Intelligence, and that a peculiar mode of its causality is requisite for the final purpose, different from that which is requisite merely for purposes of nature. We cannot therefore assume that in our final purpose we have not merely a moral ground for admitting a final purpose of creation (as an effect), but also for admitting a moral Being as the original ground of creation. But we may well say, that, according to the constitution of our rational faculty, we cannot comprehend the possibility of such a purposiveness in respect of the moral law, and its Object, as there is in this final purpose, apart from an Author and Governor of the world, who is at the same time its moral Lawgiver.

The actuality of a highest morally-legislating Author is therefore sufficiently established merely for the practical use of our Reason, without determining anything theoretically as regards its being. For Reason requires, in respect of the possibility of its purpose, which is given to us independently by its own legislation, an Idea through which the inability to follow up this purpose, according to the mere natural concepts of the world, is removed (sufficiently for the reflective Judgement). Thus this Idea gains practical reality, although all means of creating such for it in a theoretical point of view, for the explanation of nature and determination of the supreme Cause, are entirely wanting for speculative cognition. For the theoretical reflective Judgement physical Teleology sufficiently proves from the purposes of nature an intelligent World-Cause; for the practical Judgement moral Teleology establishes it by the concept of a final purpose, which it is forced to ascribe to creation in a practical point of view. The objective reality of the Idea of God, as moral Author of the world, cannot, it is true, be established by physical purposes alone. But nevertheless, if the cognition of these purposes is combined with that of the moral purpose, they are, by virtue of the maxim of pure Reason which bids us seek unity of principles so far as is possible, of great importance for the practical reality of that Idea, by bringing in the reality which it has for the Judgement in a theoretical point of view.

To prevent a misunderstanding which may easily arise, it is in the highest degree needful to remark that, in the first place, we can think these properties of the highest Being only according to analogy. How indeed could we explore the nature of that, to which experience can show us nothing similar? Secondly, in this way we only think the supreme Being; we cannot thereby cognise Him and ascribe anything theoretically to Him. It would be needful for the determinant Judgement in the speculative aspect of our Reason, to consider what the supreme World-Cause is in Himself. But here we are only concerned with the question what concept we can form of Him, according to the constitution of our cognitive faculties; and whether we have to assume His existence in order merely to furnish practical reality to a purpose, which pure Reason without any such presupposition enjoins upon us a priori to bring about with all our powers, i.e. in order to be able to think as possible a designed effect. Although that concept may be transcendent for the speculative Reason, and the properties which we ascribe to the Being thereby thought may, objectively used, conceal an anthropomorphism in themselves; yet the design of its use is not to determine the nature of that Being which is unattainable by us, but to determine ourselves and our will accordingly. We may call a cause after the concept which we have of its effect (though only in reference to this relation), without thereby meaning to determine internally its inner constitution, by means of the properties which can be made known to us solely by similar causes and must be given in experience. For example, amongst other properties we ascribe to the soul a vis locomotiva because bodily movements actually arise whose cause lies in the representation of them; without therefore meaning to ascribe to it the only mode [of action] that we know in moving forces (viz. by attraction, pressure, impulse, and consequently motion, which always presuppose an extended being). Just so we must assume something, which contains the ground of the possibility and practical reality, i.e. the practicability, of a necessary moral final purpose; but we can think of this, in accordance with the character of the effect expected of it, as a wise Being governing the world according to moral laws, and, conformably to the constitution of our cognitive faculties, as a cause of things distinct from nature, only in order to express the relation of this Being (which transcends all our cognitive faculties) to the Objects of our practical Reason. We do not pretend thus to ascribe to it theoretically the only causality of this kind known to us, viz. an Understanding and a Will: we do not even pretend to distinguish objectively the causality thought in this Being, as regards what is for us final purpose, from the causality thought in it as regards nature (and its purposive determinations in general). We can only assume this distinction as subjectively necessary by the constitution of our cognitive faculties, and as valid for the reflective, not for the objectively determinant Judgement. But if we come to practice, then such a regulative principle (of prudence or wisdom) [commanding us] to act conformably to that as purpose, which by the constitution of our cognitive faculties can only be thought as possible in a certain way, is at the same constitutive, i.e. practically determinant. Nevertheless, as a principle for judging of the objective possibility of things, it is no way theoretically determinant (i.e. it does not say that the only kind of possibility which belongs to the Object is that which belongs to our thinking faculty), but is a mere regulative principle for the reflective Judgement.

Remark

This moral proof is not one newly discovered, although perhaps its basis is newly set forth; since it has lain in man’s rational faculty from its earliest germ, and is only continually developed with its advancing cultivation. So soon as men begin to reflect upon right and wrong—at a time when, quite indifferent as to the purposiveness of nature, they avail themselves of it without thinking anything more of it than that it is the accustomed course of nature—this judgement is inevitable, viz. that the issue cannot be the same, whether a man has behaved candidly or falsely, fairly or violently, even though up to his life’s end, as far as can be seen, he has met with no happiness for his virtues, no punishment for his vices. It is as if they perceived a voice within [saying] that the issue must be different. And so there must lie hidden in them a representation, however obscure, of something after which they feel themselves bound to strive; with which such a result would not agree,—with which, if they looked upon the course of the world as the only order of things, they could not harmonise that inner purposive determination of their minds. Now they might represent in various rude fashions the way in which such an irregularity could be adjusted (an irregularity which must be far more revolting to the human mind than the blind chance that we are sometimes willing to use as a principle for judging of nature). But they could never think any other principle of the possibility of the unification of nature with its inner ethical laws, than a supreme Cause governing the world according to moral laws; because a final purpose in them proposed as duty, and a nature without any final purpose beyond them in which that purpose might be actualised, would involve a contradiction. As to the [inner]136 constitution of that World-Cause they could contrive much nonsense. But that moral relation in the government of the world would remain always the same, which by the uncultivated Reason, considered as practical, is universally comprehensible, but with which the speculative Reason can make far from the like advance.—And in all probability attention would be directed first by this moral interest to the beauty and the purposes in nature, which would serve excellently to strengthen this Idea though they could not be the foundation of it. Still less could that moral interest be dispensed with, because it is only in reference to the final purpose that the investigation of the purposes of nature acquires that immediate interest which displays itself in such a great degree in the admiration of them without any reference to the advantage to be derived from them.

§ 89. Of the use of the moral argument

The limitation of Reason in respect of all our Ideas of the supersensible to the conditions of its practical employment has, as far as the Idea of God is concerned, undeniable uses. For it prevents Theology from rising into Theosophy (into transcendent concepts which confound Reason), or from sinking into Demonology (an anthropomorphic way of representing the highest Being). And it also prevents Religion from turning into Theurgy (a fanatical belief that we can have a feeling of other supersensible beings and can reciprocally influence them), or into Idolatry (a superstitious belief that we can please the Supreme Being by other means than by a moral sentiment).137

For if we permit the vanity or the presumption of sophistry to determine the least thing theoretically (in a way that extends our knowledge) in respect of what lies beyond the world of sense, or if we allow any pretence to be made of insight into the being and constitution of the nature of God, of His Understanding and Will, of the laws of both and of His properties which thus affect the world, I should like to know where and at what point we will bound these assumptions of Reason. For wherever such insight can be derived, there may yet more be expected (if we only strain our reflection, as we have a mind to do). Bounds must then be put to such claims according to a certain principle, and not merely because we find that all attempts of the sort have hitherto failed, for that proves nothing against the possibility of a better result. But here no principle is possible, except either to assume that in respect of the supersensible absolutely nothing can be theoretically determined (except mere negations); or else that our Reason contains in itself a yet unused mine of cognitions, reaching no one knows how far, stored up for ourselves and our posterity.—But as concerns Religion, i.e. morals in reference to God as legislator, if the theoretical cognition of Him is to come first, morals must be adjusted in accordance with Theology; and not only is an external arbitrary legislation of a Supreme Being introduced in place of an internal necessary legislation of Reason, but also whatever is defective in our insight into the nature of this Being must extend to ethical precepts, and thus make Religion immoral and perverted.

As regards the hope of a future life, if instead of the final purpose we have to accomplish in conformity with the precept of the moral law, we ask of our theoretical faculty of cognition a clue for the judgement of Reason upon our destination (which clue is only considered as necessary or worthy of acceptance in a practical reference), then in this aspect Psychology, like Theology, gives no more than a negative concept of our thinking being. That is, none of its actions or of the phenomena of the internal sense can be explained materialistically; and hence of its separate nature and of the continuance or non-continuance of its personality after death absolutely no ampliative determinant judgement is possible on speculative grounds by means of our whole theoretical cognitive faculty. Here then everything is handed over to the teleological judging of our existence in a practically necessary aspect, and to the assumption of our continuance as a condition requisite for the final purpose absolutely furnished by Reason. And so this advantage (which indeed at first glance seems to be a loss) is apparent; that, as Theology for us can never be Theosophy, or rational Psychology become Pneumatology—an ampliative science—so on the other hand this latter is assured of never falling into Materialism. Psychology, rather, is a mere anthropology of the internal sense, i.e. is the knowledge of our thinking self in life; and, as theoretical cognition, remains merely empirical. On the other hand, rational Psychology, as far as it is concerned with questions as to our eternal existence, is not a theoretical science at all, but rests on a single conclusion of moral Teleology; as also its whole use is necessary merely on account of the latter, i.e. on account of our practical destination.

§ 90. Of the kind of belief in a teleological proof of the Being of God

The first requisite for every proof, whether it be derived from the immediate empirical presentation (as in the proof from observation of the object or from experiment) of that which is to be proved, or by Reason a priori from principles, is this. It should not persuade, but convince,138 or at least should tend to conviction. I.e. the ground of proof or the conclusion should not be merely a subjective (aesthetical) determining ground of assent (mere illusion), but objectively valid and a logical ground of cognition; for otherwise the Understanding is ensnared, but not convinced. Such an illusory proof is that which, perhaps with good intent but yet with wilful concealment of its weaknesses, is adduced in Natural Theology. In this we bring in the great number of indications of the origin of natural things according to the principle of purposes, and take advantage of the merely subjective basis of human Reason, viz. its special propensity to think only one principle instead of several, whenever this can be done without contradiction; and, when in this principle only one or more requisites for determining a concept are furnished, to add in our thought these additional [features] so as to complete the concept of the thing by arbitrarily supplementing it. For, in truth, when we meet with so many products in nature which are to us marks of an intelligent cause, why should we not think One cause rather than many; and in this One, not merely great intelligence, power, etc., but rather Omniscience, and Omnipotence—in a word, think it as a Cause that contains the sufficient ground of such properties in all possible things? Further, why should we not ascribe to this unique, all-powerful, original Being not only intelligence for natural laws and products, but also, as to a moral Cause of the world, supreme, ethical, practical Reason? For by this completion of the concept a sufficient principle is furnished both for insight into nature and for moral wisdom; and no objection grounded in any way can be made against the possibility of such an Idea. If now at the same time the moral motives of the mind are aroused, and a lively interest in the latter is added by the force of eloquence (of which they are indeed very worthy), then there arises therefrom a persuasion of the objective adequacy of the proof; and also (in most cases of its use) a wholesome illusion which quite dispenses with all examination of its logical strictness, and even on the contrary regards this with abhorrence and dislike as if an impious doubt lay at its basis.—Now against this there is indeed nothing to say, so long as we only have regard to its popular usefulness. But then the division of the proof into the two dissimilar parts involved in the argument—belonging to physical and moral Teleology respectively—cannot and must not be prevented. For the blending of these makes it impossible to discern where the proper force of the proof lies, and in what part and how it must be elaborated in order that its validity may be able to stand the strictest examination (even if we should be compelled to admit in one part the weakness of our rational insight). Thus it is the duty of the philosopher (supposing even that he counts as nothing the claims of sincerity) to expose the above illusion, however wholesome it is, which such a confusion can produce; and to distinguish what merely belongs to persuasion from that which leads to conviction (for these are determinations of assent which differ not merely in degree but in kind), in order to present plainly the state of the mind in this proof in its whole clearness, and to be able to subject it frankly to the closest examination.

But a proof which is intended to convince, can again be of two kinds; either deciding what the object is in itself, or what it is for us (for men in general) according to our necessary rational principles of judgement (proof κατ’ ἀλήθειαν or κατ’ ἄνθρωπον, the last word being taken in its universal signification of man in general). In the first case it is based on adequate principles for the determinant Judgement, in the second for the reflective Judgement. In the latter case it can never, when resting on merely theoretical principles, tend to conviction; but if a practical principle of Reason (which is therefore universally and necessarily valid) lies at its basis, it may certainly lay claim to conviction adequate in a pure practical point of view, i.e. to moral conviction. But a proof tends to conviction, though without convincing, if it is [merely]139 brought on the way thereto; i.e. if it contains in itself only objective grounds, which although not attaining to certainty are yet of such a kind that they do not serve merely for persuasion as subjective grounds of the judgement.140

All theoretical grounds of proof resolve themselves either into: (1) Proofs by logically strict Syllogisms of Reason; or where this is not the case, (2) Conclusions according to analogy; or where this also has no place, (3) Probable opinion; or finally, which has the least weight, (4) Assumption of a merely possible ground of explanation, i.e. Hypothesis.—Now I say that all grounds of proof in general, which aim at theoretical conviction, can bring about no belief of this kind from the highest to the lowest degree, if there is to be proved the proposition of the existence of an original Being, as a God, in the signification adequate to the whole content of this concept; viz. a moral Author of the world, by whom the final purpose of creation is at the same time supplied.

(1.) As to the logically accurate proof proceeding from universal to particular, we have sufficiently established in the Critique the following: Since no intuition possible for us corresponds to the concept of a Being that is to be sought beyond nature—whose concept therefore, so far as it is to be theoretically determined by synthetical predicates, remains always problematical for us—there is absolutely no cognition of it to be had (by which the extent of our theoretical knowledge is in the least enlarged). The particular concept of a supersensible Being cannot be subsumed under the universal principles of the nature of things, in order to conclude from them to it, because those principles are valid simply for nature, as an object of sense.

(2.) We can indeed think one of two dissimilar things, even in the very point of their dissimilarity, in accordance with the analogy141 of the other; but we cannot, from that wherein they are dissimilar, conclude from the one to the other by analogy, i.e. transfer from the one to the other this sign of specific distinction. Thus I can, according to the analogy of the law of the equality of action and reaction in the mutual attraction and repulsion of bodies, also conceive of the association of the members of a commonwealth according to rules of right; but I cannot transfer to it those specific determinations (material attraction or repulsion), and ascribe them to the citizens in order to constitute a system called a state.—Just so we can indeed conceive of the causality of the original Being in respect of the things of the world, as natural purposes, according to the analogy of an Understanding, as ground of the forms of certain products which we call works of art (for this only takes place on behalf of the theoretical or practical use that we have to make by our cognitive faculty of this concept in respect of the natural things in the world according to a certain principle). But we can in no way conclude according to analogy, because in the case of beings of the world Understanding must be ascribed to the cause of an effect which is judged artificial, that in respect of nature the same causality which we perceive in men attaches also to the Being which is quite distinct from nature. For this concerns the very point of dissimilarity which is thought between a cause sensibly conditioned in respect of its effects and the supersensible original Being itself in our concept of it, and which therefore cannot be transferred from one to the other.— In the very fact that I must conceive the divine causality only according to the analogy of an Understanding (which faculty we know in no other being than in sensibly-conditioned man) lies the prohibition to ascribe to it this Understanding in its peculiar signification.142

(3.) Opinion finds in a priori judgements no place whatever, for by them we either cognise something as quite certain or else cognise nothing at all. But if the given grounds of proof from which we start (as here from the purposes in the world) are empirical, then we cannot even with their aid form any opinion as to anything beyond the world of sense, nor can we concede to such venturesome judgements the smallest claim to probability. For probability is part of a certainty possible in a certain series of grounds (its grounds compare with the sufficient ground as parts with a whole), the insufficient ground of which must be susceptible of completion. But since, as determining grounds of one and the same judgement, they must be of the same kind, for otherwise they would not together constitute a whole (such as certainty is), one part of them cannot lie within the bounds of possible experience and another outside all possible experience. Consequently, since merely empirical grounds of proof lead to nothing supersensible, and since what is lacking in the series of them cannot in any way be completed, we do not approach in the least nearer in our attempt to attain by their means to the supersensible and to a cognition thereof. Thus in any judgement about the latter by means of arguments derived from experience, probability has no place.

(4.) If an hypothesis is to serve for the explanation of the possibility of a given phenomenon, at least its possibility must be completely certain.143 It is sufficient that in an hypothesis I disclaim any cognition of actuality (which is claimed in an opinion given out as probable); more than this I cannot give up. The possibility of that which I place at the basis of my explanation, must at least be exposed to no doubt; otherwise there would be no end of empty chimeras. But to assume the possibility of a supersensible Being determined according to certain concepts would be a completely groundless supposition. For here none of the conditions requisite for cognition, as regards that in it which rests upon intuition, is given, and so the sole criterion of possibility remaining is the mere principle of Contradiction (which can only prove the possibility of the thought, not of the object thought).

The result then is this. For the existence [Dasein] of the original Being, as a Godhead, or of the soul as an immortal spirit, absolutely no proof in a theoretical point of view is possible for the human Reason, which can bring about even the least degree of belief. The ground of this is quite easy to comprehend. For determining our Ideas of the supersensible we have no material whatever, and we must derive this latter from things in the world of sense, which is absolutely inadequate for such an Object. Thus, in the absence of all determination of it, nothing remains but the concept of a non-sensible something which contains the ultimate ground of the world of sense, but which does not furnish any knowledge (any amplification of the concept) of its inner constitution.

§ 91. Of the kind of belief produced by a practical faith

If we look merely to the way in which anything can be for us (according to the subjective constitution of our representative powers) an Object of knowledge (res cognoscibilis), then our concepts will not cohere with Objects, but merely with our cognitive faculties and the use which they can make of a given representation (in a theoretical or practical point of view). Thus the question whether anything is or is not a cognisable being is not a question concerning the possibility of things but of our knowledge of them.

Cognisable things are of three kinds: things of opinion (opinabile); things of fact (scibile); and things of faith (mere credibile).

(1.) Objects of mere rational Ideas, which for theoretical knowledge cannot be presented in any possible experience, are so far not cognisable things, and consequently in respect of them we can form no opinion; for to form an opinion a priori is absurd in itself and the straight road to mere chimeras. Either then our proposition is certain a priori or it contains nothing for belief. Therefore things of opinion are always Objects of an empirical cognition at least possible in itself (objects of the world of sense); but, which, on account merely of the [low] degree of this faculty that we possess, is for us impossible. Thus the ether of the new physicists,144 an elastic fluid pervading all other matter (mingled intimately with it) is a mere thing of opinion, yet is such that, if our external senses were sharpened to the highest degree, it could be perceived; though it can never be presented in any observation or experiment. To assume [the existence of] rational inhabitants of other planets is a thing of opinion; for if we could come closer to them, which is in itself possible, we should decide by experience whether they did or did not exist; but as we shall never come so near, it remains in the region of opinion. But to hold the opinion that there are in the material universe pure thinking spirits without bodies (viz. if we dismiss as unworthy of our notice certain phenomena which have been published as actual145) is to be called poetic fiction. This is no thing of opinion, but a mere Idea which remains over, when we remove from a thinking being everything material, and only leave thought to it. Whether then the latter (which we know only in man, that is, in combination with a body) does survive, we cannot decide. Such a thing is a sophistical being (ens rationis ratiocinantis), not a rational being (ens rationis ratiocinatae)146; of which latter it is possible to show conclusively, the objective reality of its concept; at least for the practical use of Reason, because this which has its peculiar and apodictically certain principles a priori, demands (postulates) it.

(2.) Objects for concepts, whose objective reality can be proved (whether through pure Reason or through experience, and, in the first case, from its theoretical or practical data, in all cases by means of a corresponding intuition) are things of fact (res facti).147 Of this kind are the mathematical properties of magnitudes (in geometry), because they are susceptible of a presentation a priori for the theoretical use of Reason. Further, things or their characteristics, which can be exhibited in experience (either our own or that of others through the medium of testimony) are likewise things of fact.—And, what is very remarkable, there is one rational Idea (susceptible in itself of no presentation in intuition, and consequently, of no theoretical proof of its possibility) which also comes under things of fact. This is the Idea of freedom, whose reality, regarded as that of a particular kind of causality (of which the concept, theoretically considered, would be transcendent), may be exhibited by means of practical laws of pure Reason, and conformably to this, in actual actions, and, consequently, in experience.—This is the only one of all the Ideas of pure Reason, whose object is a thing of fact, and to be reckoned under the scibilia.

(3.) Objects, which in reference to the use of pure practical Reason that is in conformity with duty must be thought a priori (whether as consequences or as grounds), but which are transcendent for its theoretical use, are mere things of faith. Of this kind is the highest good in the world, to be brought about by freedom.148 The concept of this cannot be established as regards its objective reality in any experience possible for us and thus adequately for the theoretical use of Reason; but its use is commanded by practical pure Reason [in reference to the best possible working out of that purpose],149 and it consequently must be assumed possible. This commanded effect, together with the only conditions of its possibility thinkable by us, viz. the Being of God and the immortality of the soul, are things of faith (res fidei), and of all objects are the only ones which can be so called.150 For though what we learn by testimony from the experience of others must be believed by us, yet it is not therefore a thing of faith; for it was the proper experience of some one witness and so a thing of fact, or is presupposed as such. Again it must be possible by this path (that of historical faith) to arrive at knowledge; and the Objects of history and geography, like everything in general which it is at least possible to know by the constitution of our cognitive faculties, belong not to things of faith but to things of fact. It is only objects of pure Reason which can be things of faith at all, though not as objects of the mere pure speculative Reason: for then they could not be reckoned with certainty among things, i.e. Objects of that cognition which is possible for us. They are Ideas, i.e. concepts of the objective reality of which we cannot theoretically be certain. On the other hand, the highest final purpose to be worked out by us, by which alone we can become worthy of being ourselves the final purpose of creation, is an Idea which has in a practical reference objective reality for us, and is also a thing. But because we cannot furnish such reality to this concept in a theoretical point of view, it is a mere thing of faith of the pure Reason, along with God and Immortality, as the conditions under which alone we, in accordance with the constitution of our (human) Reason, can conceive the possibility of that effect of the use of our freedom in conformity with law. But belief in things of faith is a belief in a pure practical point of view, i.e. a moral faith, which proves nothing for theoretical pure rational cognition, but only for that which is practical and directed to the fulfilment of its duties; it in no way extends speculation or the practical rules of prudence in accordance with the principle of self-love. If the supreme principle of all moral laws is a postulate, so is also the possibility of its highest Object; and consequently, too, the condition under which we can think this possibility is postulated along with it and by it. Thus the cognition of the latter is neither knowledge nor opinion of the being and character of these conditions, regarded as theoretical cognition; but is a mere assumption in a reference which is practical and commanded for the moral use of our Reason.

If we were able also plausibly to base upon the purposes of nature, which physical Teleology presents to us in such rich abundance, a determinate concept of an intelligent World-Cause, then the existence [Dasein] of this Being would not be a thing of faith. For since this would not be assumed on behalf of the performance of my duty, but only in reference to the explanation of nature, it would be merely the opinion and hypothesis most conformable to our Reason. Now such Teleology leads in no way to a determinate concept of God; on the contrary, this can only be found in the concept of a moral Author of the World, because this alone furnishes the final purpose to which we can only reckon ourselves [as attached] if we behave conformably to what the moral law prescribes as final purpose and consequently obliges us [to do]. Hence it is only by its reference to the Object of our duty, as the condition of the possibility of attaining the final purpose of the same, that the concept of God attains the privilege of counting as a thing of faith, in our belief; but on the other hand, this same concept cannot make its Object valid as a thing of fact. For, although the necessity of duty is very plain for practical Reason, yet the attainment of its final purpose, so far as it is not altogether in our own power, is only assumed on behalf of the practical use of Reason, and therefore is not so practically necessary as duty itself.151

Faith (as habitus, not as actus) is the moral attitude of Reason as to belief in that which is unattainable by theoretical cognition. It is therefore the constant principle of the mind, to assume as true, on account of the obligation in reference to it, that which it is necessary to presuppose as condition of the possibility of the highest moral final purpose152; although its possibility or impossibility be alike impossible for us to see into. Faith (absolutely so called) is trust in the attainment of a design, the promotion of which is a duty, but the possibility of the fulfilment of which (and consequently also that of the only conditions of it thinkable by us) is not to be comprehended by us. Faith, then, that refers to particular objects, which are not objects of possible knowledge or opinion (in which latter case it ought to be called, especially in historical matters, credulity and not faith), is quite moral. It is a free belief, not in that for which dogmatical proofs for the theoretically determinant Judgement are to be found, or in that to which we hold ourselves bound, but in that which we assume on behalf of a design in accordance with laws of freedom. This, however, is not, like opinion, without any adequate ground; but, is grounded as in Reason (although only in respect of its practical employment), and adequately for its design. For without this, the moral attitude of thought in its repudiation of the claim of the theoretical Reason for proofs (of the possibility of the Objects of morality) has no permanence; but wavers between practical commands and theoretical doubts. To be incredulous means to cling to maxims, and not to believe testimony in general; but he is unbelieving, who denies all validity to rational Ideas, because there is wanting a theoretical ground of their reality.154 He judges therefore dogmatically. A dogmatical unbelief cannot subsist together with a moral maxim dominant in the mental attitude (for Reason cannot command one to follow a purpose, which is cognised as nothing more than a chimera); but a doubtful faith can. To this the absence of conviction by grounds of speculative Reason is only a hindrance, the influence of which upon conduct a critical insight into the limits of this faculty can remove, while it substitutes by way of compensation a paramount practical belief.

* * * * *

If, in place of certain mistaken attempts, we wish to introduce a different principle into philosophy and to promote its influence, it makes us highly contented to see how and why those attempts must have disappointed us.

God, freedom, and immortality, are the problems at the solution of which all the equipments of Metaphysic aim, as their ultimate and unique purpose. Now it was believed that the doctrine of freedom is needed for practical philosophy only as its negative condition; but that on the other hand the doctrine of God and of the constitution of the soul, as belonging to theoretical philosophy, must be established for themselves and separately, in order afterwards to unite both with that which the moral law (possible only under the condition of freedom) commands, and so to constitute a religion. But we can easily see that these attempts must fail. For from mere ontological concepts of things in general, or of the existence of a necessary Being, it is possible to form absolutely no determinate concept of an original Being by means of predicates which can be given in experience and can therefore serve for cognition. Again a concept based on experience of the physical purposiveness of nature could furnish no adequate proof for morality, or consequently for cognition of a Deity. Just as little could the cognition of the soul by means of experience (which we only apply in this life) supply us with a concept of its spiritual immortal nature, a concept which would be adequate for morality. Theology and Pneumatology, regarded as problems of the sciences of a speculative Reason, can be established by no empirical data and predicates, because the concept of them is transcendent for our whole cognitive faculty.—The determination of both concepts, God and the soul (in respect of its immortality) alike, can only take place by means of predicates, which, although they are only possible from a supersensible ground, must yet prove their reality in experience; for thus alone can they make possible a cognition of a quite supersensible Being.—The only concept of this kind to be met with in human Reason is that of the freedom of men under moral laws, along with the final purpose which Reason prescribes by these laws. Of these two [the moral laws and the final purpose] the first are useful for ascribing to the Author of Nature, the second for ascribing to man, those properties which contain the necessary condition of the possibility of both [God and the soul]; so that from this Idea a conclusion can be drawn as to the existence and constitution of these beings which are otherwise quite hidden from us.

Thus the ground of the failure of the attempt to prove God and immortality by the merely theoretical path lies in this, that no cognition whatever is possible of the supersensible in this way (of natural concepts). The ground of its success by the moral way (of the concept of freedom) is as follows. Here the supersensible (freedom), which in this case is fundamental, by a determinate law of causality that springs from it, not only supplies material for cognition of other supersensibles (the moral final purpose and the conditions of its attainability), but also establishes its reality in actions as a fact; though at the same time it can furnish a valid ground of proof in no other than a practical point of view (the only one, however, of which Religion has need).

It is thus very remarkable that of the three pure rational Ideas, God, freedom, and immortality, that of freedom is the only concept of the supersensible which (by means of the causality that is thought in it) proves its objective reality in nature by means of the effects it can produce there; and thus renders possible the connexion of both the others with nature, and of all three together with Religion. We have therefore in us a principle capable of determining the Idea of the supersensible within us, and thus also that of the supersensible without us, for knowledge, although only in a practical point of view; a principle this of which mere speculative philosophy (which could give a merely negative concept of freedom) must despair. Consequently the concept of freedom (as fundamental concept of all unconditioned practical laws) can extend Reason beyond those bounds, within which every natural (theoretical) concept must remain hopelessly limited.

General remark on Teleology

If the question is, what rank the moral argument, which proves the Being of God only as a thing of faith for the practical pure Reason, maintains among the other arguments in philosophy, it is easy to set aside the whole achievement of this last; by which it appears that there is no choice, but that our theoretical faculty must give up all its pretensions before an impartial criticism.

All belief must in the first place be grounded upon facts, if it is not to be completely groundless; and therefore the only distinction in proofs that there can be is that belief in the consequence derived therefrom can either be grounded on this fact as knowledge for theoretical cognition, or merely as faith for practical. All facts belong either to the natural concept which proves its reality in the objects of sense, given (or which may possibly be given) before all natural concepts; or to the concept of freedom, which sufficiently establishes its reality through the causality of Reason in regard of certain effects in the world of sense, possible through it, which it incontrovertibly postulates in the moral law. The natural concept (merely belonging to theoretical cognition) is now either metaphysical and thinkable completely a priori, or physical, i.e. thinkable a posteriori and as necessary only through determinate experience. The metaphysical natural concept (which presupposes no determinate experience) is therefore ontological.

The ontological proof of the being of God from the concept of an original Being is either that which from ontological predicates, by which alone it can be thought as completely determined, infers absolutely necessary being; or that which, from the absolute necessity of the being somewhere of some thing, whatever it be, infers the predicates of the original Being. For there belongs to the concept of an original Being, inasmuch as it is not derived from anything, the unconditioned necessity of its presence, and (in order to represent this) its complete determination by its [mere]155 concept. It was believed that both requirements were found in the concept of the ontological Idea of a Being the most real of all; and thus two metaphysical proofs originated.

The proof (properly called ontological) resting upon a merely metaphysical natural concept concludes from the concept of the Being the most real of all, its absolutely necessary existence; for (it is said), if it did not exist, a reality would be wanting to it, viz. existence.—The other (which is also called the metaphysico-cosmological proof) concludes from the necessity of the existence somewhere of a thing (which must be conceded, for a being is given to us in self-consciousness), its complete determination as that of a Being the most real of all; for everything existing must be completely determined, but the absolutely necessary (i.e. that which we ought to cognise as such and consequently a priori) must be completely determined by means of its own concept. But this is only the case with the concept of a thing the most real of all. It is not needful to expose here the sophistry in both arguments, which has been already done elsewhere;156 it is only needful to remark that neither proof, even if they could be defended by all manner of dialectical subtlety, could ever pass from the schools into the world, or have the slightest influence on the mere sound Understanding.

The proof, which rests on a natural concept that can only be empirical and yet is to lead us beyond the bounds of nature regarded as the complex of the objects of sense, can be no other than that derived from the purposes of nature. The concept of these cannot, it is true, be given a priori but only through experience; but yet it promises such a concept of the original ground of nature as alone, among all those which we can conceive, is suited to the supersensible, viz. that of a highest Understanding as Cause of the world. This, in fact, it completely performs in accordance with principles of the reflective Judgement, i.e. in accordance with the constitution of our (human) faculty of cognition.—But whether or not it is in a position to supply from the same data this concept of a supreme, i.e. independent intelligent Being, in short of a God or Author of a world under moral laws, and consequently as sufficiently determined for the Idea of a final purpose of the being of the world—this is the question upon which everything depends, whether we desire a theoretically adequate concept of the Original Being on behalf of our whole knowledge of nature, or a practical concept for religion.

This argument derived from physical Teleology is worthy of respect. It produces a similar effect in the way of conviction upon the common Understanding as upon the subtlest thinker; and a Reimarus157 has acquired immortal honour in his work (not yet superseded), in which he abundantly develops this ground of proof with his peculiar thoroughness and lucidity.—But how does this proof acquire such mighty influence upon the mind? How does a judgement by cold reason (for we might refer to persuasion the emotion and elevation of reason produced by the wonders of nature) issue thus in a calm and unreserved assent? It is not the physical purposes, which all indicate in the World Cause an unfathomable intelligence; these are inadequate thereto, because they do not satisfy the need of the inquiring Reason. For, wherefore (it asks) are all those natural things that exhibit art? Wherefore is man himself, whom we must regard as the ultimate purpose of nature thinkable by us? Wherefore is this collective Nature here, and what is the final purpose of such great and manifold art? Reason cannot be contented with enjoyment or with contemplation, observation, and admiration (which, if it stops there, is only enjoyment of a particular kind) as the ultimate final purpose for the creation of the world and of man himself; for this presupposes a personal worth, which man alone can give himself, as the condition under which alone he and his being can be the final purpose. Failing this (which alone is susceptible of a definite concept), the purposes of nature do not satisfactorily answer our questions; especially because they cannot furnish any determinate concept of the highest Being as an all-sufficient (and therefore unique and so properly called highest) being, and of the laws according to which an Understanding is Cause of the world.

Hence that the physico-teleological proof convinces, just as if it were a theological proof, does not arise from our availing ourselves of the Ideas of purposes of nature as so many empirical grounds of proof of a highest Understanding. But it mingles itself unnoticed with that moral ground of proof, which dwells in every man and influences him secretly, in the conclusion by which we ascribe to the Being, which manifests itself with such incomprehensible art in the purposes of nature, a final purpose and consequently wisdom (without however being justified in doing so by the perception of the former); and by which therefore we arbitrarily fill up the lacunas of the [design] argument. In fact it is only the moral ground of proof which produces conviction, and that only in a moral reference with which every man feels inwardly his agreement. But the physico-teleological proof has only the merit of leading the mind, in its consideration of the world, by the way of purposes and through them to an intelligent Author of the world. The moral reference to purposes and the Idea of a moral legislator and Author of the world, as a theological concept, seem to be developed of themselves out of that ground of proof, although they are in truth pure additions.

Henceforward we may allow the customary statement to stand. For it is generally difficult (if the distinction requires much reflection) for ordinary sound Understanding to distinguish from one another as heterogeneous the different principles which it confuses, and from one of which alone it actually draws conclusions with correctness. The moral ground of proof of the Being of God, properly speaking, does not merely complete and render perfect the physico-teleological proof; but it is a special proof that supplies the conviction which is wanting in the latter. This latter in fact can do nothing more than guide Reason, in its judgements upon the ground of nature and that contingent but admirable order of nature only known to us by experience, to the causality of a Cause containing the ground of the same in accordance with purposes (which we by the constitution of our cognitive faculties must think as an intelligent cause); and thus by arresting the attention of Reason it makes it more susceptible of the moral proof. For what is requisite to the latter concept is so essentially different from everything which natural concepts contain and can teach, that there is need of a particular ground of proof quite independent of the former, in order to supply the concept of the original Being adequately for Theology and to infer its existence.—The moral proof (which it is true only proves the Being of God in a practical though indispensable aspect of Reason) would preserve all its force, if we found in the world no material, or only that which is doubtful, for physical Teleology. It is possible to conceive rational beings surrounded by a nature which displayed no clear trace of organisation but only the effects of a mere mechanism of crude matter; on behalf of which and amid the changeability of some merely contingent purposive forms and relations there would appear to be no ground for inferring an intelligent Author. In such case there would be no occasion for a physical Teleology; and yet Reason, which here gets no guidance from natural concepts, would find in the concept of freedom and in the moral Ideas founded thereon a practically sufficient ground for postulating the concept of the original Being in conformity with these, i.e. as a Deity, and for postulating nature (even the nature of our own being) as a final purpose in accordance with freedom and its laws—and all this in reference to the indispensable command of practical Reason.—However the fact that there is in the actual world for the rational beings in it abundant material for physical Teleology (even though this is not necessary) serves as a desirable confirmation of the moral argument, as far as nature can exhibit anything analogous to the (moral) rational Ideas. For the concept of a supreme Cause possessing intelligence (though not reaching far enough for a Theology) thus acquires sufficient reality for the reflective Judgement, but it is not required as the basis of the moral proof; nor does this latter serve to complete as a proof the former, which does not by itself point to morality at all, by means of an argument developed according to a single principle. Two such heterogeneous principles as nature and freedom can only furnish two different kinds of proof; and the attempt to derive one from the other is found unavailing as regards that which is to be proved.

If the physico-teleological ground of proof sufficed for the proof which is sought, it would be very satisfactory for the speculative Reason; for it would furnish the hope of founding a Theosophy (for so we must call the theoretical cognition of the divine nature and its existence which would suffice at once for the explanation of the constitution of the world and for the determination of moral laws). In the same way if Psychology enabled us to arrive at a cognition of the immortality of the soul it would make Pneumatology possible, which would be just as welcome to the speculative Reason. But neither, agreeable as they would be to the arrogance of our curiosity, would satisfy the wish of Reason in respect of a theory which must be based on a cognition of the nature of things. Whether the first, as Theology, and the second, as Anthropology, when founded on the moral principle, i.e. the principle of freedom, and consequently in accordance with the practical use [of Reason] do not better fulfil their objective final design, is another question which we need not here pursue.

The physico-teleological ground of proof does not reach to Theology, because it does not and cannot give any determinate concept, sufficient for this design, of the original Being; but we must derive this from quite another quarter, or must supply its lacuna by an arbitrary addition. You infer, from the great purposiveness of natural forms and their relations, a world-cause endowed with Understanding; but what is the degree of this Understanding? Without doubt you cannot assume that it is the highest possible Understanding; because for that it would be requisite that you should see that a greater Understanding than that of which you perceive proofs in the world, is not thinkable; and this would be to ascribe Omniscience to yourself.158 In the same way, if you infer from the magnitude of the world the very great might of its Author, you must be content with this having only a comparative significance for your faculty of comprehension; for since you do not know all that is possible, so as to compare it with the magnitude of the world as far as you know it, you cannot infer the Almightiness of its Author from so small a standard, and so on. Now you arrive in this way at no definite concept of an original Being available for a Theology; for this can only be found in the concept of the totality of perfections compatible with intelligence, and you cannot help yourself to this by merely empirical data. But without such a definite concept you cannot infer a unique intelligent original Being; you can only assume it (with whatever motive).—Now it may certainly be conceded that you should arbitrarily add (for Reason has nothing fundamental to say to the contrary): Where so much perfection is found, we may well assume that all perfection is united in a unique Cause of the world, because Reason succeeds better both theoretically and practically with a principle thus definite. But then you cannot regard this concept of the original Being as proved by you, for you have only assumed it on behalf of a better employment of Reason. Hence all lamentation or impotent anger on account of the alleged mischief of rendering doubtful the coherency of your chain of reasoning, is vain pretentiousness, which would fain have us believe that the doubt here freely expressed as to your argument is a doubting of sacred truth, in order that under this cover the shallowness of your argument may pass unnoticed.

Moral Teleology, on the other hand, which is not less firmly based than physical,—which, indeed, rather deserves the preference because it rests a priori on principles inseparable from our Reason—leads to that which is requisite for the possibility of a Theology, viz. to a determinate concept of the supreme Cause, as Cause of the world according to moral laws, and, consequently, to the concept of such a cause as satisfies our moral final purpose. For this are required, as natural properties belonging to it, nothing less than Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and the like, which must be thought as bound up with the moral final purpose which is infinite and thus as adequate to it. Hence moral Teleology alone can furnish the concept of a unique Author of the world, which is available for a Theology.

In this way Theology leads immediately to Religion, i.e. the recognition of our duties as divine commands159; because it is only the recognition of our duty and of the final purpose enjoined upon us by Reason which brings out with definiteness the concept of God. This concept, therefore, is inseparable in its origin from obligation to that Being. On the other hand, even if the concept of the original Being could be also found determinately by the merely theoretical path (viz. the concept of it as mere Cause of nature), it would afterwards be very difficult—perhaps impossible without arbitrary interpolation [of elements]—to ascribe to this Being by well-grounded proofs a causality in accordance with moral laws; and yet without this that quasi-theological concept could furnish no foundation for religion. Even if a religion could be established by this theoretical path, it would actually, as regards sentiment (wherein its essence lies) be different from that in which the concept of God and the (practical) conviction of His Being originate from the fundamental Ideas of morality. For if we must suppose the Omnipotence, Omniscience, etc., of an Author of the world as concepts given to us from another quarter, in order afterwards only to apply our concepts of duties to our relation to Him, then these latter concepts must bear very markedly the appearance of compulsion and forced submission. If, instead of this, the respect for the moral law, quite freely, in virtue of the precept of our own Reason, represents to us the final purpose of our destination, we admit among our moral views a Cause harmonising with this and with its accomplishment, with the sincerest reverence, which is quite distinct from pathological fear; and we willingly submit ourselves thereto.160

If it be asked why it is incumbent upon us to have any Theology at all, it appears clear that it is not needed for the extension or correction of our cognition of nature or in general for any theory, but simply in a subjective point of view for Religion, i.e. the practical or moral use of our Reason. If it is found that the only argument which leads to a definite concept of the object of Theology is itself moral, it is not only not strange, but we miss nothing in respect of its final purpose as regards the sufficiency of belief from this ground of proof, provided that it be admitted that such an argument only establishes the Being of God sufficiently for our moral destination, i.e. in a practical point of view, and that here speculation neither shows its strength in any way, nor extends by means of it the sphere of its domain. Our surprise and the alleged contradiction between the possibility of a Theology asserted here and that which the Critique of speculative Reason said of the Categories—viz. that they can only produce knowledge when applied to objects of sense, but in no way when applied to the supersensible—vanish, if we see that they are here used for a cognition of God not in a theoretical point of view (in accordance with what His own nature, inscrutable to us, may be) but simply in a practical.—In order then at this opportunity to make an end of the misinterpretation of that very necessary doctrine of the Critique, which, to the chagrin of the blind dogmatist, refers Reason to its bounds, I add here the following elucidation.

If I ascribe to a body motive force and thus think it by means of the category of causality, then I at the same time cognise it by that [category]; i.e. I determine the concept of it, as of an Object in general, by means of what belongs to it by itself (as the condition of the possibility of that relation) as an object of sense. If the motive force ascribed to it is repulsive, then there belongs to it (although I do not place near it any other body upon which it may exert force) a place in space, and moreover extension, i.e. space in itself, besides the filling up of this by means of the repulsive forces of its parts. In addition there is the law of this filling up (that the ground of the repulsion of the parts must decrease in the same proportion as the extension of the body increases, and as the space, which it fills with the same parts by means of this force, is augmented).—On the contrary, if I think a supersensible Being as the first mover, and thus by the category of causality as regards its determination of the world (motion of matter), I must not think it as existing in any place in space nor as extended; I must not even think it as existing in time or simultaneously with other beings. Hence I have no determinations whatever, which could make intelligible to me the condition of the possibility of motion by means of this Being as its ground. Consequently, I do not in the very least cognise it by means of the predicate of Cause (as first mover), for itself; but I have only the representation of a something containing the ground of the motions in the world; and the relation of the latter to it as their cause, since it does not besides furnish me with anything belonging to the constitution of the thing which is cause, leaves its concept quite empty. The reason of this is, that by predicates which only find their Object in the world of sense I can indeed proceed to the being of something which must contain their ground, but not to the determination of its concept as a supersensible being, which excludes all these predicates. By the category of causality, then, if I determine it by the concept of a first mover, I do not in the very least cognise what God is. Perhaps, however, I shall have better success if I start from the order of the world, not merely to think its causality as that of a supreme Understanding, but to cognise it by means of this determination of the said concept; because here the troublesome condition of space and of extension disappears.—At all events the great purposiveness in the world compels us to think a supreme cause of it, and to think its causality as that of an Understanding; but we are not therefore entitled to ascribe this to it. (E.g. we think of the eternity of God as presence in all time, because we can form no other concept of mere being as a quantum, i.e. as duration; or we think of the divine Omnipresence as presence in all places in order to make comprehensible to ourselves His immediate presence in things which are external to one another; without daring to ascribe to God any of these determinations, as something cognised in Him.) If I determine the causality of a man, in respect of certain products which are only explicable by designed purposiveness, by thinking it as that of Understanding, I need not stop here, but I can ascribe to him this predicate as a well-known property and cognise him accordingly. For I know that intuitions are given to the senses of men and are brought by the Understanding under a concept and thus under a rule; that this concept only contains the common characteristic (with omission of the particular ones) and is thus discursive; and that the rules for bringing given representations under a consciousness in general are given by Understanding before those intuitions, etc. I therefore ascribe this property to man as a property by means of which I cognise him. However, if I wish to think a supersensible Being (God) as an intelligence, this is not only permissible in a certain aspect of my employment of Reason—it is unavoidable; but to ascribe to Him Understanding and to flatter ourselves that we can cognise Him by means of it as a property of His, is in no way permissible. For I must omit all those conditions under which alone I know an Understanding, and thus the predicate which only serves for determining man cannot be applied at all to a supersensible Object; and therefore by a causality thus determined, I cannot cognise what God is. And so it is with all Categories, which can have no significance for cognition in a theoretical aspect, if they are not applied to objects of possible experience.—However, according to the analogy of an Understanding I can in a certain other aspect think a supersensible being, without at the same time meaning thereby to cognise it theoretically; viz. if this determination of its causality concerns an effect in the world, which contains a design morally necessary but unattainable by a sensible being. For then a cognition of God and of His Being (Theology) is possible by means of properties and determinations of His causality merely thought in Him according to analogy, which has all requisite reality in a practical reference though only in respect of this (as moral).—An Ethical Theology is therefore possible; for though morality can subsist without theology as regards its rule, it cannot do so as regards the final design which this proposes, unless Reason in respect of it is to be renounced. But a Theological Ethic (of pure Reason) is impossible; for laws which Reason itself does not give and whose observance it does not bring about as a pure practical faculty, can not be moral. In the same way a Theological Physic would be a nonentity, for it would propose no laws of nature but ordinances of a Highest Will; while on the other hand a physical (properly speaking a physico-teleological) Theology can serve at least as a propaedeutic to Theology proper, by giving occasion for the Idea of a final purpose which nature cannot present by the observation of natural purposes of which it offers abundant material. It thus makes felt the need of a Theology which shall determine the concept of God adequately for the highest practical use of Reason, but it cannot develop this and base it satisfactorily on its proofs.

THE END

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FOOTNOTES:

1 Dr. Caird (Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. ii. p. 406) has given an instructive account of the gradual development in Kant’s mind of the main idea of the Critique of Judgement.

2 Natural Theology and Modern Thought, p. 158.

3 I reproduce here in part a paper read before the Victoria Institute in April 1892.

4 Critique of Pure Reason. Dialectic, Bk. ii. chap. i. near the end.

5 Cf. Kuno Fischer, A Critique of Kant, p. 142.

6 Quoted by Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. ii. p. 507, who reiterates this criticism all through his account of Kant’s teaching.

7 Natural Theology and Modern Thought, p. 241.

8 [Reading, with Windelband, in sicheren alleinigen Besitz.]

9 If we have cause for supposing that concepts which we use as empirical principles stand in relationship with the pure cognitive faculty a priori, it is profitable, because of this reference, to seek for them a transcendental definition; i.e. a definition through pure categories, so far as these by themselves adequately furnish the distinction of the concept in question from others. We here follow the example of the mathematician who leaves undetermined the empirical data of his problem, and only brings their relation in their pure synthesis under the concepts of pure Arithmetic, and thus generalises the solution. Objection has been brought against a similar procedure of mine (cf. the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason, Abbott’s Translation, p. 94), and my definition of the faculty of desire has been found fault with, viz. that it is [the being’s] faculty of becoming by means of its representations the cause of the actuality of the objects of these representations; for the desires might be mere cravings, and by means of these alone every one is convinced the Object cannot be produced.—But this proves nothing more than that there are desires in man, by which he is in contradiction with himself. For here he strives for the production of the Object by means of the representation alone, from which he can expect no result, because he is conscious that his mechanical powers (if I may so call those which are not psychological) which must be determined by that representation to bring about the Object (mediately) are either not competent, or even tend towards what is impossible; e.g. to reverse the past (O mihi praeteritos … etc.), or to annihilate in the impatience of expectation the interval before the wished for moment.—Although in such fantastic desires we are conscious of the inadequacy (or even the unsuitability) of our representations for being causes of their objects, yet their reference as causes, and consequently the representation of their causality, is contained in every wish; and this is specially evident if the wish is an affection or longing. For these [longings] by their dilatation and contraction of the heart and consequent exhaustion of its powers, prove that these powers are continually kept on the stretch by representations, but that they perpetually let the mind, having regard to the impossibility [of the desire], fall back in exhaustion. Even prayers for the aversion of great and (as far as one can see) unavoidable evils, and many superstitious means for attaining in a natural way impossible purposes, point to the causal reference of representations to their Objects; a reference which cannot at all be checked by the consciousness of the inadequacy of the effort to produce the effect.—As to why there should be in our nature this propensity to desires which are consciously vain, that is an anthropologico-teleological problem. It seems that if we were not determined to the application of our powers before we were assured of the adequacy of our faculties to produce an Object, these powers would remain in great part unused. For we commonly learn to know our powers only by first making trial of them. This deception in the case of vain wishes is then only the consequence of a benevolent ordinance in our nature. [This note was added by Kant in the Second Edition.]

10 One of the various pretended contradictions in this whole distinction of the causality of nature from that of freedom is this. It is objected that if I speak of obstacles which nature opposes to causality according to (moral) laws of freedom or of the assistance it affords, I am admitting an influence of the former upon the latter. But if we try to understand what has been said, this misinterpretation is very easy to avoid. The opposition or assistance is not between nature and freedom, but between the former as phenomenon and the effects of the latter as phenomena in the world of sense. The causality of freedom itself (of pure and practical Reason) is the causality of a natural cause subordinated to freedom (i.e. of the subject considered as man and therefore as phenomenon). The intelligible, which is thought under freedom, contains the ground of the determination of this [natural cause] in a way not explicable any further (just as that intelligible does which constitutes the supersensible substrate of nature).

11 It has been thought a doubtful point that my divisions in pure Philosophy should always be threefold. But that lies in the nature of the thing. If there is to be an a priori division it must be either analytical, according to the law of contradiction, which is always twofold (quodlibet ens est aut A aut non A); or it is synthetical. And if in this latter case it is to be derived from a priori concepts (not as in Mathematic from the intuition corresponding to the concept), the division must necessarily be trichotomy. For according to what is requisite for synthetical unity in general there must be (1) a condition, (2) a conditioned, and (3) the concept which arises from the union of the conditioned with its condition.

12 The definition of taste which is laid down here is that it is the faculty of judging of the beautiful. But the analysis of judgements of taste must show what is required in order to call an object beautiful. The moments, to which this Judgement has regard in its reflection, I have sought in accordance with the guidance of the logical functions of judgement (for in a judgement of taste a reference to the Understanding is always involved). I have considered the moment of quality first, because the aesthetical judgement upon the beautiful first pays attention to it.

13 A judgement upon an object of satisfaction may be quite disinterested, but yet very interesting, i.e. not based upon an interest, but bringing an interest with it; of this kind are all pure moral judgements. Judgements of taste, however, do not in themselves establish any interest. Only in society is it interesting to have taste: the reason of this will be shown in the sequel.

14 [Second Edition.]

15 An obligation to enjoyment is a manifest absurdity. Thus the obligation to all actions which have merely enjoyment for their aim can only be a pretended one; however spiritually it may be conceived (or decked out), even if it is a mystical, or so-called heavenly, enjoyment.

16 [Second Edition.]

17 [Second Edition.]

18 [Ueberweg points out (Hist. of Phil., ii. 528, Eng. Trans.) that Mendelssohn had already called attention to the disinterestedness of our satisfaction in the Beautiful. “It appears,” says Mendelssohn, “to be a particular mark of the beautiful, that it is contemplated with quiet satisfaction, that it pleases, even though it be not in our possession, and even though we be never so far removed from the desire to put it to our use.” But, of course, as Ueberweg remarks, Kant’s conception of disinterestedness extends far beyond the absence of a desire to possess the object.]

19 [Reading besondere with Windelband; Hartenstein reads bestimmte.]

20 [I.e. The Critique of Pure Reason, Analytic, bk. ii. c. i.]

21 [Second Edition. Spencer expresses much more concisely what Kant has in his mind here. “Pleasure … is a feeling which we seek to bring into consciousness and retain there; pain is … a feeling which we seek to get out of consciousness and to keep out.” Principles of Psychology, § 125.]

22 [The editions of Hartenstein and Kirchmann omit ohne before zweck, which makes havoc of the sentence. It is correctly printed by Rosenkranz and Windelband.]

23 [First Edition.]

24 [Cf. Metaphysic of Morals, Introd. I. “The pleasure which is necessarily bound up with the desire (of the object whose representation affects feeling) may be called practical pleasure, whether it be cause or effect of the desire. On the contrary, the pleasure which is not necessarily bound up with the desire of the object, and which, therefore, is at bottom not a pleasure in the existence of the Object of the representation, but clings to the representation only, may be called mere contemplative pleasure or passive satisfaction. The feeling of the latter kind of pleasure we call taste.”]

25 [Second Edition.]

26 [First Edition has gleiche; Second Edition has solche.]

27 [First and Second Editions have sehr zweifle; but this was corrected to nicht zweifle in the Third Edition of 1799.]

28 [Belebt machen; First Edition had beliebt.]

29 [Second Edition.]

30 [Kant probably alludes here to Baumgarten (1714–1762), who was the first writer to give the name of Aesthetics to the Philosophy of Taste. He defined beauty as “perfection apprehended through the senses.” Kant is said to have used as a text-book at lectures a work by Meier, a pupil of Baumgarten’s, on this subject.]

31 [Cf. Preface to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, v.: “The word perfection is liable to many misconceptions. It is sometimes understood as a concept belonging to Transcendental Philosophy; viz. the concept of the totality of the manifold, which, taken together, constitutes a Thing; sometimes, again, it is understood as belonging to Teleology, so that it signifies the agreement of the characteristics of a thing with a purpose. Perfection in the former sense might be called quantitative (material), in the latter qualitative (formal) perfection.”]

32 [The words even if … general were added in the Second Edition.]

33 [Second Edition.]

34 Models of taste as regards the arts of speech must be composed in a dead and learned language. The first, in order that they may not suffer that change which inevitably comes over living languages, in which noble expressions become flat, common ones antiquated, and newly created ones have only a short currency. The second, because learned languages have a grammar which is subject to no wanton change of fashion, but the rules of which are preserved unchanged.

35 [This distinction between an Idea and an Ideal, as also the further contrast between Ideals of the Reason and Ideals of the Imagination, had already been given by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, Dialectic, bk. ii. c. iii. § 1.]

36 [Polycletus of Argos flourished about 430 B.C. His statue of the Spearbearer (Doryphorus), afterwards became known as the Canon; because in it the artist was supposed to have embodied a perfect representation of the ideal of the human figure.]

37 [This was a celebrated statue executed by Myron, a Greek sculptor, contemporary with Polycletus. It is frequently mentioned in the Greek Anthology.]

38 It will be found that a perfectly regular countenance, such as a painter might wish to have for a model, ordinarily tells us nothing; because it contains nothing characteristic, and therefore rather expresses the Idea of the race than the specific [traits] of a person. The exaggeration of a characteristic of this kind, i.e. such as does violence to the normal Idea (the purposiveness of the race) is called caricature. Experience also shows that these quite regular countenances commonly indicate internally only a mediocre man; presumably (if it may be assumed that external nature expresses the proportions of internal) because, if no mental disposition exceeds that proportion which is requisite in order to constitute a man free from faults, nothing can be expected of what is called genius, in which nature seems to depart from the ordinary relations of the mental powers on behalf of some special one.

39 It might be objected to this explanation that there are things, in which we see a purposive form without cognising any [definite] purpose in them, like the stone implements often got from old sepulchral tumuli with a hole in them as if for a handle. These, although they plainly indicate by their shape a purposiveness of which we do not know the purpose, are nevertheless not described as beautiful. But if we regard a thing as a work of art, that is enough to make us admit that its shape has reference to some design and definite purpose. And hence there is no immediate satisfaction in the contemplation of it. On the other hand a flower, e.g. a tulip, is regarded as beautiful; because in perceiving it we find a certain purposiveness which, in our judgement, is referred to no purpose at all.

40 [Cp. p. 170, infra.]

41 [See The History of Sumatra, by W. Marsden (London, 1783), p. 113.]

42 [Cf. § 42, infra.]

43 [Second Edition.]

44 [Second Edition.]

45 [Lettres sur l’Égypte, par M. Savary, Amsterdam, 1787.]

46 [Second Edition.]

47 [With this should be compared the similar discussion in the Critique of Pure Reason, Dialectic, bk. ii. c. ii. § 1, On the System of Cosmological Ideas.]

48 [Second Edition.]

49 [Cf. § 83, infra.]

50 [In the Philosophical Theory of Religion, pt. i. sub fin. (Abbott’s Translation, p. 360), Kant, as here, divides “all religions into two classes—favour-seeking religion (mere worship) and moral religion, that is, the religion of a good life;” and he concludes that “amongst all the public religions that have ever existed the Christian alone is moral.”]

51 [Voyages dans les Alpes, par H. B. de Saussure; vol. i. was published at Neuchatel in 1779; vol. ii. at Geneva in 1786.]

52 [Second Edition.]

53 [Als Vermögen der Independenz der absoluten Totalität, a curious phrase.]

54 [Second Edition.]

55 Affections are specifically different from passions. The former are related merely to feeling; the latter belong to the faculty of desire, and are inclinations which render difficult or impossible all determination of the [elective] will by principles. The former are stormy and unpremeditated; the latter are steady and deliberate; thus indignation in the form of wrath is an affection, but in the form of hatred (revenge) is a passion. The latter can never and in no reference be called sublime; because while in an affection the freedom of the mind is hindered, in a passion it is abolished. [Cf. Preface to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, § xvi., where this distinction is more fully drawn out. Affection is described as hasty; and passion is defined as the sensible appetite grown into a permanent inclination.]

56 [In the Preface to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, § xvii., Kant gives the term moral apathy to that freedom from the sway of the affections, which is distinguished from indifference to them.]

57 [Reading weiche with Rosenkranz and Windelband; Hartenstein and Kirchmann have weise, which yields no sense.]

58 [Cf. p. 129, supra.]

59 [Kirchmann has positiv; but this is probably a mere misprint.]

60 [L.c. vol. ii. p. 181.]

61 [See Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Part IV., Sect. vii. “If the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions.” Kant quotes from the German version published at Riga in 1773. This was a free translation made from Burke’s fifth edition.]

62 [See Burke, l.c., Part IV., Sect. xix. “Beauty acts by relaxing the solids of the whole system. There are all the appearances of such a relaxation; and a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me to be the cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that manner of expression so common in all times and in all countries, of being softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure?”]

63 [Reading Gebot; Kirchmann has Gesetz.]

64 [Second Edition.]

65 [Second Edition.]

66 [Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Methodology, c. 1, § 1. “The construction of a concept is the a priori presentation of the corresponding intuition.”]

67 [Charles Batteux (1713–1780), author of Les Beaux Arts reduits à un même principe.]

68 [Essay XVIII, The Sceptic. “Critics can reason and dispute more plausibly than cooks or perfumers. We may observe, however, that this uniformity among human kind, hinders not, but that there is a considerable diversity in the sentiments of beauty and worth, and that education, custom, prejudice, caprice, and humour, frequently vary our taste of this kind…. Beauty and worth are merely of a relative nature, and consist in an agreeable sentiment, produced by an object in a particular mind, according to the peculiar structure and constitution of that mind.”]

69 [For the distinction, an important one in Kant, between judgements of experience and judgements of perception, see his Prolegomena, § 18. Cf. Kant’s Critical Philosophy for English Readers, vol. i. p. 116.]

70 [First Edition has “limited.”]

71 In order to be justified in claiming universal assent for an aesthetical judgement that rests merely on subjective grounds, it is sufficient to assume, (1) that the subjective conditions of the Judgement, as regards the relation of the cognitive powers thus put into activity to a cognition in general, are the same in all men. This must be true, because otherwise men would not be able to communicate their representations or even their knowledge. (2) The judgement must merely have reference to this relation (consequently to the formal condition of the Judgement) and be pure, i.e. not mingled either with concepts of the Object or with sensations, as determining grounds. If there has been any mistake as regards this latter condition, then there is only an inaccurate application of the privilege, which a law gives us, to a particular case; but that does not destroy the privilege itself in general.

72 [Kant lays down these three maxims in his Introduction to Logic, § vii., as “general rules and conditions of the avoidance of error.”]

73 We soon see that although enlightenment is easy in thesi, yet in hypothesi it is difficult and slow of accomplishment. For not to be passive as regards Reason, but to be always self-legislative, is indeed quite easy for the man who wishes only to be in accordance with his essential purpose, and does not desire to know what is beyond his Understanding. But since we can hardly avoid seeking this, and there are never wanting others who promise with much confidence that they are able to satisfy our curiosity, it must be very hard to maintain in or restore to the mind (especially the mind of the public) that bare negative which properly constitutes enlightenment.

74 We may designate Taste as sensus communis aestheticus, common Understanding as sensus communis logicus.

75 [Peter Camper (1722–1789), a celebrated naturalist and comparative anatomist; for some years professor at Groningen.]

76 In my country a common man, if you propose to him such a problem as that of Columbus with his egg, says, that is not art, it is only science. I.e. if we know how, we can do it; and he says the same of all the pretended arts of jugglers. On the other hand, he will not refuse to apply the term art to the performance of a rope-dancer.

77 [Kant was accustomed to say that the talk at a dinner table should always pass through these three stages—narrative, discussion, and jest; and punctilious in this, as in all else, he is said to have directed the conversation at his own table accordingly (Wallace’s Kant, p. 39).]

78 [Second Edition.]

79 [Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics, c. iv. p. 1448 b: ἃ γὰρ αὐτὰ λυπηρῶς ὁρῶμεν, τούτων τὰς εἰκόνας τὰς μάλιστα ἠκριβωμένας χαίρομεν θεωροῦντες οἷον θηρίων τε μορφὰς τῶν ἀτιμοτάτων καὶ νεκρῶν. Cf. also Rhetoric, I. 11, p. 1371 b; and Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful, Part I. § 16. Boileau (L’art poétique, chant 3), makes a similar observation:

“Il n’est point de serpent ni de monstre odieux

Qui, par l’art imité, ne puisse plaire aux yeux.

D’un pinceau délicat l’artifice agréable

Du plus affreux objet fait un objet aimable.”]

80 [Second Edition.]

81 [Cf. p. 199, infra.]

82 [In English we would rather say “without soul”; but I prefer to translate Geist consistently by spirit, to avoid the confusion of it with Seele.]

83 [These lines occur in one of Frederick the Great’s French poems: Épître au maréchal Keith XVIII., “sur les vaines terreurs de la mort et les frayeurs d’une autre vie.” Kant here translates them into German.]

84 [Withof, whose “Moral Poems” appeared in 1755. This reference was supplied by H. Krebs in Notes and Queries 5th January 1895.]

85 Perhaps nothing more sublime was ever said and no sublimer thought ever expressed than the famous inscription on the Temple of Isis (Mother Nature): “I am all that is and that was and that shall be, and no mortal hath lifted my veil.” Segner availed himself of this Idea in a suggestive vignette prefixed to his Natural Philosophy, in order to inspire beforehand the pupil whom he was about to lead into that temple with a holy awe, which should dispose his mind to serious attention. [J. A. de Segner (1704–1777) was Professor of Natural Philosophy at Göttingen, and the author of several scientific works of repute.]

86 [Second Edition.]

87 The three former faculties are united in the first instance by means of the fourth. Hume gives us to understand in his History of England that although the English are inferior in their productions to no people in the world as regards the evidences they display of the three former properties, separately considered, yet they must be put after their neighbours the French as regards that which unites these properties. [In his Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime, § iv. sub init., Kant remarks that the English have the keener sense of the sublime, the French of the beautiful.]

88 The reader is not to judge this scheme for a possible division of the beautiful arts as a deliberate theory. It is only one of various attempts which we may and ought to devise.

89 [Second Edition.]

90 [I.e. the case of Plastic art, with its subdivisions of Architecture and Sculpture, as is explained in the next paragraph.]

91 That landscape gardening may be regarded as a species of the art of painting, although it presents its forms corporeally, seems strange. But since it actually takes its forms from nature (trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers from forest and field—at least in the first instance), and so far is not an art like Plastic; and since it also has no concept of the object and its purpose (as in Architecture) conditioning its arrangements, but involves merely the free play of the Imagination in contemplation, it so far agrees with mere aesthetical painting which has no definite theme (which arranges sky, land, and water, so as to entertain us by means of light and shade only).—In general the reader is only to judge of this as an attempt to combine the beautiful arts under one principle, viz. that of the expression of aesthetical Ideas (according to the analogy of speech), and not to regard it as a definitive analysis of them.

92 I must admit that a beautiful poem has always given me a pure gratification; whilst the reading of the best discourse, whether of a Roman orator or of a modern parliamentary speaker or of a preacher, has always been mingled with an unpleasant feeling of disapprobation of a treacherous art, which means to move men in important matters like machines to a judgement that must lose all weight for them on quiet reflection. Readiness and accuracy in speaking (which taken together constitute Rhetoric) belong to beautiful art; but the art of the orator (ars oratoria), the art of availing oneself of the weaknesses of men for one’s own designs (whether these be well meant or even actually good does not matter) is worthy of no respect. Again, this art only reached its highest point, both at Athens and at Rome, at a time when the state was hastening to its ruin and true patriotic sentiment had disappeared. The man who along with a clear insight into things has in his power a wealth of pure speech, and who with a fruitful Imagination capable of presenting his Ideas unites a lively sympathy with what is truly good, is the vir bonus discendi peritus, the orator without art but of great impressiveness, as Cicero has it; though he may not always remain true to this ideal.

93 [From this to the end of the paragraph, and the next note, were added in the Second Edition.]

94 Those who recommend the singing of spiritual songs at family prayers do not consider that they inflict a great hardship upon the public by such noisy (and therefore in general pharisaical) devotions; for they force the neighbours either to sing with them or to abandon their meditations. [Kant suffered himself from such annoyances, which may account for the asperity of this note. At one period he was disturbed by the devotional exercises of the prisoners in the adjoining jail. In a letter to the burgomaster “he suggested the advantage of closing the windows during these hymn-singings, and added that the warders of the prison might probably be directed to accept less sonorous and neighbour-annoying chants as evidence of the penitent spirit of their captives” (Wallace’s Kant, p. 42).]

95 [Cf. “Parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus.”]

96 [The First Edition adds “as in the case of a man who gets the news of a great commercial success.”]

97 [The jest may have been taken from Steele’s play, “The Funeral or Grief à la mode,” where it occurs verbatim. This play was published in 1702.]

98 [Henriade, Chant 7, sub init.

“Du Dieu qui nous créa la clémence infinie,

Pour adoucir les maux de cette courte vie,

A placé parmi nous deux êtres bienfaisants,

De la terre à jamais aimables habitants,

Soutiens dans les travaux, trésors dans l’indigence:

L’un est le doux sommeil, et l’autre est l’espérance.”]

99 We may describe as a rationalising judgement (judicium ratiocinans) one which proclaims itself as universal, for as such it can serve as the major premise of a syllogism. On the other hand, we can only speak of a judgement as rational (judicium ratiocinatum) which is thought as the conclusion of a syllogism, and consequently as grounded a priori.

100 [Cf. p. 241, infra.]

101 [Second Edition.]

102 [Antiparos is a small island in the Cyclades, remarkable for a splendid stalactite cavern near the southern coast.]

103 The intuitive in cognition must be opposed to the discursive (not to the symbolical). The former is either schematical, by demonstration; or symbolical as a representation in accordance with a mere analogy.

104 [I read Geselligkeit with Rosenkranz and Windelband; Hartenstein and Kirchmann have Glückseligkeit.]

105 As in pure mathematics we can never talk of the existence, but only of the possibility of things, viz. of an intuition corresponding to a concept, and so never of cause and effect, it follows that all purposiveness observed there must be considered merely as formal and never as a natural purpose.

106 [The allusion is to Vitruvius de Architectura, Bk. vi. Praef. “Aristippus philosophus Socraticus, naufragio cum eiectus ad Rhodiensium litus animadvertisset geometrica schemata descripta, exclamavisse ad comites ita dicitur, Bene speremus, hominum enim vestigia video.”]

107 [Second Edition.]

108 We can conversely throw light upon a certain combination, much more often met with in Idea than in actuality, by means of an analogy to the so-called immediate natural purposes. In a recent complete transformation of a great people into a state the word organisation for the regulation of magistracies, etc., and even of the whole body politic, has often been fitly used. For in such a whole every member should surely be purpose as well as means, and, whilst all work together towards the possibility of the whole, each should be determined as regards place and function by means of the Idea of the whole. [Kant probably alludes here to the organisation of the United States of America.]

109 [These words are inserted by Rosenkranz and Windelband, but omitted by Hartenstein and Kirchmann.]

110 In the aesthetical part [§ 58, p. 247] it was said: We view beautiful nature with favour, whilst we have a quite free (disinterested) satisfaction in its form. For in this mere judgement of taste no consideration is given to the purpose for which these natural beauties exist; whether to excite pleasure in us, or as purposes without any reference to us at all. But in a teleological judgement we pay attention to this reference, and here we can regard it as a favour of nature that it has been willing to minister to our culture by the exhibition of so many beautiful figures.

111 The German word vermessen is a good word and full of meaning. A judgement in which we forget to consider the extent of our powers (our Understanding) may sometimes sound very humble, and yet make great pretensions, and so be very presumptuous. Of this kind are most of those by which we pretend to extol the divine wisdom by ascribing to it designs in the works of creation and preservation which are really meant to do honour to the private wisdom of the reasoner.

112 We thus see that in most speculative things of pure Reason, as regards dogmatic assertions, the philosophical schools have commonly tried all possible solutions of a given question. To explain the purposiveness of nature men have tried either lifeless matter or a lifeless God, or again, living matter or a living God. It only remains for us, if the need should arise, to abandon all these objective assertions and to examine critically our judgement merely in reference to our cognitive faculties, in order to supply to their principle a validity which, if not dogmatic, shall at least be that of a maxim sufficient for the sure employment of Reason.

113 [That is, the wider concept serves as a universal, under which the particular may be brought; cognition from principles, in Kant’s phrase, is the process of knowing the particular in the universal by means of concepts.]

114 [This distinction will be familiar to the student of the Critique of Pure Reason. See Dialectic, bk. i., Of the Concepts of Pure Reason.]

115 [Second Edition.]

116 [This principle, that for our intellect, the conception of an organised body is impossible except by the aid of the Idea of design, is frequently insisted on by Kant. Professor Wallace points out (Kant, p. 110) that as far back as 1755, in his General Physiogony and Theory of the Heavens, Kant classed the origin of animals and plants with the secrets of Providence and the mystical number 666 “as one of the topics on which ingenuity and thought are occasionally wasted.”]

117 [Second Edition.]

118 [Second Edition.]

119 [This is marked as an Appendix in the Second Edition.]

120 We may call a hypothesis of this kind a daring venture of reason, and there may be few even of the most acute naturalists through whose head it has not sometimes passed. For it is not absurd, like that generatio aequivoca by which is understood the production of an organised being through the mechanics of crude unorganised matter. It would always remain generatio univoca in the most universal sense of the word, for it only considers one organic being as derived from another organic being, although from one which is specifically different; e.g. certain water-animals transform themselves gradually into marsh-animals and from these, after some generations, into land-animals. A priori, in the judgement of Reason alone, there is no contradiction here. Only experience gives no example of it; according to experience all generation that we know is generatio homonyma. This is not merely univoca in contrast to the generation out of unorganised material, but in the organisation the product is of like kind to that which produced it; and generation heteronyma, so far as our empirical knowledge of nature extends, is nowhere found.

121 [It is probable that Kant alludes here to Hume’s Essay On a Providence and a Future State, § xi of the Inquiry. Hume argues that though the inference from an effect to an intelligent cause may be valid in the case of human contrivance, it is not legitimate to rise by a like argument to Supreme Intelligence. “In human nature there is a certain experienced coherence of designs and inclinations; so that when from any fact we have discovered one intention of any man, it may often be reasonable from experience to infer another, and draw a long chain of conclusions concerning his past or future conduct. But this method of reasoning can never have place with regard to a being so remote and incomprehensible, who bears much less analogy to any other being in the universe than the sun to a waxen taper, and who discovers himself only by some faint traces or outlines, beyond which we have no authority to ascribe to him any attribute or perfection.”]

122 [J. F. Blumenbach (1752–1840), a German naturalist and professor at Göttingen; the author of Institutiones Physiologicae (1787) and other works. An interesting account of him is given in Lever’s novel Adventures of Arthur O’Leary, ch. xix.]

123 [Carl von Linné (1707–1778), Knight of the Polar Star, the celebrated Swedish botanist.]

124 If the once adopted name Natural history is to continue for the description of nature, we may in contrast with art, give the title of Archaeology of nature to that which the former literally indicates, viz. a representation of the old condition of the earth, about which, although we cannot hope for certainty, we have good ground for conjecture. As sculptured stones, etc., belong to the province of art, so petrefactions belong to the archaeology of nature. And since work is actually being done in this [science] (under the name of the Theory of the Earth), constantly, although of course slowly, this name is not given to a merely imaginary investigation of nature, but to one to which nature itself leads and invites us.

125 [See p. 184 above.]

126 [First Edition has freedom.]

127 [These views are set forth by Kant more fully in the essay Zum ewigen Frieden (1795).]

128 [Second Edition.]

129 [Cf. The Philosophical Theory of Religion, Part i., On the bad principle in Human Nature, III., where Kant remarks that although war “is not so incurably bad as the deadness of a universal monarchy … yet, as an ancient observed, it makes more bad men than it takes away.”]

130 The value of life for us, if it is estimated by that which we enjoy (by the natural purpose of the sum of all inclinations, i.e. happiness), is easy to decide. It sinks below zero; for who would be willing to enter upon life anew under the same conditions? who would do so even according to a new, self-chosen plan (yet in conformity with the course of nature), if it were merely directed to enjoyment? We have shown above what value life has in virtue of what it contains in itself, when lived in accordance with the purpose that nature has along with us, and which consists in what we do (not merely what we enjoy), in which, however, we are always but means towards an undetermined final purpose. There remains then nothing but the value which we ourselves give our life, through what we can not only do, but do purposively in such independence of nature that the existence of nature itself can only be a purpose under this condition.

131 It would be possible that the happiness of rational beings in the world should be a purpose of nature, and then also this would be its ultimate purpose. At least we cannot see a priori why nature should not be so ordered, because by means of its mechanism this effect would be certainly possible, at least so far as we see. But morality, with a causality according to purposes subordinated thereto, is absolutely impossible by means of natural causes; for the principle by which it determines to action is supersensible, and is therefore the only possible principle in the order of purposes that in respect of nature is absolutely unconditioned. Its subject consequently alone is qualified to be the final purpose of creation to which the whole of nature is subordinated.—Happiness, on the contrary, as has been shown in the preceding paragraphs by the testimony of experience, is not even a purpose of nature in respect of man in preference to other creatures; much less a final purpose of creation. Men may of course make it their ultimate subjective purpose. But if I ask, in reference to the final purpose of creation, why must men exist? then we are speaking of an objective supreme purpose, such as the highest Reason would require for creation. If we answer: These beings exist to afford objects for the benevolence of that Supreme Cause; then we contradict the condition to which the Reason of man subjects even his inmost wish for happiness (viz. the harmony with his own internal moral legislation). This proves that happiness can only be a conditioned purpose, and that it is only as a moral being that man can be the final purpose of creation; but that as concerns his state happiness is only connected with it as a consequence, according to the measure of his harmony with that purpose regarded as the purpose of his being.

132 [Second Edition.]

133 I say deliberately under moral laws. It is not man in accordance with moral laws, i.e. a being who behaves himself in conformity with them, who is the final purpose of creation. For by using the latter expression we should be asserting more than we know; viz. that it is in the power of an Author of the world to cause man always to behave himself in accordance with moral laws. But this presupposes a concept of freedom and of nature (of which latter we can only think an external author), which would imply an insight into the supersensible substrate of nature and its identity with that which causality through freedom makes possible in the world. And this far surpasses the insight of our Reason. Only of man under moral laws can we say, without transgressing the limits of our insight: his being constitutes the final purpose of the world. This harmonises completely with the judgement of human Reason reflecting morally upon the course of the world. We believe that we perceive in the case of the wicked the traces of a wise purposive reference, if we only see that the wanton criminal does not die before he has undergone the deserved punishment of his misdeeds. According to our concepts of free causality, our good or bad behaviour depends on ourselves; we regard it the highest wisdom in the government of the world to ordain for the first, opportunity, and for both, their consequence, in accordance with moral laws. In the latter properly consists the glory of God, which is hence not unsuitably described by theologians as the ultimate purpose of creation.— It is further to be remarked that when we use the word creation, we understand nothing more than we have said here, viz. the cause of the being of the world or of the things in it (substances). This is what the concept properly belonging to this word involves (actuatio substantiae est creatio); and consequently there is not implied in it the supposition of a freely working, and therefore intelligent, cause (whose being we first of all want to prove).

134 [Note added in Second Edition.] This moral argument does not supply any objectively-valid proof of the Being of God; it does not prove to the sceptic that there is a God, but proves that if he wishes to think in a way consonant with morality, he must admit the assumption of this proposition under the maxims of his practical Reason.— We should therefore not say: it is necessary for morals [Sittlichkeit], to assume the happiness of all rational beings of the world in proportion to their morality [Moralität]; but rather, this is necessitated by morality. Accordingly, this is a subjective argument sufficient for moral beings.

135 [Second Edition.]

136 [Second Edition.]

137 In a practical sense that religion is always idolatry which conceives the Supreme Being with properties, according to which something else besides morality can be a fit condition for that which man can do being in accordance with His Will. For however pure and free from sensible images the concept that we have formed may be in a theoretical point of view, yet it will be in a practical point of view still represented as an idol, i.e. in regard to the character of His Will, anthropomorphically.

138 [Cf. Introd. to Logic, ix. p. 63, “Conviction is opposed to Persuasion, which is a belief from inadequate reasons, of which we do not know whether they are only subjective or are also objective.”]

139 [Second Edition.]

140 [I.e. Urtheils. First Edition had Urtheilens, the judging subject.]

141 Analogy (in a qualitative signification) is the identity of the relation between reasons and consequences (causes and effects), so far as it is to be found, notwithstanding the specific difference of the things or those properties in them which contain the reason for like consequences (i.e. considered apart from this relation). Thus we conceive of the artificial constructions of beasts by comparing them with those of men; by comparing the ground of those effects brought about by the former, which we do not know, with the ground of similar effects brought about by men (reason), which we do know; i.e. we regard the ground of the former as an analogon of reason. We then try at the same time to show that the ground of the artisan faculty of beasts, which we call instinct, specifically different as it is in fact from reason, has yet a similar relation to its effect (the buildings of the beaver as compared with those of men).—But then I cannot therefore conclude that because man uses reason for his building, the beaver must have the like, and call this a conclusion according to analogy. But from the similarity of the mode of operation of beasts (of which we cannot immediately perceive the ground) to that of men (of which we are immediately conscious), we can quite rightly conclude according to analogy, that beasts too act in accordance with representations (not as Descartes has it, that they are machines), and that despite their specific distinction they are yet (as living beings) of the same genus as man. The principle of our right so to conclude consists in the sameness of the ground for reckoning beasts in respect of the said determination in the same genus with men, regarded as men, so far as we can externally compare them with one another in accordance with their actions. There is par ratio. Just so I can conceive, according to the analogy of an Understanding, the causality of the supreme World-Cause, by comparing its purposive products in the world with the artificial works of men; but I cannot conclude according to analogy to those properties in it [which are in man], because here the principle of the possibility of such a method of reasoning entirely fails, viz. the paritas rationis for counting the Supreme Being in one and the same genus with man (in respect of the causality of both). The causality of the beings of the world, which is always sensibly conditioned (as is causality through Understanding) cannot be transferred to a Being which has in common with them no generic concept save that of Thing in general.

142 We thus miss nothing in the representation of the relations of this Being to the world, as far as the consequences, theoretical or practical, of this concept are concerned. To wish to investigate what it is in itself, is a curiosity as purposeless as it is vain.

143 [Cf. Introd. to Logic, p. 76, where the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis are laid down. See also Critique of Pure Reason, Methodology, c. i. § 3.]

144 [This illustration is also given in the Logic (p. 57); where the three modi of belief, Opinion, Faith, and Knowledge, are distinguished from each other. Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Methodology, c. ii. § 3.]

145 [The speculations of Swedenborg seem to have always had a strange fascination for Kant. He says of two reported cases of Swedenborg’s clairvoyance that he knows not how to disprove them (Rosenkranz vii. 5); but in his Anthropology §§ 35, 37, he attacks Swedenborgianism as folly. So in an early essay, Dreams of a Visionary explained by Dreams of Metaphysics, he avows his scepticism as to the value of the information which “psychical research” can supply about the spirit-world, though he is careful not to commit himself to any dogmatic statement on the subject of ghosts. In the Critique of Pure Reason (when discussing the Postulates of Empirical Thought) he gives, as an instance of a concept inconsistent with the canons of possibility, “a power of being in a community of thought with other men, however distant from us.”]

146 [Cf. supra, p. 229.]

147 I here extend, correctly as it seems to me, the concept of a thing of fact beyond the usual signification of this word. For it is not needful, not even feasible, to limit this expression merely to actual experience, if we are talking of the relation of things to our cognitive faculties; for an experience merely possible is quite sufficient in order that we may speak of them merely as objects of a definite kind of cognition.

148 [Cf. introduction to Logic, p. 59 note.]

149 [Second Edition.]

150 Things of faith are not therefore articles of faith; if we understand by the latter things of faith to the confession of which (internal or external) we can be bound. Natural theology contains nothing like this. For since they, as things of faith (like things of fact) cannot be based on theoretical proofs, [they are accepted by] a belief which is free and which only as such is compatible with the morality of the subject.

151 The final purpose which the moral law enjoins upon us to further, is not the ground of duty; since this lies in the moral law, which, as formal practical principle, leads categorically, independently of the Objects of the faculty of desire (the material of the will) and consequently of any purpose whatever. This formal characteristic of my actions (their subordination under the principle of universal validity), wherein alone consists their inner moral worth, is quite in our power; and I can quite well abstract from the possibility or the unattainableness of purposes which I am obliged to promote in conformity with that law (because in them consists only the external worth of my actions) as something which is never completely in my power, in order only to look to that which is of my doing. But then the design of promoting the final purpose of all rational beings (happiness so far as it is possible for it to be accordant with duty) is even yet prescribed by the law of duty. The speculative Reason, however, does not see at all the attainableness of this (neither on the side of our own physical faculty nor on that of the co-operation of nature). It must rather, so far as we can judge in a rational way, hold the derivation, by the aid of such causes, of such a consequence of our good conduct from mere nature (internal and external) without God and immortality, to be an ungrounded and vain, though well-meant, expectation; and if it could have complete certainty of this judgement, it would regard the moral law itself as the mere deception of our Reason in a practical aspect. But since the speculative Reason fully convinces itself that the latter can never take place, but that on the other hand those Ideas whose object lies outside nature can be thought without contradiction, it must for its own practical law and the problem prescribed thereby, and therefore in a moral aspect, recognise those Ideas as real in order not to come into contradiction with itself.

152 It is a trust in the promise of the moral law; [not however such as is contained in it, but such as I put into it and that on morally adequate grounds.153 For a final purpose cannot be commanded by any law of Reason without this latter at the same time promising, however uncertainly, its attainableness; and thus justifying our belief in the special conditions under which alone our Reason can think it as attainable. The word fides expresses this; and it can only appear doubtful, how this expression and this particular Idea came into moral philosophy, since it first was introduced with Christianity, and the adoption of it perhaps might seem to be only a flattering imitation of Christian terminology. But this is not the only case in which this wonderful religion with its great simplicity of statement has enriched philosophy with far more definite and purer concepts of morality, than it had been able to furnish before; but which, once they are there, are freely assented to by Reason and are assumed as concepts to which it could well have come of itself and which it could and should have introduced.]

153 [Second Edition.]

154 [Cf. Introd. to Logic, ix. p. 60, “That man is morally unbelieving who does not accept that which though impossible to know is morally necessary to suppose.”]

155 [First Edition.]

156 [In the Critique of Pure Reason, Dialectic, bk. II. c. iii. §§ 4, 5.]

157 [H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768), the author of the famous Wolfenbüttel Fragments, published after the death of Reimarus by Lessing. The book alluded to by Kant is probably the Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion (1754), which had great popularity in its day.]

158 [These arguments are advanced by Hume, Inquiry, § vii. Cf. also Pure Reason, Dialectic, bk. II. c. iii. § 6, and Practical Reason, Dialectic, c. ii. § vii.]

159 [Cf. Practical Reason, Dialectic, c. ii. § v.]

160 The admiration for beauty, and also the emotion aroused by the manifold purposes of nature, which a reflective mind is able to feel even prior to a clear representation of a rational Author of the world, have something in themselves like religious feeling. They seem in the first place by a method of judging analogous to moral to produce an effect upon the moral feeling (gratitude to, and veneration for, the unknown cause); and thus by exciting moral Ideas to produce an effect upon the mind, when they inspire that admiration which is bound up with far more interest than mere theoretical observation can bring about.

Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Text has three occcurrences of “casuality”, which have been retained, but which may be misprints for “causality”.
These are transliterations of the Greek text for use on devices that cannot display such text:
Page xvii: kosmos.
Page xxii: kalo.
Page xxiv: sôphrosynê.
Page xxxiii: nous.
Page 397: kat’ alêtheian (or) kat’ anthrôpon.
Footnote 79 (originally on page 195): ha gar auta lypêrôs horômen, toutôn tas eikonas tas malista êkribômenas chairomen theôrountes hoion thêriôn te morphas tôn atimotatôn kai nekrôn.

Contents
ACT I
Scene     I. Elsinore.      A     platform before    the  Castle.
Scene     II. Elsinore.     A     room      of    state       in    the  Castle
Scene     III. A room      in    Polonius’s      house.
Scene     IV.   The platform.
Scene     V.   A     more      remote   part of    the  Castle.
ACT II

Scene     I. A  room      in    Polonius’s      house.

Scene     II. A room      in    the  Castle.

ACT III

Scene     I. A  room      in    the  Castle.

Scene     II. A hall  in    the  Castle.

Scene     III. A room      in    the  Castle.

Scene     IV.   Another  room      in    the  Castle.

ACT IV

Scene     I. A  room      in    the  Castle.

Scene     II. Another     room      in    the  Castle.

Scene     III. Another    room      in    the  Castle.

Scene     IV.   A     plain       in    Denmark.

Scene     V.   Elsinore. A     room      in    the  Castle.

Scene     VI.   Another  room      in    the  Castle.

Scene     VII. Another  room      in    the  Castle.

ACT V

Scene     I. A  churchyard.

Scene     II. A hall  in    the  Castle.

Dramatis Personæ

HAMLET, Prince     of    Denmark.

CLAUDIUS,     King of    Denmark,      Hamlet’s uncle.

The GHOST   of    the  late king,       Hamlet’s father.

GERTRUDE,    the  Queen,   Hamlet’s mother,  now wife of    Claudius.

POLONIUS,    Lord Chamberlain.

LAERTES, Son to    Polonius.

OPHELIA,       Daughter       to    Polonius.

HORATIO,      Friend     to    Hamlet.

FORTINBRAS, Prince     of    Norway.

VOLTEMAND,       Courtier.

CORNELIUS,  Courtier.

ROSENCRANTZ,    Courtier.

GUILDENSTERN,   Courtier.

MARCELLUS,  Officer.

BARNARDO,  Officer.

FRANCISCO,  a     Soldier

OSRIC,    Courtier.

REYNALDO,   Servant   to    Polonius.

Players.

A     Gentleman,   Courtier.

A     Priest.

Two Clowns,  Grave-diggers.

A     Captain.

English   Ambassadors.

Lords,     Ladies,    Officers,  Soldiers, Sailors,   Messengers,  and       Attendants.

SCENE.   Elsinore.

ACT I

SCENE    I.     Elsinore. A     platform before    the  Castle.

Enter      FRANCISCO       and BARNARDO ,      two sentinels.

BARNARDO.

Who’s     there?

FRANCISCO.

Nay, answer   me. Stand     and unfold    yourself.

BARNARDO.

Long      live  the  King!

FRANCISCO.

Barnardo?

BARNARDO.

He.

FRANCISCO.

You come      most      carefully upon      your hour.

BARNARDO.

’Tis  now struck     twelve.   Get  thee to    bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO.

For  this  relief       much     thanks.   ’Tis  bitter      cold,

And I      am  sick at    heart.

BARNARDO.

Have      you had quiet      guard?

FRANCISCO.

Not a     mouse    stirring.

BARNARDO.

Well,       good      night.

If     you do   meet      Horatio   and Marcellus,

The rivals      of    my  watch,    bid  them      make      haste.

Enter      HORATIO    and MARCELLUS .

FRANCISCO.

I      think      I      hear them.     Stand,    ho!  Who       is     there?

HORATIO.

Friends   to    this  ground.

MARCELLUS.

And liegemen to    the  Dane.

FRANCISCO.

Give you good      night.

MARCELLUS.

O,    farewell, honest    soldier,   who hath reliev’d   you?

FRANCISCO.

Barnardo has  my  place.     Give you good-night.

[ Exit. ]

MARCELLUS.

Holla,     Barnardo!

BARNARDO.

Say, what,      is     Horatio   there?

HORATIO.

A     piece      of    him.

BARNARDO.

Welcome,      Horatio.  Welcome,      good      Marcellus.

MARCELLUS.

What,     has  this  thing      appear’d again      tonight?

BARNARDO.

I      have       seen nothing.

MARCELLUS.

Horatio   says ’tis   but  our  fantasy,

And will  not  let   belief      take hold of    him

Touching       this  dreaded sight,      twice      seen of    us.

Therefore      I      have       entreated      him along

With       us    to    watch     the  minutes  of    this  night,

That if     again      this  apparition     come

He   may approve  our  eyes and speak     to    it.

HORATIO.

Tush,      tush,       ’twill not  appear.

BARNARDO.

Sit   down      awhile,

And let   us    once       again      assail      your ears,

That are  so    fortified  against   our  story,

What      we   two nights     have       seen.

HORATIO.

Well,       sit    we   down,

And let   us    hear Barnardo speak     of    this.

BARNARDO.

Last night      of    all,

When     yond      same      star that’s      westward       from       the  pole,

Had made     his   course    t’illume   that part of    heaven

Where    now it     burns,     Marcellus      and myself,

The bell  then beating  one—

MARCELLUS.

Peace,    break      thee off.  Look       where     it     comes    again.

Enter      GHOST .

BARNARDO.

In    the  same      figure,    like  the  King that’s      dead.

MARCELLUS.

Thou      art   a     scholar;  speak     to    it,    Horatio.

BARNARDO.

Looks     it     not  like  the  King?      Mark      it,    Horatio.

HORATIO.

Most      like. It     harrows  me  with fear and wonder.

BARNARDO

It     would     be   spoke     to.

MARCELLUS.

Question it,    Horatio.

HORATIO.

What      art   thou that usurp’st  this  time of    night, Together     with that       fair  and warlike   form

In    which     the  majesty  of    buried    Denmark

Did  sometimes    march?   By   heaven   I      charge    thee speak.

MARCELLUS.

It     is     offended.

BARNARDO.

See, it     stalks      away.

HORATIO.

Stay!       speak,    speak!    I      charge    thee speak!

[ Exit       GHOST . ]

MARCELLUS.

’Tis  gone,     and will  not  answer.

BARNARDO.

How now,       Horatio!  You tremble  and look pale.

Is     not  this  something     more      than fantasy?

What      think      you on’t?

HORATIO.

Before    my  God,       I      might     not  this  believe

Without  the  sensible  and true avouch

Of   mine      own eyes.

MARCELLUS.

Is     it     not  like  the  King?

HORATIO.

As   thou art   to    thyself:

Such       was the  very armour   he   had on

When     he   th’ambitious  Norway  combated;

So   frown’d   he   once,      when      in    an   angry     parle

He   smote     the  sledded  Polacks   on   the  ice.

’Tis  strange.

MARCELLUS.

Thus       twice      before,   and jump      at    this  dead      hour,

With       martial   stalk hath he   gone      by   our  watch.

HORATIO.

In    what       particular       thought  to    work       I      know      not; But       in    the  gross      and scope     of    my  opinion,

This bodes     some      strange   eruption to    our  state.

MARCELLUS.

Good      now,       sit    down,     and tell  me, he   that knows,

Why this  same      strict       and most      observant      watch

So   nightly    toils the  subject   of    the  land,

And why such daily cast of    brazen    cannon

And foreign   mart       for   implements   of    war;

Why such impress  of    shipwrights,   whose    sore task

Does      not  divide     the  Sunday   from       the  week.

What      might     be   toward,   that this  sweaty    haste

Doth       make      the  night      joint-labourer       with the  day:

Who       is’t   that can  inform    me?

HORATIO.

That can  I;

At    least,      the  whisper  goes       so.   Our last  King,

Whose    image     even       but  now appear’d to    us,

Was,       as    you know,     by   Fortinbras      of    Norway,

Thereto  prick’d    on   by   a     most      emulate  pride,

Dar’d      to    the  combat;  in    which     our  valiant    Hamlet,

For  so    this  side of    our  known    world      esteem’d him,

Did  slay this  Fortinbras;     who by   a     seal’d     compact,

Well ratified   by   law  and heraldry,

Did  forfeit,    with his   life,  all    those      his   lands

Which    he   stood     seiz’d     of,   to    the  conqueror;

Against   the  which,    a     moiety    competent

Was gaged    by   our  King;      which     had return’d

To   the  inheritance    of    Fortinbras,

Had he   been      vanquisher;   as    by   the  same      cov’nant

And carriage  of    the  article     design’d,

His  fell   to    Hamlet.  Now,      sir,   young    Fortinbras,

Of   unimproved   mettle,   hot  and full,

Hath       in    the  skirts      of    Norway,  here and there,

Shark’d   up   a     list   of    lawless   resolutes,

For  food       and diet, to    some      enterprise

That hath a     stomach in’t; which     is     no   other,

As   it     doth       well appear   unto our  state,

But  to    recover   of    us    by   strong    hand

And terms     compulsatory,      those      foresaid  lands

So   by   his   father     lost. And this, I      take it,

Is     the  main      motive    of    our  preparations,

The source    of    this  our  watch,    and the  chief       head

Of   this  post-haste    and rummage      in    the  land.

BARNARDO.

I      think      it     be   no   other      but  e’en so:

Well may it     sort that this  portentous    figure

Comes    armed    through  our  watch     so    like  the  King

That was and is     the  question of    these      wars.

HORATIO.

A     mote      it     is     to    trouble   the  mind’s    eye.

In    the  most      high and palmy     state       of    Rome,

A     little ere  the  mightiest Julius      fell,

The graves    stood     tenantless      and the  sheeted  dead

Did  squeak   and gibber    in    the  Roman   streets;

As   stars with trains      of    fire  and dews      of    blood,

Disasters in    the  sun; and the  moist      star,

Upon      whose    influence Neptune’s     empire   stands,

Was sick almost    to    doomsday     with eclipse.

And even       the  like  precurse of    fierce      events,

As   harbingers     preceding      still  the  fates

And prologue to    the  omen     coming   on,

Have      heaven   and earth      together demonstrated

Unto       our  climatures     and countrymen.

Re-enter GHOST .

But, soft, behold!  Lo,   where     it     comes    again!

I’ll    cross      it,    though   it     blast       me. Stay,       illusion!

If     thou hast any  sound,    or    use  of    voice,

Speak     to    me.

If     there      be   any  good      thing      to    be   done,

That may to    thee do   ease,      and grace      to    me,

Speak     to    me.

If     thou art   privy       to    thy  country’s fate,

Which,    happily,  foreknowing  may avoid,

O    speak!

Or   if     thou hast uphoarded    in    thy  life

Extorted treasure  in    the  womb     of    earth,

For  which,    they say, you spirits     oft   walk in    death,

Speak     of    it.    Stay,       and speak!

[ The      cock crows. ]

Stop it,    Marcellus!

MARCELLUS.

Shall       I      strike      at    it     with my  partisan?

HORATIO.

Do,  if     it     will  not  stand.

BARNARDO.

’Tis  here!

HORATIO.

’Tis  here!

[ Exit       GHOST . ]

MARCELLUS.

’Tis  gone!

We  do   it     wrong,    being     so    majestical,

To   offer       it     the  show      of    violence,

For  it     is     as    the  air,  invulnerable,

And our  vain blows     malicious mockery.

BARNARDO.

It     was about     to    speak,    when      the  cock crew.

HORATIO.

And then it     started,   like  a     guilty      thing

Upon      a     fearful    summons.     I      have       heard

The cock,      that is     the  trumpet  to    the  morn,

Doth       with his   lofty and shrill-sounding     throat

Awake    the  god of    day; and at    his   warning,

Whether in    sea  or    fire, in    earth      or    air,

Th’extravagant     and erring     spirit       hies

To   his   confine.  And of    the  truth       herein

This present   object     made     probation.

MARCELLUS.

It     faded     on   the  crowing  of    the  cock.

Some     say  that ever ’gainst    that season   comes

Wherein our  Saviour’s birth       is     celebrated,

The bird of    dawning singeth   all    night      long;

And then,      they say, no   spirit       dare stir  abroad,

The nights     are  wholesome,   then no   planets   strike,

No   fairy takes,     nor  witch      hath power     to    charm;

So   hallow’d and so    gracious is     the  time.

HORATIO.

So   have       I      heard,    and do   in    part believe   it.

But  look,       the  morn      in    russet     mantle   clad,

Walks     o’er the  dew of    yon high eastward hill.

Break      we   our  watch     up,  and by   my  advice,

Let  us    impart    what       we   have       seen tonight

Unto       young    Hamlet;  for   upon      my  life,

This spirit,      dumb     to    us,   will  speak     to    him.

Do   you consent  we   shall acquaint him with it,

As   needful   in    our  loves,     fitting     our  duty?

MARCELLUS.

Let’s do’t, I      pray,       and I      this  morning know

Where    we   shall find him most      conveniently.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     Elsinore. A     room      of    state       in    the  Castle.

Enter      Claudius KING    of    Denmark,      Gertrude the  QUEEN,       HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES,   VOLTEMAND,

CORNELIUS,  LORDS   and ATTENDANT .

KING.

Though  yet  of    Hamlet   our  dear brother’s death

The memory be   green,    and that it     us    befitted

To   bear our  hearts     in    grief,      and our  whole     kingdom

To   be   contracted     in    one brow      of    woe;

Yet  so    far   hath discretion      fought    with nature

That we   with wisest     sorrow    think      on   him,

Together with remembrance of    ourselves.

Therefore      our  sometime      sister,     now our  queen,

Th’imperial    jointress to    this  warlike   state, Have    we,  as    ’twere       with a     defeated joy,

With       one auspicious     and one dropping eye,

With       mirth      in    funeral,   and with dirge      in    marriage,

In    equal      scale      weighing delight   and dole,

Taken     to    wife; nor  have       we   herein    barr’d

Your       better     wisdoms, which     have       freely      gone

With       this  affair      along.     For  all,   our  thanks.

Now       follows,   that you know      young    Fortinbras,

Holding  a     weak      supposal of    our  worth,

Or   thinking  by   our  late dear brother’s death

Our state       to    be   disjoint   and out  of    frame,

Colleagued    with this  dream    of    his   advantage,

He   hath not  fail’d       to    pester     us    with message,

Importing      the  surrender      of    those      lands

Lost by   his   father,    with all    bonds     of    law,

To   our  most      valiant    brother.  So   much     for   him.

Now       for   ourself    and for   this  time of    meeting:

Thus       much     the  business is:    we   have       here writ

To   Norway,  uncle      of    young    Fortinbras,

Who,      impotent and bed-rid,  scarcely  hears

Of   this  his   nephew’s       purpose, to    suppress

His  further    gait herein;    in    that the  levies,

The lists, and full  proportions   are  all    made

Out of    his   subject:  and we   here dispatch

You, good      Cornelius,      and you, Voltemand,

For  bearers   of    this  greeting to    old  Norway,

Giving    to    you no   further    personal power

To   business with the  King,      more      than the  scope

Of   these      dilated    articles   allow.

Farewell; and let   your haste      commend      your duty.

CORNELIUS   and VOLTEMAND.

In    that, and all    things,    will  we   show      our  duty.

KING.

We  doubt     it     nothing: heartily   farewell.

[ Exeunt  VOLTEMAND     and CORNELIUS . ]

And now,       Laertes,  what’s    the  news      with you?

You told us    of    some      suit. What      is’t,  Laertes?

You cannot   speak     of    reason    to    the  Dane,

And lose your voice.     What      wouldst  thou beg, Laertes,

That shall not  be   my  offer,      not  thy  asking?

The head      is     not  more      native     to    the  heart,

The hand      more      instrumental  to    the  mouth,

Than      is     the  throne    of    Denmark to    thy  father.

What      wouldst  thou have,      Laertes?

LAERTES.

Dread     my  lord,

Your       leave      and favour    to    return     to    France,

From      whence  though   willingly  I      came      to    Denmark

To   show      my  duty in    your coronation;

Yet  now I      must      confess,  that duty done,

My  thoughts and wishes    bend      again      toward   France,

And bow them      to    your gracious leave      and pardon.

KING.

Have      you your father’s   leave?     What      says Polonius?

POLONIUS.

He   hath,      my  lord, wrung    from       me  my  slow leave

By   laboursome   petition; and at    last

Upon      his   will  I      seal’d     my  hard consent.

I      do   beseech you give him leave      to    go.

KING.

Take       thy  fair  hour,      Laertes;  time be   thine,

And thy  best graces    spend     it     at    thy  will!

But  now,       my  cousin    Hamlet,  and my  son—

HAMLET.

[ Aside. ] A     little more      than kin,  and less than kind.

KING.

How is     it     that the  clouds    still  hang      on   you?

HAMLET.

Not so,   my  lord, I      am  too  much     i’     the  sun.

QUEEN.

Good      Hamlet,  cast thy  nighted  colour    off,

And let   thine      eye  look like  a     friend     on   Denmark.

Do   not  for   ever with thy  vailed     lids

Seek       for   thy  noble     father     in    the  dust.

Thou      know’st  ’tis   common,       all    that lives must      die,

Passing  through  nature    to    eternity.

HAMLET.

Ay,  madam,  it     is     common.

QUEEN.

If     it     be,

Why seems    it     so    particular       with thee?

HAMLET.

Seems,   madam! Nay, it     is;    I      know      not  seems.

’Tis  not  alone      my  inky cloak,     good      mother,

Nor customary     suits of    solemn   black,

Nor windy     suspiration    of    forc’d     breath,

No,  nor  the  fruitful    river in    the  eye,

Nor the  dejected haviour   of    the  visage,

Together with all    forms,     moods,   shows     of    grief,

That can  denote   me  truly.      These     indeed    seem,

For  they are  actions   that a     man might     play;

But  I      have       that within     which     passeth  show;

These     but  the  trappings       and the  suits of    woe.

KING.

’Tis  sweet     and commendable      in    your nature,   Hamlet,

To   give these      mourning      duties     to    your father;

But  you must      know,     your father     lost  a     father,

That father     lost, lost  his,  and the  survivor  bound

In    filial obligation,     for   some      term

To   do   obsequious   sorrow.   But  to    persevere

In    obstinate condolement is     a     course

Of   impious  stubbornness. ’Tis  unmanly grief,

It     shows     a     will  most      incorrect to    heaven,

A     heart      unfortified,    a     mind      impatient,

An   understanding      simple    and unschool’d;

For  what       we   know      must      be,  and is     as    common

As   any  the  most      vulgar     thing      to    sense,

Why should    we   in    our  peevish  opposition

Take       it     to    heart?     Fie,  ’tis   a     fault to    heaven, A      fault       against   the  dead,      a     fault to    nature,

To   reason    most      absurd,   whose    common theme

Is     death     of    fathers,   and who still  hath cried,

From      the  first corse      till   he   that died today,

‘This must      be   so.’  We  pray you throw     to    earth

This unprevailing  woe,       and think      of    us

As   of    a     father;    for   let   the  world      take note

You are  the  most      immediate     to    our  throne,

And with no   less nobility   of    love

Than      that which     dearest   father     bears      his   son

Do   I      impart    toward   you. For  your intent

In    going     back       to    school    in    Wittenberg,

It     is     most      retrograde     to    our  desire:

And we   beseech you bend      you to    remain

Here       in    the  cheer      and comfort  of    our  eye,

Our chiefest  courtier, cousin,   and our  son.

QUEEN.

Let  not  thy  mother   lose her  prayers,  Hamlet.

I      pray thee stay with us;   go   not  to    Wittenberg.

HAMLET.

I      shall in    all    my  best obey       you, madam.

KING.

Why,      ’tis   a     loving     and a     fair  reply.

Be   as    ourself    in    Denmark.      Madam,  come;

This gentle    and unforc’d accord    of    Hamlet

Sits  smiling   to    my  heart;     in    grace      whereof,

No   jocund    health    that Denmark drinks     today

But  the  great      cannon   to    the  clouds    shall tell,

And the  King’s     rouse      the  heaven   shall bruit       again,

Re-speaking  earthly    thunder. Come     away.

[ Exeunt  all    but  HAMLET . ]

HAMLET.

O    that this  too  too  solid       flesh would     melt,

Thaw,     and resolve   itself into a     dew!

Or   that the  Everlasting    had not  fix’d

His  canon     ’gainst    self-slaughter.      O    God!       O    God!

How weary,    stale,      flat, and unprofitable

Seem      to    me  all    the  uses of    this  world!

Fie   on’t! Oh  fie!  ’tis   an   unweeded     garden

That grows     to    seed;      things     rank and gross      in    nature

Possess  it     merely.   That it     should    come      to    this!

But  two months  dead—nay,    not  so    much,     not  two:

So   excellent a     king;       that was to    this

Hyperion to    a     satyr;      so    loving     to    my  mother,

That he   might     not  beteem  the  winds     of    heaven

Visit her  face too  roughly.  Heaven  and earth!

Must      I      remember?    Why,      she  would     hang      on   him

As   if     increase of    appetite had grown

By   what       it     fed  on;  and yet,  within     a     month—

Let  me  not  think      on’t—Frailty,  thy  name     is     woman!

A     little month,   or    ere  those      shoes     were       old

With       which     she  followed my  poor       father’s   body

Like Niobe,    all    tears.—Why  she, even       she—

O    God!       A     beast      that wants     discourse       of    reason

Would    have       mourn’d longer,—married  with mine      uncle,

My  father’s   brother;  but  no   more      like  my  father

Than      I      to    Hercules. Within    a     month?

Ere  yet  the  salt  of    most      unrighteous   tears

Had left  the  flushing  in    her  galled     eyes,

She married. O    most      wicked    speed,    to    post

With       such dexterity to    incestuous     sheets!

It     is     not, nor  it     cannot   come      to    good.

But  break      my  heart,     for   I      must      hold my  tongue.

Enter      HORATIO,    MARCELLUS and BARNARDO .

HORATIO.

Hail to    your lordship!

HAMLET.

I      am  glad to    see  you well:

Horatio,  or    I      do   forget     myself.

HORATIO.

The same,     my  lord,

And your poor       servant   ever.

HAMLET.

Sir,  my  good      friend;

I’ll    change   that name     with you:

And what       make      you from       Wittenberg,   Horatio?—

Marcellus?

MARCELLUS.

My  good      lord.

HAMLET.

I      am  very glad to    see  you.—Good   even,      sir.—

But  what,      in    faith,      make      you from       Wittenberg?

HORATIO.

A     truant     disposition,    good      my  lord.

HAMLET.

I      would     not  hear your enemy    say  so;

Nor shall you do   my  ear  that violence,

To   make      it     truster    of    your own report

Against   yourself. I      know      you are  no   truant.

But  what       is     your affair      in    Elsinore?

We’ll       teach      you to    drink      deep      ere  you depart.

HORATIO.

My  lord, I      came      to    see  your father’s   funeral.

HAMLET.

I      prithee   do   not  mock      me, fellow-student.

I      think      it     was to    see  my  mother’s wedding.

HORATIO.

Indeed,   my  lord, it     follow’d  hard upon.

HAMLET.

Thrift,     thrift,      Horatio!  The funeral   bak’d      meats

Did  coldly     furnish    forth       the  marriage tables.

Would    I      had met my  dearest   foe  in    heaven

Or   ever I      had seen that day, Horatio.

My  father,—methinks I      see  my  father.

HORATIO.

Where,   my  lord?

HAMLET.

In    my  mind’s    eye, Horatio.

HORATIO.

I      saw him once;      he   was a     goodly    king.

HAMLET.

He   was a     man,      take him for   all    in    all,

I      shall not  look upon      his   like  again.

HORATIO.

My  lord, I      think      I      saw him yesternight.

HAMLET.

Saw?      Who?

HORATIO.

My  lord, the  King your father.

HAMLET.

The King my  father!

HORATIO.

Season   your admiration    for   a     while

With       an   attent     ear, till   I      may deliver

Upon      the  witness   of    these      gentlemen

This marvel    to    you.

HAMLET.

For  God’s     love let   me  hear.

HORATIO.

Two nights     together had these      gentlemen,

Marcellus      and Barnardo,      on   their watch

In    the  dead      waste     and middle    of    the  night,

Been      thus encounter’d.  A     figure     like  your father,

Armed    at    point      exactly,   cap-à-pie,

Appears  before    them,     and with solemn   march

Goes      slow and stately    by   them:     thrice     he   walk’d

By   their oppress’d      and fear-surprised      eyes,

Within    his   truncheon’s   length;   whilst     they,       distill’d

Almost   to    jelly with the  act  of    fear,

Stand     dumb,    and speak     not  to    him. This to    me

In    dreadful secrecy   impart    they did,

And I      with them      the  third       night      kept the  watch, Where,       as    they had deliver’d, both       in    time,

Form      of    the  thing,     each       word      made     true and good,

The apparition     comes.   I      knew      your father;

These     hands     are  not  more      like.

HAMLET.

But  where     was this?

MARCELLUS.

My  lord, upon      the  platform where     we   watch.

HAMLET.

Did  you not  speak     to    it?

HORATIO.

My  lord, I      did;

But  answer   made     it     none:     yet  once       methought

It     lifted      up   it     head,      and did  address

Itself       to    motion,  like  as    it     would     speak.

But  even       then the  morning cock crew       loud,

And at    the  sound     it     shrunk    in    haste      away,

And vanish’d from       our  sight.

HAMLET.

’Tis  very strange.

HORATIO.

As   I      do   live, my  honour’d lord, ’tis   true;

And we   did  think      it     writ down      in    our  duty

To   let   you know      of    it.

HAMLET.

Indeed,   indeed,   sirs, but  this  troubles  me.

Hold       you the  watch     tonight?

Mar. and BARNARDO.

We  do,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

Arm’d,    say  you?

Both.

Arm’d,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

From      top  to    toe?

BOTH.

My  lord, from       head      to    foot.

HAMLET.

Then      saw you not  his   face?

HORATIO.

O    yes, my  lord, he   wore       his   beaver    up.

HAMLET.

What,     look’d     he   frowningly?

HORATIO.

A     countenance more      in    sorrow    than in    anger.

HAMLET.

Pale,       or    red?

HORATIO.

Nay, very pale.

HAMLET.

And fix’d his   eyes upon      you?

HORATIO.

Most      constantly.

HAMLET.

I      would     I      had been      there.

HORATIO.

It     would     have       much     amaz’d   you.

HAMLET.

Very like, very like. Stay’d     it     long?

HORATIO.

While     one with moderate      haste      might     tell  a     hundred.

MARCELLUS  and BARNARDO.

Longer,   longer.

HORATIO.

Not when      I      saw’t.

HAMLET.

His  beard     was grizzled, no?

HORATIO.

It     was, as    I      have       seen it     in    his   life,

A     sable      silver’d.

HAMLET.

I      will  watch     tonight;

Perchance     ’twill walk again.

HORATIO.

I      warrant  you it     will.

HAMLET.

If     it     assume  my  noble     father’s   person,

I’ll    speak     to    it,    though   hell  itself should    gape

And bid  me  hold my  peace.    I      pray you all,

If     you have       hitherto  conceal’d      this  sight,

Let  it     be   tenable   in    your silence    still;

And whatsoever    else shall hap tonight,

Give it     an   understanding,     but  no   tongue.

I      will  requite   your loves.     So,  fare ye    well.

Upon      the  platform ’twixt      eleven    and twelve,

I’ll    visit you.

ALL.

Our duty to    your honour.

HAMLET.

Your       loves,     as    mine      to    you: farewell.

[ Exeunt  HORATIO,    MARCELLUS and BARNARDO . ]

My  father’s   spirit       in    arms!      All   is     not  well;

I      doubt     some      foul play: would     the  night      were       come!

Till   then sit    still, my  soul: foul deeds     will  rise,

Though  all    the  earth      o’erwhelm     them,     to    men’s     eyes.

[ Exit. ]

SCENE    III.    A     room      in    Polonius’s      house.

Enter      LAERTES      and OPHELIA .

LAERTES.

My  necessaries    are  embark’d.      Farewell.

And, sister,     as    the  winds     give benefit

And convoy   is     assistant, do   not  sleep,

But  let   me  hear from       you.

OPHELIA.

Do   you doubt     that?

LAERTES.

For  Hamlet,  and the  trifling    of    his   favour,

Hold       it     a     fashion   and a     toy  in    blood;

A     violet      in    the  youth     of    primy     nature,

Forward, not  permanent,   sweet,    not  lasting;

The perfume and suppliance     of    a     minute;

No   more.

OPHELIA.

No   more      but  so?

LAERTES.

Think      it     no   more.

For  nature    crescent does       not  grow      alone

In    thews     and bulk;       but  as    this  temple   waxes,

The inward    service    of    the  mind      and soul

Grows     wide       withal.    Perhaps  he   loves      you now,

And now no   soil  nor  cautel     doth       besmirch

The virtue     of    his   will; but  you must      fear,

His  greatness      weigh’d, his   will  is     not  his   own;

For  he   himself   is     subject   to    his   birth:

He   may not, as    unvalu’d persons  do,

Carve     for   himself;  for   on   his   choice    depends

The sanctity  and health    of    this  whole     state;

And therefore must      his   choice    be   circumscrib’d

Unto       the  voice      and yielding  of    that body

Whereof he   is     the  head.      Then      if     he   says he   loves      you,

It     fits   your wisdom  so    far   to    believe   it

As   he   in    his   particular       act  and place

May give his   saying    deed;      which     is     no   further

Than      the  main      voice      of    Denmark goes       withal.

Then      weigh     what       loss your honour   may sustain

If     with too  credent  ear  you list   his   songs, Or       lose your heart,       or    your chaste    treasure  open

To   his   unmaster’d    importunity.

Fear it,    Ophelia, fear it,    my  dear sister;

And keep       you in    the  rear of    your affection,

Out of    the  shot and danger   of    desire.

The chariest  maid      is     prodigal enough

If     she  unmask  her  beauty    to    the  moon.

Virtue     itself scopes    not  calumnious    strokes:

The canker    galls the  infants    of    the  spring

Too oft   before    their buttons  be   disclos’d,

And in    the  morn      and liquid      dew of    youth

Contagious    blastments    are  most      imminent.

Be   wary       then,      best safety     lies  in    fear.

Youth     to    itself rebels,    though   none      else near.

OPHELIA.

I      shall th’effect  of    this  good      lesson    keep

As   watchman     to    my  heart.     But  good      my  brother,

Do   not  as    some      ungracious    pastors   do,

Show      me  the  steep      and thorny    way to    heaven;

Whilst     like  a     puff’d     and reckless  libertine

Himself   the  primrose path of    dalliance treads,

And recks      not  his   own rede.

LAERTES.

O,    fear me  not.

I      stay too  long.      But  here my  father     comes.

Enter      POLONIUS .

A     double   blessing  is     a     double   grace;

Occasion smiles     upon      a     second   leave.

POLONIUS.

Yet  here,      Laertes?  Aboard,  aboard,  for   shame.

The wind       sits  in    the  shoulder of    your sail,

And you are  stay’d     for.  There,     my  blessing  with you.

[ Laying  his   hand      on   LAERTES’S   head. ]

And these      few  precepts in    thy  memory

Look       thou character.      Give thy  thoughts no   tongue,

Nor any  unproportion’d     thought  his   act.

Be   thou familiar,  but  by   no   means    vulgar.

Those     friends    thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple  them      unto thy  soul with hoops     of    steel;

But  do   not  dull thy  palm      with entertainment

Of   each       new-hatch’d, unfledg’d       comrade.       Beware

Of   entrance to    a     quarrel;  but  being     in,

Bear’t     that th’opposed    may beware   of    thee.

Give every      man thine      ear, but  few  thy  voice:

Take       each       man’s     censure, but  reserve   thy  judgment.

Costly     thy  habit      as    thy  purse      can  buy,

But  not  express’d in    fancy;     rich, not  gaudy:

For  the  apparel   oft   proclaims      the  man;

And they in    France    of    the  best rank and station

Are  of    a     most      select     and generous       chief       in    that.

Neither   a     borrower nor  a     lender    be:

For  loan oft   loses      both       itself and friend;

And borrowing     dulls the  edge      of    husbandry.

This above     all:   to    thine      own self  be   true;

And it     must      follow,    as    the  night      the  day,

Thou      canst      not  then be   false to    any  man.

Farewell: my  blessing  season   this  in    thee.

LAERTES.

Most      humbly   do   I      take my  leave,     my  lord.

POLONIUS.

The time invites    you; go,  your servants tend.

LAERTES.

Farewell, Ophelia, and remember     well

What      I      have       said to    you.

OPHELIA.

’Tis  in    my  memory lock’d,

And you yourself  shall keep       the  key  of    it.

LAERTES.

Farewell.

[ Exit. ]

POLONIUS.

What      is’t,  Ophelia, he   hath said to    you?

OPHELIA.

So   please    you, something     touching the  Lord Hamlet.

POLONIUS.

Marry,    well bethought:

’Tis  told me  he   hath very oft   of    late

Given     private    time to    you; and you yourself

Have      of    your audience been      most      free and bounteous.

If     it     be   so,—as   so    ’tis   put  on   me,

And that in    way of    caution,—I    must      tell  you

You do   not  understand    yourself  so    clearly

As   it     behoves my  daughter and your honour.

What      is     between you?       Give me  up   the  truth.

OPHELIA.

He   hath,      my  lord, of    late made     many      tenders

Of   his   affection to    me.

POLONIUS.

Affection!      Pooh!     You speak     like  a     green     girl,

Unsifted in    such perilous  circumstance.

Do   you believe   his   tenders,  as    you call  them?

OPHELIA.

I      do   not  know,     my  lord, what       I      should    think.

POLONIUS.

Marry,    I’ll    teach      you; think      yourself  a     baby;

That you have       ta’en      these      tenders   for   true pay,

Which    are  not  sterling.  Tender   yourself  more      dearly;

Or,—not to    crack      the  wind       of    the  poor       phrase,

Roaming it     thus,—you’ll  tender    me  a     fool.

OPHELIA.

My  lord, he   hath importun’d    me  with love

In    honourable   fashion.

POLONIUS.

Ay,  fashion   you may call  it;    go   to,   go   to.

OPHELIA.

And hath given      countenance to    his   speech,  my  lord,

With       almost    all    the  holy vows      of    heaven.

POLONIUS.

Ay,  springes to    catch      woodcocks.   I      do   know,

When     the  blood     burns,     how prodigal the  soul

Lends     the  tongue   vows:      these      blazes,    daughter,

Giving    more      light than heat,      extinct    in    both,

Even       in    their promise, as    it     is     a-making,

You must      not  take for   fire. From      this  time

Be   something     scanter   of    your maiden   presence;

Set  your entreatments at    a     higher    rate

Than      a     command      to    parley.    For  Lord Hamlet,

Believe   so    much     in    him that he   is     young;

And with a     larger     tether     may he   walk

Than      may be   given      you. In    few, Ophelia,

Do   not  believe   his   vows;      for   they are  brokers,

Not of    that dye  which     their investments   show,

But  mere      implorators    of    unholy    suits,

Breathing      like  sanctified      and pious      bawds,

The better     to    beguile.  This is     for   all.

I      would     not, in    plain       terms,     from       this  time forth

Have      you so    slander   any  moment leisure

As   to    give words     or    talk  with the  Lord Hamlet.

Look       to’t, I      charge    you; come      your ways.

OPHELIA.

I      shall obey,      my  lord.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    IV.   The platform.

Enter      HAMLET,      HORATIO      and MARCELLUS .

HAMLET.

The air   bites       shrewdly; it     is     very cold.

HORATIO.

It     is     a     nipping  and an   eager     air.

HAMLET.

What      hour       now?

HORATIO.

I      think      it     lacks       of    twelve.

MARCELLUS.

No,  it     is     struck.

HORATIO.

Indeed?  I      heard     it     not. It     then draws     near the  season

Wherein the  spirit       held his   wont      to    walk.

[ A   flourish   of    trumpets,      and ordnance       shot off   within. ]

What      does       this  mean,     my  lord?

HAMLET.

The King doth       wake      tonight   and takes      his   rouse,

Keeps     wassail,  and the  swaggering   upspring reels;

And as    he   drains     his   draughts of    Rhenish  down,

The kettle-drum   and trumpet  thus bray out

The triumph  of    his   pledge.

HORATIO.

Is     it     a     custom?

HAMLET.

Ay   marry     is’t;

And to    my  mind,     though   I      am  native     here,

And to    the  manner  born,      it     is     a     custom

More      honour’d in    the  breach    than the  observance.

This heavy-headed      revel       east and west

Makes    us    traduc’d and tax’d       of    other      nations:

They       clepe      us    drunkards,     and with swinish   phrase

Soil  our  addition; and indeed    it     takes

From      our  achievements,      though   perform’d      at    height,

The pith and marrow  of    our  attribute.

So   oft   it     chances  in    particular       men

That for   some      vicious    mole      of    nature    in    them,

As   in    their birth,      wherein  they are  not  guilty,

Since      nature    cannot   choose   his   origin,

By   their o’ergrowth    of    some      complexion,

Oft  breaking down      the  pales      and forts of    reason;

Or   by   some      habit,     that too  much     o’erleavens

The form       of    plausive  manners;—that    these      men,

Carrying, I      say, the  stamp     of    one defect,

Being     Nature’s livery      or    Fortune’s star,—

His  virtues    else,—be they as    pure as    grace,

As   infinite    as    man may undergo,

Shall       in    the  general   censure  take corruption

From      that particular       fault.      The dram      of    evil

Doth       all    the  noble     substance      often      doubt

To   his   own scandal.

HORATIO.

Look,      my  lord, it     comes!

Enter      GHOST .

HAMLET.

Angels    and ministers of    grace      defend   us!

Be   thou a     spirit       of    health    or    goblin    damn’d,

Bring      with thee airs  from       heaven   or    blasts     from       hell,

Be   thy  intents    wicked    or    charitable,

Thou      com’st    in    such a     questionable shape

That I      will  speak     to    thee.      I’ll    call  thee Hamlet,

King,      father,    royal       Dane.     O,    answer   me!

Let  me  not  burst      in    ignorance;     but  tell

Why thy  canoniz’d      bones,    hearsed  in    death,

Have      burst      their cerements;    why the  sepulchre,

Wherein we   saw thee quietly    inurn’d,

Hath       op’d his   ponderous     and marble   jaws

To   cast thee up   again!     What      may this  mean,

That thou,      dead      corse,     again      in    complete       steel,

Revisit’st thus the  glimpses of    the  moon,

Making   night      hideous, and we   fools       of    nature

So   horridly  to    shake     our  disposition

With       thoughts beyond   the  reaches  of    our  souls?

Say, why is     this? Wherefore?    What      should    we   do?

[GHOST beckons HAMLET . ]

HORATIO.

It     beckons you to    go   away      with it,

As   if     it     some      impartment   did  desire

To   you alone.

MARCELLUS.

Look       with what       courteous      action

It     waves     you to    a     more      removed ground.

But  do   not  go   with it.

HORATIO.

No,  by   no   means.

HAMLET.

It     will  not  speak;    then will  I      follow     it.

HORATIO.

Do   not, my  lord.

HAMLET.

Why,      what       should    be   the  fear?

I      do   not  set   my  life   at    a     pin’s fee;

And for   my  soul, what       can  it     do   to    that,

Being     a     thing      immortal as    itself?

It     waves     me  forth       again.     I’ll    follow     it.

HORATIO.

What      if     it     tempt     you toward   the  flood,     my  lord,

Or   to    the  dreadful summit   of    the  cliff

That beetles   o’er his   base into the  sea,

And there      assume  some      other      horrible  form

Which    might     deprive   your sovereignty   of    reason,

And draw       you into madness?      Think      of    it.

The very place      puts toys of    desperation,

Without  more      motive,   into every      brain

That looks      so    many      fadoms   to    the  sea

And hears      it     roar beneath.

HAMLET.

It     waves     me  still.

Go   on,  I’ll    follow     thee.

MARCELLUS.

You shall not  go,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

Hold       off   your hands.

HORATIO.

Be   rul’d;      you shall not  go.

HAMLET.

My  fate cries out,

And makes    each       petty      artery     in    this  body

As   hardy     as    the  Nemean lion’s      nerve.

[GHOST beckons. ]

Still  am  I      call’d.     Unhand  me, gentlemen.

[ Breaking      free from       them. ]

By   heaven,  I’ll    make      a     ghost     of    him that lets  me.

I      say, away!—Go    on,  I’ll    follow     thee.

[ Exeunt  GHOST        and HAMLET . ]

HORATIO.

He   waxes     desperate      with imagination.

MARCELLUS.

Let’s follow;    ’tis   not  fit    thus to    obey       him.

HORATIO.

Have      after.      To   what       issue      will  this  come?

MARCELLUS.

Something    is     rotten     in    the  state       of    Denmark.

HORATIO.

Heaven  will  direct     it.

MARCELLUS.

Nay, let’s follow     him.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    V.    A     more      remote   part of    the  Castle.

Enter      GHOST        and HAMLET .

HAMLET.

Whither  wilt  thou lead me? Speak,    I’ll    go   no   further.

GHOST.

Mark      me.

HAMLET.

I      will.

GHOST.

My  hour       is     almost    come,

When     I      to    sulph’rous     and tormenting    flames

Must      render    up   myself.

HAMLET.

Alas, poor       ghost!

GHOST.

Pity me  not, but  lend thy  serious   hearing

To   what       I      shall unfold.

HAMLET.

Speak,    I      am  bound    to    hear.

GHOST.

So   art   thou to    revenge, when      thou shalt       hear.

HAMLET.

What?

GHOST.

I      am  thy  father’s   spirit,

Doom’d  for   a     certain    term       to    walk the  night,

And for   the  day  confin’d  to    fast  in    fires,

Till   the  foul crimes    done      in    my  days of    nature

Are  burnt      and purg’d    away.     But  that I      am  forbid

To   tell  the  secrets   of    my  prison-house,

I      could      a     tale unfold    whose    lightest   word

Would    harrow   up   thy  soul; freeze     thy  young    blood,

Make      thy  two eyes like  stars start from       their spheres,

Thy  knotted  and combined      locks      to    part,

And each       particular       hair to    stand      on   end

Like quills      upon      the  fretful     porcupine.

But  this  eternal   blazon    must      not  be

To   ears of    flesh and blood.    List, list,  O,    list!

If     thou didst       ever thy  dear father     love—

HAMLET.

O    God!

GHOST.

Revenge his   foul and most      unnatural      murder.

HAMLET.

Murder!

GHOST.

Murder   most      foul, as    in    the  best it     is;

But  this  most      foul, strange,  and unnatural.

HAMLET.

Haste     me  to    know’t,   that I,     with wings     as    swift

As   meditation    or    the  thoughts of    love

May sweep    to    my  revenge.

GHOST.

I      find thee apt;

And duller     shouldst thou be   than the  fat   weed

That rots itself in    ease on   Lethe      wharf,

Wouldst thou not  stir  in    this. Now,      Hamlet,  hear.

’Tis  given      out  that, sleeping in    my  orchard,

A     serpent   stung     me; so    the  whole     ear  of    Denmark

Is     by   a     forged    process  of    my  death

Rankly    abus’d;   but  know,     thou noble     youth,

The serpent   that did  sting       thy  father’s   life

Now       wears     his   crown.

HAMLET.

O    my  prophetic      soul!

Mine      uncle!

GHOST.

Ay,  that incestuous,    that adulterate     beast,

With       witchcraft      of    his   wit,  with traitorous      gifts,—

O    wicked    wit,  and gifts,       that have       the  power

So   to    seduce!—won      to    his   shameful lust

The will  of    my  most      seeming-virtuous queen.

O    Hamlet,  what       a     falling     off   was there,

From      me, whose    love was of    that dignity

That it     went       hand      in    hand      even       with the  vow

I      made     to    her  in    marriage;       and to    decline

Upon      a     wretch    whose    natural   gifts were       poor

To   those      of    mine.      But  virtue,     as    it     never      will  be       mov’d, Though     lewdness court      it     in    a     shape     of       heaven;

So   lust, though   to    a     radiant   angel      link’d,

Will sate itself in    a     celestial  bed

And prey on   garbage.

But  soft! methinks I      scent      the  morning air;

Brief let   me  be.  Sleeping within     my  orchard,

My  custom   always    of    the  afternoon,

Upon      my  secure    hour       thy  uncle      stole

With       juice of    cursed    hebenon in    a     vial,

And in    the  porches  of    my  ears did  pour

The leperous distilment,     whose    effect

Holds     such an   enmity    with blood     of    man

That swift as    quicksilver     it     courses  through

The natural   gates      and alleys      of    the  body;

And with a     sudden   vigour    it     doth       posset

And curd,      like  eager     droppings      into milk,

The thin and wholesome    blood.    So   did  it     mine;

And a     most      instant    tetter      bark’d     about,

Most      lazar-like,      with vile  and loathsome     crust

All   my  smooth  body.

Thus       was I,     sleeping, by   a     brother’s hand,

Of   life,  of    crown,    of    queen    at    once       dispatch’d:

Cut  off   even       in    the  blossoms       of    my  sin,

Unhous’led,   disappointed, unanel’d;

No   reckoning      made,     but  sent to    my  account

With       all    my  imperfections on   my  head.

O    horrible! O    horrible! most      horrible!

If     thou hast nature    in    thee,      bear it     not;

Let  not  the  royal       bed of    Denmark be

A     couch     for   luxury     and damned incest.

But  howsoever     thou pursu’st  this  act,

Taint      not  thy  mind,     nor  let   thy  soul contrive

Against   thy  mother   aught;    leave      her  to    heaven,

And to    those      thorns    that in    her  bosom    lodge,

To   prick       and sting       her. Fare thee well at    once!

The glow-worm   shows     the  matin     to    be   near,

And ’gins to    pale his   uneffectual    fire.

Adieu,    adieu,     adieu.     Hamlet,  remember     me.

[ Exit. ]

HAMLET.

O    all    you host of    heaven!  O    earth!     What      else?

And shall I      couple    hell? O,    fie!  Hold,      my  heart;

And you, my  sinews,   grow      not  instant    old,

But  bear me  stiffly      up.  Remember    thee?

Ay,  thou poor       ghost,     while      memory holds      a     seat

In    this  distracted      globe.     Remember    thee?

Yea, from       the  table      of    my  memory

I’ll    wipe       away      all    trivial      fond records,

All   saws       of    books,    all    forms,     all    pressures       past,

That youth     and observation   copied    there;

And thy  commandment     all    alone      shall live

Within    the  book      and volume   of    my  brain,

Unmix’d  with baser      matter.   Yes, by   heaven!

O    most      pernicious     woman!

O    villain,    villain,    smiling   damned villain!

My  tables.    Meet      it     is     I      set   it     down,

That one may smile,     and smile,     and be   a     villain!

At    least I      am  sure it     may be   so    in    Denmark.

[ Writing. ]

So,  uncle,     there      you are. Now       to    my  word;

It     is     ‘Adieu,    adieu,     remember     me.’

I      have       sworn’t.

HORATIO      and MARCELLUS.

[ Within. ]       My  lord, my  lord.

MARCELLUS.

[ Within. ]       Lord Hamlet.

HORATIO.

[ Within. ]       Heaven  secure    him.

HAMLET.

So   be   it!

MARCELLUS.

[ Within. ]       Illo,  ho,  ho,  my  lord!

HAMLET.

Hillo,      ho,  ho,  boy! Come,    bird, come.

Enter      HORATIO    and MARCELLUS .

MARCELLUS.

How is’t,  my  noble     lord?

HORATIO.

What      news,     my  lord?

HAMLET.

O,    wonderful!

HORATIO.

Good      my  lord, tell  it.

HAMLET.

No,  you’ll      reveal     it.

HORATIO.

Not I,     my  lord, by   heaven.

MARCELLUS.

Nor I,     my  lord.

HAMLET.

How say  you then,      would     heart      of    man once       think      it?—

But  you’ll      be   secret?

HORATIO      and MARCELLUS.

Ay,  by   heaven,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

There’s   ne’er      a     villain     dwelling in    all    Denmark

But  he’s an   arrant     knave.

HORATIO.

There     needs     no   ghost,     my  lord, come      from       the  grave

To   tell  us    this.

HAMLET.

Why,      right;      you are  i’     the  right;

And so,   without  more      circumstance at    all,

I      hold it     fit    that we   shake     hands     and part:

You, as    your business and desires   shall point      you,—

For  every      man hath business and desire,

Such       as    it     is;—and  for   my  own poor       part,

Look       you, I’ll    go   pray.

HORATIO.

These     are  but  wild and whirling  words,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

I’m  sorry       they offend    you, heartily;

Yes  faith,      heartily.

HORATIO.

There’s   no   offence,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

Yes, by   Saint      Patrick,   but  there      is,    Horatio,

And much     offence   too. Touching       this  vision     here,

It     is     an   honest    ghost,     that let   me  tell  you.

For  your desire     to    know      what       is     between us,

O’ermaster’t  as    you may.       And now,       good      friends,

As   you are  friends,   scholars, and soldiers,

Give me  one poor       request.

HORATIO.

What      is’t,  my  lord?       We  will.

HAMLET.

Never     make      known    what       you have       seen tonight.

HORATIO      and MARCELLUS.

My  lord, we   will  not.

HAMLET.

Nay, but  swear’t.

HORATIO.

In    faith,      my  lord, not  I.

MARCELLUS.

Nor I,     my  lord, in    faith.

HAMLET.

Upon      my  sword.

MARCELLUS.

We  have       sworn,    my  lord, already.

HAMLET.

Indeed,   upon      my  sword,    indeed.

GHOST.

[ Cries     under     the  stage. ]   Swear.

HAMLET.

Ha,  ha   boy, say’st      thou so?  Art   thou there,     truepenny?

Come     on,  you hear this  fellow     in    the  cellarage.

Consent to    swear.

HORATIO.

Propose  the  oath,      my  lord.

HAMLET.

Never     to    speak     of    this  that you have       seen.

Swear     by   my  sword.

GHOST.

[ Beneath. ]    Swear.

HAMLET.

Hic  et    ubique? Then      we’ll shift our  ground.

Come     hither,    gentlemen,

And lay   your hands     again      upon      my  sword.

Never     to    speak     of    this  that you have       heard.

Swear     by   my  sword.

GHOST.

[ Beneath. ]    Swear.

HAMLET.

Well said, old  mole!     Canst     work       i’     th’earth  so    fast?

A     worthy    pioner!   Once      more      remove,  good      friends.

HORATIO.

O    day  and night,     but  this  is     wondrous      strange.

HAMLET.

And therefore as    a     stranger give it     welcome.

There     are  more      things     in    heaven   and earth,     Horatio,

Than      are  dreamt   of    in    your philosophy.   But  come,

Here,      as    before,   never,     so    help you mercy,

How strange   or    odd soe’er     I      bear myself,—

As   I      perchance     hereafter shall think      meet

To   put  an   antic       disposition    on—

That you, at    such times      seeing    me, never      shall,

With       arms       encumber’d   thus,       or    this  head-shake,

Or   by   pronouncing of    some      doubtful phrase,

As   ‘Well,      we   know’,    or    ‘We could      and if     we   would’,

Or   ‘If    we   list   to    speak’;    or    ‘There     be   and if     they might’,

Or   such ambiguous    giving     out, to    note

That you know      aught     of    me:—this      not  to    do.

So   grace      and mercy     at    your most      need      help you,

Swear.

GHOST.

[ Beneath. ]    Swear.

HAMLET.

Rest,       rest, perturbed      spirit.      So,  gentlemen,

With       all    my  love I      do   commend      me  to    you;

And what       so    poor       a     man as    Hamlet   is

May do   t’express his   love and friending to    you,

God willing,   shall not  lack. Let  us    go   in    together,

And still  your fingers    on   your lips, I      pray.

The time is     out  of    joint.      O    cursed    spite,

That ever I      was born       to    set   it     right.

Nay, come,     let’s go   together.

[ Exeunt. ]

ACT II

SCENE    I.     A     room      in    Polonius’s      house.

Enter      POLONIUS and REYNALDO .

POLONIUS.

Give him this  money    and these      notes,     Reynaldo.

REYNALDO.

I      will, my  lord.

POLONIUS.

You shall do   marvellous    wisely,    good      Reynaldo,

Before    you visit him, to    make      inquiry

Of   his   behaviour.

REYNALDO.

My  lord, I      did  intend    it.

POLONIUS.

Marry,    well said; very well said. Look       you, sir,

Enquire  me  first what       Danskers are  in    Paris;

And how,       and who,       what       means,   and where     they keep,

What      company,      at    what       expense; and finding

By   this  encompassment   and drift of    question,

That they do   know      my  son, come      you more      nearer

Than      your particular       demands will  touch     it.

Take       you as    ’twere     some      distant    knowledge    of    him,

As   thus,       ‘I     know      his   father     and his   friends,

And in    part him’—do you mark      this, Reynaldo?

REYNALDO.

Ay,  very well, my  lord.

POLONIUS.

‘And in    part him, but,’ you may say, ‘not well;

But  if’t   be   he   I      mean,     he’s very wild;

Addicted so    and so;’  and there      put  on   him

What      forgeries you please;   marry,    none      so    rank As   may       dishonour      him; take heed      of    that;

But, sir,   such wanton,  wild, and usual      slips

As   are  companions  noted     and most      known

To   youth     and liberty.

REYNALDO.

As   gaming,  my  lord?

POLONIUS.

Ay,  or    drinking, fencing,  swearing,

Quarrelling,   drabbing.      You may go   so    far.

REYNALDO.

My  lord, that would     dishonour      him.

POLONIUS.

Faith       no,  as    you may season   it     in    the  charge.

You must      not  put  another  scandal  on   him,

That he   is     open      to    incontinency;

That’s     not  my  meaning: but  breathe  his   faults      so    quaintly

That they may seem      the  taints      of    liberty;

The flash and outbreak of    a     fiery mind,

A     savageness    in    unreclaimed  blood,

Of   general   assault.

REYNALDO.

But  my  good      lord—

POLONIUS.

Wherefore     should    you do   this?

REYNALDO.

Ay,  my  lord, I      would     know      that.

POLONIUS.

Marry,    sir,   here’s     my  drift,

And I      believe   it     is     a     fetch      of    warrant.

You laying     these      slight      sullies     on   my  son,

As   ’twere     a     thing      a     little soil’d      i’     th’   working,

Mark      you,

Your       party      in    converse,       him you would     sound,

Having   ever seen in    the  prenominate crimes

The youth     you breathe  of    guilty,     be   assur’d He     closes     with       you in    this  consequence;

‘Good     sir,’  or    so;   or    ‘friend,’   or    ‘gentleman’—

According      to    the  phrase    or    the  addition

Of   man and country.

REYNALDO.

Very good,     my  lord.

POLONIUS.

And then,      sir,   does       he   this,—

He   does—What  was I      about     to    say?

By   the  mass,     I      was about     to    say  something.    Where    did  I       leave?

REYNALDO.

At    ‘closes    in    the  consequence.’

At    ‘friend    or    so,’  and ‘gentleman.’

POLONIUS.

At    ‘closes    in    the  consequence’ ay,   marry!

He   closes     with you thus:       ‘I     know      the  gentleman,

I      saw him yesterday,      or    t’other    day,

Or   then,      or    then,      with such and such;      and, as    you say,

There     was he   gaming,  there      o’ertook in’s  rouse,

There     falling     out  at    tennis’:   or    perchance,

‘I     saw him enter      such a     house     of    sale’—

Videlicet, a     brothel,  or    so    forth.      See  you now;

Your       bait of    falsehood      takes      this  carp of    truth;

And thus do   we   of    wisdom  and of    reach,

With       windlasses,    and with assays    of    bias,

By   indirections   find directions      out.

So   by   my  former    lecture    and advice

Shall       you my  son. You have       me, have       you not?

REYNALDO.

My  lord, I      have.

POLONIUS.

God b’    wi’   you, fare you well.

REYNALDO.

Good      my  lord.

POLONIUS.

Observe his   inclination     in    yourself.

REYNALDO.

I      shall,      my  lord.

POLONIUS.

And let   him ply   his   music.

REYNALDO.

Well,       my  lord.

POLONIUS.

Farewell.

[ Exit       REYNALDO . ]

Enter      OPHELIA .

How now,       Ophelia, what’s    the  matter?

OPHELIA.

Alas, my  lord, I      have       been      so    affrighted.

POLONIUS.

With       what,      in    the  name     of    God?

OPHELIA.

My  lord, as    I      was sewing   in    my  chamber,

Lord Hamlet,  with his   doublet  all    unbrac’d,

No   hat  upon      his   head,      his   stockings foul’d,

Ungart’red,    and down-gyved  to    his   ankle,

Pale as    his   shirt,       his   knees     knocking each       other,

And with a     look so    piteous   in    purport

As   if     he   had been      loosed    out  of    hell

To   speak     of    horrors,  he   comes    before    me.

POLONIUS.

Mad for   thy  love?

OPHELIA.

My  lord, I      do   not  know,     but  truly I      do   fear it.

POLONIUS.

What      said he?

OPHELIA.

He   took me  by   the  wrist and held me  hard;

Then      goes       he   to    the  length    of    all    his   arm;

And with his   other      hand      thus o’er his   brow,

He   falls to    such perusal   of    my  face

As   he   would     draw       it.    Long      stay’d     he   so,

At    last,—a   little shaking  of    mine      arm,

And thrice     his   head      thus waving   up   and down,

He   rais’d      a     sigh so    piteous   and profound

As   it     did  seem      to    shatter   all    his   bulk

And end his   being.     That done,     he   lets  me  go,

And with his   head      over his   shoulder turn’d

He   seem’d   to    find his   way without  his   eyes,

For  out  o’    doors     he   went       without  their help,

And to    the  last  bended  their light on   me.

POLONIUS.

Come,    go   with me. I      will  go   seek the  King.

This is     the  very ecstasy   of    love,

Whose    violent    property fordoes   itself,

And leads      the  will  to    desperate      undertakings,

As   oft   as    any  passion  under     heaven

That does       afflict      our  natures.  I      am  sorry,—

What,     have       you given      him any  hard words     of    late?

OPHELIA.

No,  my  good      lord; but  as    you did  command,

I      did  repel      his   letters     and denied

His  access    to    me.

POLONIUS.

That hath made     him mad.

I      am  sorry       that with better     heed      and judgment

I      had not  quoted   him. I      fear’d     he   did  but  trifle,

And meant    to    wreck     thee.      But  beshrew my  jealousy!

It     seems    it     is     as    proper    to    our  age

To   cast beyond   ourselves in    our  opinions

As   it     is     common for   the  younger sort

To   lack discretion.     Come,    go   we   to    the  King.

This must      be   known,   which,    being     kept close,     might       move

More      grief to    hide than hate to    utter       love.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     A     room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      KING,    QUEEN,  ROSENCRANTZ,    GUILDENSTERN   and ATTENDANTS .

KING.

Welcome,      dear Rosencrantz  and Guildenstern.

Moreover      that we   much     did  long to    see  you,

The need      we   have       to    use  you did  provoke

Our hasty      sending. Something    have       you heard

Of   Hamlet’s transformation;     so    I      call  it,

Since      nor  th’exterior      nor  the  inward    man

Resembles     that it     was. What      it     should    be,

More      than his   father’s   death,    that thus hath put  him

So   much     from       th’understanding  of    himself,

I      cannot   dream    of.   I      entreat   you both

That,      being     of    so    young    days brought  up   with him,

And since      so    neighbour’d  to    his   youth     and humour,

That you vouchsafe      your rest here in    our  court

Some     little time,      so    by   your companies

To   draw       him on   to    pleasures       and to    gather,

So   much     as    from       occasion you may glean,

Whether aught     to    us    unknown afflicts    him thus

That,      open’d,   lies  within     our  remedy.

QUEEN.

Good      gentlemen,    he   hath much     talk’d      of    you,

And sure I      am, two men there      are  not  living

To   whom     he   more      adheres. If     it     will  please    you

To   show      us    so    much     gentry    and good      will

As   to    expend   your time with us    awhile,

For  the  supply    and profit      of    our  hope,

Your       visitation shall receive   such thanks

As   fits   a     king’s     remembrance.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Both       your majesties

Might,    by   the  sovereign      power     you have       of    us,

Put  your dread     pleasures       more      into command

Than      to    entreaty.

GUILDENSTERN.

We  both       obey,

And here give up   ourselves,      in    the  full  bent,

To   lay   our  service    freely      at    your feet

To   be   commanded.

KING.

Thanks,  Rosencrantz  and gentle    Guildenstern.

QUEEN.

Thanks,  Guildenstern  and gentle    Rosencrantz.

And I      beseech you instantly to    visit

My  too  much     changed son. Go,  some      of    you,

And bring      these      gentlemen     where     Hamlet   is.

GUILDENSTERN.

Heavens make      our  presence and our  practices

Pleasant and helpful    to    him.

QUEEN.

Ay,  amen.

[ Exeunt  ROSENCRANTZ,  GUILDENSTERN   and some      ATTENDANTS . ]

Enter      POLONIUS .

POLONIUS.

Th’ambassadors   from       Norway,  my  good      lord,

Are  joyfully   return’d.

KING.

Thou      still  hast been      the  father     of    good      news.

POLONIUS.

Have      I,     my  lord?       Assure    you, my  good      liege,

I      hold my  duty,      as    I      hold my  soul,

Both       to    my  God and to    my  gracious King:

And I      do   think,—or      else this  brain      of    mine

Hunts     not  the  trail of    policy     so    sure

As   it     hath us’d to    do—that I      have       found

The very cause     of    Hamlet’s lunacy.

KING.

O    speak     of    that, that do   I      long to    hear.

POLONIUS.

Give first admittance    to    th’ambassadors;

My  news      shall be   the  fruit to    that great      feast.

KING.

Thyself   do   grace      to    them,     and bring      them      in.

[ Exit       POLONIUS . ]

He   tells me, my  sweet     queen,    that he   hath found

The head      and source    of    all    your son’s      distemper.

QUEEN.

I      doubt     it     is     no   other      but  the  main,

His  father’s   death     and our  o’erhasty marriage.

KING.

Well,       we   shall sift   him.

Enter      POLONIUS with VOLTEMAND     and CORNELIUS .

Welcome,      my  good      friends!

Say, Voltemand,   what       from       our  brother   Norway?

VOLTEMAND.

Most      fair  return     of    greetings       and desires.

Upon      our  first, he   sent out  to    suppress

His  nephew’s       levies,     which     to    him appear’d

To   be   a     preparation   ’gainst    the  Polack;

But  better     look’d     into, he   truly found

It     was against   your Highness;      whereat  griev’d,

That so    his   sickness, age, and impotence

Was falsely     borne     in    hand,     sends     out  arrests

On  Fortinbras;     which     he,  in    brief,      obeys,

Receives rebuke    from       Norway;  and in    fine,

Makes    vow before    his   uncle      never      more

To   give th’assay  of    arms       against   your Majesty.

Whereon old  Norway,  overcome      with joy,

Gives      him three      thousand       crowns   in    annual    fee,

And his   commission   to    employ   those      soldiers

So   levied     as    before,   against   the  Polack:

With       an   entreaty, herein    further    shown,

[ Gives    a     paper. ]

That it     might     please    you to    give quiet      pass Through your       dominions     for   this  enterprise,

On  such regards   of    safety     and allowance

As   therein   are  set   down.

KING.

It     likes us    well;

And at    our  more      consider’d     time we’ll read,

Answer,  and think      upon      this  business.

Meantime      we   thank     you for   your well-took      labour.

Go   to    your rest, at    night      we’ll feast       together:.

Most      welcome home.

[ Exeunt  VOLTEMAND     and CORNELIUS . ]

POLONIUS.

This business is     well ended.

My  liege       and madam,  to    expostulate

What      majesty  should    be,  what       duty is,

Why day  is     day, night      night,     and time is     time.

Were      nothing  but  to    waste     night,     day  and time.

Therefore,      since      brevity    is     the  soul of    wit,

And tediousness   the  limbs      and outward flourishes,

I      will  be   brief.      Your       noble     son  is     mad.

Mad call  I      it;    for   to    define     true madness,

What      is’t   but  to    be   nothing  else but  mad?

But  let   that go.

QUEEN.

More      matter,   with less art.

POLONIUS.

Madam,  I      swear     I      use  no   art   at    all.

That he   is     mad,      ’tis   true: ’tis   true ’tis   pity;

And pity ’tis   ’tis   true. A     foolish    figure,

But  farewell  it,    for   I      will  use  no   art.

Mad let   us    grant      him then.      And now remains

That we   find out  the  cause     of    this  effect,

Or   rather     say, the  cause     of    this  defect,

For  this  effect      defective comes    by   cause.

Thus       it     remains, and the  remainder     thus.       Perpend,

I      have       a     daughter—have   whilst     she  is     mine—

Who       in    her  duty and obedience,    mark,

Hath       given      me  this. Now       gather,   and surmise.

[ Reads. ]

To   the  celestial, and my  soul’s     idol, the  most      beautified       Ophelia—

That’s     an   ill     phrase,   a     vile  phrase;   ‘beautified’    is     a     vile phrase:   but  you shall hear.

[ Reads. ]

these;     in    her  excellent white      bosom,   these,     &c.

QUEEN.

Came     this  from       Hamlet   to    her?

POLONIUS.

Good      madam,  stay awhile;   I      will  be   faithful.

[ Reads. ]

Doubt     thou the  stars are  fire,

                                   Doubt     that the  sun  doth       move,

                     Doubt     truth       to    be   a     liar,

                                   But  never      doubt     I      love.

O    dear Ophelia, I      am  ill     at    these      numbers.       I      have       not  art   to    reckon    my  groans.

But  that I      love thee best,       O    most      best,       believe   it.       Adieu.

              Thine      evermore,      most      dear lady, whilst     this  machine       is     to    him,                                   HAMLET.

This in    obedience     hath my  daughter show’d   me;

And more      above,    hath his   solicitings,

As   they fell   out  by   time,      by   means,   and place,

All   given      to    mine      ear.

KING.

But  how hath she  receiv’d  his   love?

POLONIUS.

What      do   you think      of    me?

KING.

As   of    a     man faithful   and honourable.

POLONIUS.

I      would     fain prove     so.   But  what       might     you think,

When     I      had seen this  hot  love on   the  wing,

As   I      perceiv’d it,    I      must      tell  you that,

Before    my  daughter told me, what       might     you, Or   my  dear       Majesty  your queen    here,      think,

If     I      had play’d     the  desk or    table-book,

Or   given      my  heart      a     winking, mute      and dumb,

Or   look’d     upon      this  love with idle  sight,

What      might     you think?     No,  I      went       round     to    work,

And my  young    mistress  thus I      did  bespeak:

‘Lord      Hamlet   is     a     prince,    out  of    thy  star.

This must      not  be.’  And then I      precepts gave       her,

That she  should    lock herself    from       his   resort,

Admit     no   messengers,  receive   no   tokens.

Which    done,     she  took the  fruits      of    my  advice,

And he,  repulsed,—a  short      tale to    make—

Fell  into a     sadness, then into a     fast,

Thence   to    a     watch,    thence    into a     weakness,

Thence   to    a     lightness, and, by   this  declension,

Into the  madness wherein  now he   raves,

And all    we   wail for.

KING.

Do   you think      ’tis   this?

QUEEN.

It     may be,  very likely.

POLONIUS.

Hath       there      been      such a     time,      I’d   fain know      that,

That I      have       positively said ‘’Tis so,’

When     it     prov’d    otherwise?

KING.

Not that I      know.

POLONIUS.

Take       this  from       this, if     this  be   otherwise.

[ Points   to    his   head      and shoulder. ]

If     circumstances       lead me, I      will  find

Where    truth       is     hid, though   it     were       hid  indeed

Within    the  centre.

KING.

How may we   try   it     further?

POLONIUS.

You know      sometimes    he   walks      four hours     together

Here       in    the  lobby.

QUEEN.

So   he   does       indeed.

POLONIUS.

At    such a     time I’ll    loose      my  daughter to    him.

Be   you and I      behind   an   arras       then,

Mark      the  encounter.     If     he   love her  not,

And be   not  from       his   reason    fall’n       thereon,

Let  me  be   no   assistant for   a     state,

But  keep       a     farm and carters.

KING.

We  will  try   it.

Enter      HAMLET,     reading.

QUEEN.

But  look where     sadly      the  poor       wretch    comes    reading.

POLONIUS.

Away,     I      do   beseech you, both       away

I’ll    board     him presently.      O,    give me  leave.

[ Exeunt  KING,    QUEEN and ATTENDANTS . ]

How does       my  good      Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET.

Well,       God-a-mercy.

POLONIUS.

Do   you know      me, my  lord?

HAMLET.

Excellent well. You’re    a     fishmonger.

POLONIUS.

Not I,     my  lord.

HAMLET.

Then      I      would     you were       so    honest    a     man.

POLONIUS.

Honest,  my  lord?

HAMLET.

Ay   sir, to  be  honest, as  this       world    goes,    is   to  be  one man      picked  out of  ten thousand.

POLONIUS.

That’s     very true, my  lord.

HAMLET.

For  if     the  sun  breed     maggots in    a     dead      dog, being     a       good      kissing    carrion,—

Have      you a     daughter?

POLONIUS.

I      have,      my  lord.

HAMLET.

Let  her not walk      i’    th’ sun.      Conception  is   a    blessing,       but not as  your      daughter may     conceive. Friend,    look to’t.

POLONIUS.

How say  you by   that?      [ Aside. ] Still  harping  on   my  daughter.       Yet  he   knew      me  not at     first;      he  said      I     was       a     fishmonger. He is   far gone,    far gone.    And      truly      in    my youth     I      suffered  much     extremity for   love; very near this.       I’ll    speak     to    him again.

—What  do   you read,      my  lord?

HAMLET.

Words,   words,    words.

POLONIUS.

What      is     the  matter,   my  lord?

HAMLET.

Between who?

POLONIUS.

I      mean     the  matter    that you read,      my  lord.

HAMLET.

Slanders, sir.   For  the  satirical  slave      says here that old  men have       grey beards;   that their faces      are  wrinkled; their eyes purging  thick       amber    and plum-tree     gum;      and that they have       a       plentiful  lack of    wit,  together with most      weak      hams.     All       which, sir,      though I     most     powerfully    and       potently       believe, yet I     hold      it   not honesty to have it     thus set       down.     For  you yourself, sir,   should    be   old  as    I      am, if       like  a     crab you could      go   backward.

POLONIUS.

[ Aside. ] Though  this  be   madness,       yet  there      is     a     method       in’t.—

Will you walk out  of    the  air,  my  lord?

HAMLET.

Into my  grave?

POLONIUS.

Indeed,   that is     out  o’    the  air.  [ Aside. ] How pregnant sometimes       his   replies    are! A happiness  that      often    madness      hits       on, which   reason  and       sanity   could    not so prosperously be   delivered of.   I      will  leave      him and suddenly       contrive  the  means of meeting between him and my  daughter.

My  honourable   lord, I      will  most      humbly   take my  leave      of       you.

HAMLET.

You cannot, sir, take      from     me anything      that      I     will more      willingly part      withal, except      my  life,  except    my  life,       except    my  life.

POLONIUS.

Fare you well, my  lord.

HAMLET.

These     tedious   old  fools.

Enter      ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN .

POLONIUS.

You go   to    seek the  Lord Hamlet;  there      he   is.

ROSENCRANTZ.

[ To Polonius. ]     God save you, sir.

[ Exit       POLONIUS . ]

GUILDENSTERN.

My  honoured      lord!

ROSENCRANTZ.

My  most      dear lord!

HAMLET.

My  excellent      good    friends! How     dost      thou,    Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz.

Good      lads, how do   ye    both?

ROSENCRANTZ.

As   the  indifferent     children  of    the  earth.

GUILDENSTERN.

Happy    in    that we   are  not  over-happy;

On  Fortune’s cap  we   are  not  the  very button.

HAMLET.

Nor the  soles      of    her  shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Neither,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

Then      you live  about     her  waist,     or    in    the  middle    of    her       favours?

GUILDENSTERN.

Faith,      her  privates  we.

HAMLET.

In    the  secret     parts      of    Fortune? O,    most      true; she  is     a       strumpet.      What’s    the  news?

ROSENCRANTZ.

None,     my  lord, but  that the  world’s   grown    honest.

HAMLET.

Then      is   doomsday   near.     But your      news     is   not true.       Let me question      more    in particular. What    have    you,       my good    friends, deserved      at  the hands   of  Fortune, that she  sends     you to    prison     hither?

GUILDENSTERN.

Prison,    my  lord?

HAMLET.

Denmark’s     a     prison.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Then      is     the  world      one.

HAMLET.

A     goodly    one; in    which     there      are  many      confines, wards,       and dungeons,     Denmark being     one o’    th’   worst.

ROSENCRANTZ.

We  think      not  so,   my  lord.

HAMLET.

Why,      then ’tis   none      to    you; for   there      is     nothing  either       good      or    bad but  thinking makes     it     so.   To   me  it     is       a     prison.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Why,      then your ambition makes    it     one; ’tis   too  narrow   for   your       mind.

HAMLET.

O    God,     I     could    be  bounded      in   a    nutshell,      and       count    myself   a    king      of  infinite space,      were       it       not  that I      have       bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN.

Which    dreams,  indeed,   are  ambition;       for   the  very substance       of    the  ambitious      is merely the  shadow  of    a     dream.

HAMLET.

A     dream    itself is     but  a     shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Truly,      and I      hold ambition of    so    airy  and light a     quality    that       it     is     but  a     shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET.

Then      are our beggars bodies, and       our monarchs    and       outstretch’d   heroes  the beggars’ shadows. Shall       we   to    th’  court?       For, by   my  fay,  I      cannot   reason.

ROSENCRANTZ     and GUILDENSTERN.

We’ll       wait upon      you.

HAMLET.

No   such matter.   I      will  not  sort you with the  rest of    my  servants;       for,  to    speak     to you    like  an   honest    man,      I      am  most       dreadfully      attended.      But, in    the  beaten   way of friendship,       what       make      you at    Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ.

To   visit you, my  lord, no   other      occasion.

HAMLET.

Beggar   that      I     am,       I     am even     poor     in   thanks; but  I     thank    you.      And      sure,     dear friends, my thanks  are  too dear      a    halfpenny.   Were    you       not sent      for?       Is   it   your own     inclining?     Is   it   a    free       visitation?      Come,   deal      justly    with      me.       Come,   come; nay,     speak.

GUILDENSTERN.

What      should    we   say, my  lord?

HAMLET.

Why,      anything.     But to  the purpose.      You      were     sent for; and       there    is   a    kind      of confession      in    your       looks,     which     your modesties     have       not  craft enough  to       colour.

I      know      the  good      King and Queen    have       sent for   you.

ROSENCRANTZ.

To   what       end, my  lord?

HAMLET.

That you must      teach      me. But  let   me  conjure   you, by   the       rights     of    our  fellowship, by the consonancy of  our youth,   by   the obligation    of  our ever-preserved   love, and      by   what       more      dear a     better     proposer could      charge    you withal,       be   even       and direct      with me, whether  you were       sent for       or    no.

ROSENCRANTZ.

[ To Guildenstern. ]      What      say  you?

HAMLET.

[ Aside. ] Nay, then I      have       an   eye  of    you. If     you love me, hold       not  off.

GUILDENSTERN.

My  lord, we   were       sent for.

HAMLET.

I      will tell you       why;     so  shall     my anticipation prevent your discovery,    and       your secrecy to    the  King and Queen       moult     no   feather.  I      have       of    late, but  wherefore      I know      not, lost  all    my  mirth,     forgone  all    custom   of    exercises;       and indeed,   it     goes so  heavily  with      my disposition   that       this       goodly  frame    the earth,    seems   to  me a sterile promontory;  this       most     excellent      canopy the air, look      you, this       brave o’erhanging     firmament,   this       majestical    roof fretted  with      golden  fire,       why,     it appears    no       other      thing      to    me  than a     foul and pestilent congregation       of    vapours.

What      a     piece      of    work       is     man!      How noble     in       reason?  How infinite    in    faculties, in form   and moving,  how       express   and admirable?    In    action     how like  an   angel?    In apprehension,      how like  a     god?       The beauty    of    the  world,       the  paragon of    animals.

And yet,  to    me, what       is     this  quintessence of    dust?      Man       delights  not  me; no,  nor woman    neither,  though   by   your       smiling   you seem      to    say  so.

ROSENCRANTZ.

My  lord, there      was no   such stuff in    my  thoughts.

HAMLET.

Why did  you laugh     then,      when      I      said ‘Man      delights  not       me’?

ROSENCRANTZ.

To   think,    my lord,      if    you       delight  not in   man,     what       Lenten  entertainment     the players   shall     receive  from       you.      We coted    them    on the way,      and       hither     are they coming to    offer       you service.

HAMLET.

He   that plays      the  king shall be   welcome,—his      Majesty  shall have       tribute    of    me; the   adventurous  knight    shall use  his   foil  and       target;    the  lover       shall not  sigh gratis, the      humorous     man       shall end his   part in    peace;    the  clown     shall make      those       laugh whose  lungs      are  tickle      a’    th’   sere; and the  lady shall       say  her  mind      freely,     or    the blank verse      shall halt for’t. What       players   are  they?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Even       those      you were       wont      to    take such delight   in—the       tragedians     of    the  city.

HAMLET.

How chances it   they      travel?  Their     residence,    both     in   reputation     and       profit,   was better    both       ways.

ROSENCRANTZ.

I      think      their inhibition       comes    by   the  means    of    the  late       innovation.

HAMLET.

Do   they hold the  same      estimation     they did  when      I      was in       the  city? Are  they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ.

No,  indeed,   they are  not.

HAMLET.

How comes    it?    Do   they grow      rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Nay, their     endeavour   keeps    in   the wonted pace;    but there      is,  sir, an  ayry      of children,  little      eyases, that      cry   out on the top of  question,     and       are most tyrannically clapped  for’t.     These   are now      the fashion, and       so  berattle  the common stages—so   they      call them—that  many    wearing  rapiers  are afraid    of goose-quills   and dare scarce       come      thither.

HAMLET.

What,     are  they children? Who       maintains      ’em?       How are  they       escoted? Will they pursue   the  quality    no   longer    than they can       sing?      Will they not  say  afterwards,    if they     should  grow     themselves    to  common      players—as  it   is   most     like,      if     their means are  no   better—their writers    do   them      wrong       to    make      them      exclaim   against their  own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Faith,      there      has  been      much     to    do   on   both       sides;       and the  nation    holds      it     no   sin   to tarre   them    to  controversy.  There    was       for a    while,    no money  bid for argument

unless    the  poet and the  player     went       to    cuffs       in    the       question.

HAMLET.

Is’t   possible?

GUILDENSTERN.

O,    there      has  been      much     throwing about     of    brains.

HAMLET.

Do   the  boys       carry       it     away?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Ay,  that they do,  my  lord. Hercules and his   load too.

HAMLET.

It     is   not very      strange; for my uncle    is   King      of  Denmark,      and       those    that      would make mouths at  him       while    my father   lived,    give      twenty, forty,     fifty,      a     hundred ducats  apiece  for his picture  in   little.     ’Sblood, there      is   something   in   this       more than   natural,  if       philosophy    could      find it     out.

[ Flourish of    trumpets within. ]

GUILDENSTERN.

There     are  the  players.

HAMLET.

Gentlemen,   you are  welcome to    Elsinore. Your       hands,    come.       The appurtenance of   welcome is     fashion   and ceremony.     Let       me  comply   with you in    this  garb,      lest my   extent     to    the       players,  which     I      tell  you must      show      fairly       outward,       should    more appear  like  entertainment      than yours.     You are       welcome.       But  my  uncle-father  and aunt-mother are  deceived.

GUILDENSTERN.

In    what,      my  dear lord?

HAMLET.

I      am  but  mad north-north-west. When     the  wind       is     southerly,       I      know      a     hawk      from a    handsaw.

Enter      POLONIUS .

POLONIUS.

Well be   with you, gentlemen.

HAMLET.

Hark       you, Guildenstern, and you too, at    each       ear  a     hearer.       That great      baby       you

see  there      is     not  yet  out  of    his   swaddling      clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Happily  he’s the  second   time come      to    them;     for   they say  an       old  man is     twice      a child.

HAMLET.

I      will  prophesy       he   comes    to    tell  me  of    the  players.  Mark       it.—You  say  right,      sir: for     a     Monday  morning ’twas      so       indeed.

POLONIUS.

My  lord, I      have       news      to    tell  you.

HAMLET.

My  lord, I      have       news      to    tell  you. When     Roscius   was an       actor      in    Rome—

POLONIUS.

The actors     are  come      hither,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

Buzz,      buzz.

POLONIUS.

Upon      my  honour.

HAMLET.

Then      came      each       actor      on   his   ass—

POLONIUS.

The best      actors   in   the world,   either    for tragedy,       comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,

historical-pastoral,

tragical-historical,

tragical-comical-

historical-pastoral, scene    individable,  or  poem    unlimited.    Seneca   cannot  be  too heavy,   nor Plautus too light,     for the law  of  writ       and       the liberty.  These   are the only men.

HAMLET.

O    Jephthah,      judge     of    Israel,     what       a     treasure  hadst       thou!

POLONIUS.

What      treasure  had he,  my  lord?

HAMLET.

Why—

’One       fair  daughter,      and no   more,

The which     he   loved      passing  well.’

POLONIUS.

[ Aside. ] Still  on   my  daughter.

HAMLET.

Am  I      not  i’     th’   right,      old  Jephthah?

POLONIUS.

If     you call  me  Jephthah,      my  lord, I      have       a     daughter that I       love passing  well.

HAMLET.

Nay, that follows   not.

POLONIUS.

What      follows   then,      my  lord?

HAMLET.

Why,

As   by   lot,  God wot,

and then,      you know,

It     came      to    pass,      as    most      like  it     was.

The first       row       of  the pious    chanson      will show    you       more.    For look      where   my abridgement comes.

Enter      four or    five  PLAYERS .

You are welcome,     masters,       welcome      all. I     am glad      to    see thee      well.      Welcome, good  friends. O,  my old friend!    Thy       face      is   valanc’d since     I     saw       thee      last.

Com’st   thou to    beard     me  in    Denmark?      What,     my  young       lady and mistress! By’r lady, your ladyship is     nearer    to    heaven       than when      I      saw you last, by   the  altitude of      a     chopine.       Pray God your voice,     like  a     piece      of    uncurrent      gold,       be   not  cracked within      the ring.      Masters,       you       are all    welcome.     We’ll     e’en      to’t like French falconers, fly    at       anything we   see. We’ll       have       a     speech   straight.  Come,       give us    a taste    of    your quality.   Come,    a     passionate       speech.

FIRST      PLAYER.

What      speech,  my  lord?

HAMLET.

I      heard    thee      speak    me a    speech  once,    but it   was       never    acted,   or  if    it   was,      not above    once,    for the  play,     I     remember,   pleased not the million, ’twas     caviare   to the   general. But it   was—as       I     received       it,   and others,  whose   judgments   in   such matters cried       in    the       top  of    mine—an      excellent play, well digested in    the  scenes, set   down      with as    much     modesty as    cunning. I      remember       one said there      were       no sallets in    the  lines to    make      the       matter    savoury, nor  no   matter    in    the  phrase    that

might     indite    the author  of  affectation,  but called   it   an  honest    method,       as wholesome     as    sweet,    and by   very       much     more      handsome     than fine. One speech   in it, I     chiefly    loved.   ’Twas    Aeneas’ tale       to  Dido,    and       thereabout    of  it   especially where  he  speaks  of  Priam’s slaughter.      If    it   live in   your      memory,      begin    at  this line, let   me  see, let   me  see:

The rugged   Pyrrhus,  like  th’   Hyrcanian      beast,—

It     is     not  so:   it     begins    with Pyrrhus—

The rugged   Pyrrhus,  he   whose    sable      arms,

                     Black      as    his   purpose, did  the  night      resemble

                     When     he   lay   couched in    the  ominous horse,

                     Hath       now this  dread     and black      complexion       smear’d

                     With       heraldry  more      dismal.   Head      to    foot

                     Now       is     he   total gules,     horridly  trick’d

                     With       blood     of    fathers,   mothers, daughters,     sons,

                     Bak’d      and impasted with the  parching streets,

                     That lend a     tyrannous      and a     damned light

                     To   their vile  murders. Roasted  in    wrath     and fire,

                     And thus o’ersized with coagulate      gore,

                     With       eyes like  carbuncles,    the  hellish    Pyrrhus

                     Old  grandsire       Priam     seeks.

So,  proceed  you.

POLONIUS.

’Fore       God,       my  lord, well spoken,  with good      accent    and       good      discretion.

FIRST      PLAYER.

Anon      he   finds       him,

                     Striking   too  short      at    Greeks.   His  antique  sword,

                     Rebellious     to    his   arm, lies  where     it     falls,

                     Repugnant    to    command.     Unequal match’d,

                     Pyrrhus   at    Priam     drives,    in    rage strikes    wide;

                     But  with the  whiff       and wind       of    his   fell   sword

                     Th’unnerved  father     falls. Then      senseless Ilium,

                     Seeming to    feel  this  blow,      with flaming   top

                     Stoops    to    his   base,      and with a     hideous  crash

                     Takes     prisoner  Pyrrhus’  ear. For  lo,   his   sword,

                     Which    was declining on   the  milky      head

                     Of   reverend Priam,    seem’d   i’     th’air      to    stick.

                     So,  as    a     painted  tyrant,    Pyrrhus   stood,

                     And like  a     neutral   to    his   will  and matter,

                     Did  nothing.

                     But  as    we   often      see  against   some      storm,

                     A     silence    in    the  heavens, the  rack stand      still,

                     The bold winds     speechless,    and the  orb  below

                     As   hush       as    death,    anon      the  dreadful thunder

                     Doth       rend the  region;   so    after Pyrrhus’  pause,

                     Aroused vengeance    sets him new a-work,

                     And never      did  the  Cyclops’ hammers fall

                     On  Mars’s    armour,  forg’d     for   proof      eterne,

                     With       less remorse  than Pyrrhus’  bleeding sword

                     Now       falls on   Priam.

                     Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All   you gods,

                     In    general   synod,    take away      her  power;

                     Break      all    the  spokes    and fellies     from       her       wheel,

                     And bowl       the  round     nave       down      the  hill   of       heaven,

                     As   low  as    to    the  fiends.

POLONIUS.

This is     too  long.

HAMLET.

It     shall to    the  barber’s, with your beard.—Prythee   say  on.

He’s for   a     jig   or    a     tale of    bawdry,  or    he   sleeps.

Say  on;  come      to    Hecuba.

FIRST      PLAYER.

But  who,       O    who,       had seen the  mobled  queen,—

HAMLET.

‘The mobled  queen’?

POLONIUS.

That’s     good!     ‘Mobled  queen’    is     good.

FIRST      PLAYER.

Run barefoot up   and down,     threat’ning    the  flames

                     With       bisson    rheum.   A     clout      upon      that head

                     Where    late the  diadem   stood,     and for   a     robe,

                     About     her  lank and all    o’erteemed    loins,

                     A     blanket,  in    th’alarm of    fear caught   up—

                     Who       this  had seen,      with tongue   in    venom       steep’d,

                     ’Gainst    Fortune’s state       would     treason   have       pronounc’d.

                     But  if     the  gods       themselves    did  see  her  then,                    When     she  saw Pyrrhus   make      malicious sport

                     In    mincing  with his   sword     her  husband’s     limbs,

                     The instant    burst      of    clamour  that she  made,—

                     Unless    things     mortal    move      them      not  at    all,—

                     Would    have       made     milch      the  burning  eyes of       heaven,

                     And passion  in    the  gods.

POLONIUS.

Look,      where     he   has  not  turn’d     his   colour,    and has  tears       in’s  eyes.      Pray you, no more.

HAMLET.

’Tis  well. I’ll    have       thee speak     out  the  rest of    this  soon.—Good       my  lord, will  you see  the  players   well bestowed?     Do   you hear,       let   them      be   well used;      for   they are the   abstracts and brief       chronicles      of    the  time.      After       your death     you were       better have    a     bad epitaph  than their ill     report     while      you       live.

POLONIUS.

My  lord, I      will  use  them      according      to    their desert.

HAMLET.

God’s     bodikin, man,     better.  Use       every    man      after     his   desert,  and       who      should scape      whipping?    Use       them      after     your      own      honour and       dignity. The       less they deserve,      the  more      merit      is     in    your bounty.  Take       them      in.

POLONIUS.

Come,    sirs.

HAMLET.

Follow    him, friends.   We’ll       hear a     play tomorrow.

[ Exeunt  POLONIUS with all    the  PLAYERS     but  the  First. ]

Dost thou hear me, old  friend?    Can you play The       Murder   of       Gonzago?

FIRST      PLAYER.

Ay,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

We’ll       ha’t tomorrow      night.     You could      for   a     need       study      a     speech   of    some      dozen or sixteen   lines,       which     I      would     set   down      and insert      in’t, could      you       not?

FIRST      PLAYER.

Ay,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

Very well. Follow    that lord, and look you mock      him not.

[ Exit       FIRST    PLAYER . ]

[ To Rosencrantz and       Guildenstern]      My good    friends, I’ll  leave      you       till  night.

You are  welcome to    Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Good      my  lord.

[ Exeunt  ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN . ]

HAMLET.

Ay,  so,   God b’    wi’   ye.   Now       I      am  alone.

O    what       a     rogue     and peasant  slave      am  I!

Is     it     not  monstrous     that this  player     here,

But  in    a     fiction,    in    a     dream    of    passion,

Could     force      his   soul so    to    his   own conceit

That from       her  working  all    his   visage    wan’d;

Tears      in    his   eyes,      distraction     in’s  aspect,

A     broken   voice,     and his   whole     function suiting

With       forms     to    his   conceit? And all    for   nothing!

For  Hecuba?

What’s    Hecuba  to    him, or    he   to    Hecuba,

That he   should    weep      for   her? What      would     he   do,

Had he   the  motive    and the  cue  for   passion

That I      have?     He   would     drown    the  stage      with tears

And cleave    the  general   ear  with horrid     speech;

Make      mad the  guilty,     and appal      the  free,

Confound      the  ignorant, and amaze    indeed,

The very faculties of    eyes and ears. Yet  I,

A     dull and muddy-mettled    rascal,    peak

Like John-a-dreams,   unpregnant   of    my  cause,

And can  say  nothing. No,  not  for   a     king

Upon      whose    property and most      dear life

A     damn’d  defeat    was made.     Am  I      a     coward?

Who       calls me  villain,    breaks    my  pate across?

Plucks    off   my  beard     and blows     it     in    my  face?

Tweaks   me  by   the  nose,      gives      me  the  lie    i’     th’   throat

As   deep      as    to    the  lungs?    Who       does       me  this?

Ha!  ’Swounds,      I      should    take it:    for   it     cannot   be But    I       am  pigeon-liver’d,      and lack gall

To   make      oppression    bitter,     or    ere  this

I      should    have       fatted     all    the  region    kites

With       this  slave’s    offal.       Bloody,   bawdy    villain!

Remorseless, treacherous,  lecherous,     kindless  villain!

Oh  vengeance!

Why,      what       an   ass  am  I!     This is     most      brave,

That I,     the  son  of    a     dear father     murder’d,

Prompted      to    my  revenge  by   heaven   and hell,

Must,      like  a     whore,    unpack   my  heart      with words

And fall   a-cursing      like  a     very drab,

A     scullion! Fie   upon’t!   Foh!

About,    my  brain!     I      have       heard

That guilty      creatures sitting     at    a     play,

Have      by   the  very cunning  of    the  scene,

Been      struck     so    to    the  soul that presently

They       have       proclaim’d     their malefactions.

For  murder,  though   it     have       no   tongue,  will  speak

With       most      miraculous    organ.    I’ll    have       these      players

Play something     like  the  murder   of    my  father

Before    mine      uncle.     I’ll    observe  his   looks;

I’ll    tent him to    the  quick.     If     he   but  blench,

I      know      my  course.   The spirit       that I      have       seen

May be   the  devil,      and the  devil       hath power

T’assume a     pleasing shape,    yea, and perhaps

Out of    my  weakness      and my  melancholy,

As   he   is     very potent    with such spirits,

Abuses   me  to    damn     me. I’ll    have       grounds

More      relative   than this. The play’s     the  thing

Wherein I’ll    catch      the  conscience    of    the  King.

[ Exit. ]

ACT III

SCENE    I.     A     room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      KING,    QUEEN,  POLONIUS,    OPHELIA,       ROSENCRANTZ        and GUILDENSTERN .

KING.

And can  you by   no   drift of    circumstance

Get  from       him why he   puts on   this  confusion,

Grating   so    harshly   all    his   days of    quiet

With       turbulent and dangerous     lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ.

He   does       confess   he   feels himself   distracted,

But  from       what       cause     he   will  by   no   means    speak.

GUILDENSTERN.

Nor do   we   find him forward  to    be   sounded,

But  with a     crafty      madness keeps     aloof

When     we   would     bring      him on   to    some      confession

Of   his   true state.

QUEEN.

Did  he   receive   you well?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Most      like  a     gentleman.

GUILDENSTERN.

But  with much     forcing   of    his   disposition.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Niggard  of    question, but  of    our  demands,

Most      free in    his   reply.

QUEEN.

Did  you assay      him to    any  pastime?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Madam,  it     so    fell   out  that certain    players

We  o’er-raught   on   the  way. Of   these      we   told him, And there       did  seem      in    him a     kind of    joy

To   hear of    it.    They       are  about     the  court,

And, as    I      think,      they have       already   order

This night      to    play before    him.

POLONIUS.

’Tis  most      true;

And he   beseech’d      me  to    entreat   your Majesties

To   hear and see  the  matter.

KING.

With       all    my  heart;     and it     doth       much     content  me

To   hear him so    inclin’d.

Good      gentlemen,    give him a     further    edge,

And drive       his   purpose  on   to    these      delights.

ROSENCRANTZ.

We  shall,      my  lord.

[ Exeunt  ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN . ]

KING.

Sweet     Gertrude,       leave      us    too,

For  we   have       closely    sent for   Hamlet   hither,

That he,  as    ’twere     by   accident, may here

Affront    Ophelia.

Her  father     and myself,   lawful     espials,

Will so    bestow   ourselves that, seeing    unseen,

We  may of    their encounter     frankly    judge,

And gather    by   him, as    he   is     behav’d,

If’t   be   th’affliction    of    his   love or    no

That thus he   suffers    for.

QUEEN.

I      shall obey       you.

And for   your part, Ophelia, I      do   wish

That your good      beauties be   the  happy     cause

Of   Hamlet’s wildness: so    shall I      hope      your virtues

Will bring      him to    his   wonted   way again,

To   both       your honours.

OPHELIA.

Madam,  I      wish it     may.

[ Exit       QUEEN . ]

POLONIUS.

Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious,   so    please    you,

We  will  bestow   ourselves.—[ To    Ophelia. ]       Read      on   this book, That show      of    such an   exercise  may colour

Your       loneliness.—We    are  oft   to    blame     in    this,

’Tis  too  much     prov’d,    that with devotion’s     visage

And pious      action     we   do   sugar      o’er

The devil       himself.

KING.

[ Aside. ] O    ’tis   too  true!

How smart     a     lash that speech   doth       give my  conscience!

The harlot’s   cheek,    beautied with plastering      art,

Is     not  more      ugly to    the  thing      that helps      it

Than      is     my  deed      to    my  most      painted  word.

O    heavy     burden!

POLONIUS.

I      hear him coming.  Let’s withdraw,      my  lord.

[ Exeunt  KING    and POLONIUS . ]

Enter      HAMLET .

HAMLET.

To   be,  or    not  to    be,  that is     the  question:

Whether ’tis   nobler    in    the  mind      to    suffer

The slings     and arrows    of    outrageous    fortune,

Or   to    take arms       against   a     sea  of    troubles,

And by   opposing       end them?     To   die—to   sleep,

No   more;     and by   a     sleep      to    say  we   end

The heart-ache,   and the  thousand       natural   shocks

That flesh is     heir to:   ’tis   a     consummation

Devoutly to    be   wish’d.    To   die,  to    sleep.

To   sleep,     perchance     to    dream—ay,   there’s    the  rub,

For  in    that sleep      of    death     what       dreams   may come,

When     we   have       shuffled  off   this  mortal    coil,

Must      give us    pause.    There’s   the  respect

That makes    calamity of    so    long life.

For  who would     bear the  whips     and scorns    of    time, The       oppressor’s    wrong,    the  proud     man’s     contumely,

The pangs     of    dispriz’d love, the  law’s       delay,

The insolence       of    office,     and the  spurns

That patient   merit      of    the  unworthy       takes,

When     he   himself   might     his   quietus   make

With       a     bare bodkin?  Who       would     these      fardels    bear,

To   grunt      and sweat     under     a     weary     life,

But  that the  dread     of    something     after death,

The undiscover’d  country,  from       whose    bourn

No   traveller  returns,  puzzles   the  will,

And makes    us    rather     bear those      ills   we   have

Than      fly    to    others    that we   know      not  of?

Thus       conscience    does       make      cowards of    us    all,

And thus the  native     hue of    resolution

Is     sicklied   o’er with the  pale cast of    thought,

And enterprises    of    great      pith and moment,

With       this  regard    their currents  turn awry

And lose the  name     of    action.    Soft you now,

The fair  Ophelia! Nymph,  in    thy  orisons

Be   all    my  sins remember’d.

OPHELIA.

Good      my  lord,

How does       your honour   for   this  many      a     day?

HAMLET.

I      humbly   thank     you; well, well, well.

OPHELIA.

My  lord, I      have       remembrances     of    yours

That I      have       longed   long to    re-deliver.

I      pray you, now receive   them.

HAMLET.

No,  not  I.

I      never      gave       you aught.

OPHELIA.

My  honour’d lord, you know      right       well you did,

And with them      words     of    so    sweet     breath    compos’d

As   made     the  things     more      rich; their perfume lost, Take       these      again;     for   to    the  noble     mind

Rich gifts wax poor       when      givers     prove     unkind.

There,     my  lord.

HAMLET.

Ha,  ha!  Are  you honest?

OPHELIA.

My  lord?

HAMLET.

Are  you fair?

OPHELIA.

What      means    your lordship?

HAMLET.

That if     you be   honest    and fair, your honesty  should    admit     no       discourse       to    your beauty.

OPHELIA.

Could     beauty,   my  lord, have       better     commerce     than with       honesty?

HAMLET.

Ay,  truly;      for   the  power     of    beauty    will  sooner    transform       honesty  from       what       it     is to a     bawd      than the  force       of    honesty  can  translate beauty    into his   likeness. This was       sometime      a     paradox, but  now the  time gives      it     proof.     I       did  love you once.

OPHELIA.

Indeed,   my  lord, you made     me  believe   so.

HAMLET.

You should  not have     believed       me;       for virtue    cannot  so    inoculate     our old stock but     we   shall relish      of    it.    I       loved      you not.

OPHELIA.

I      was the  more      deceived.

HAMLET.

Get  thee to    a     nunnery. Why wouldst  thou be   a     breeder  of       sinners?  I      am  myself indifferent  honest;   but  yet  I      could       accuse    me  of    such things     that it     were       better     my mother   had       not borne   me.       I     am very      proud,  revengeful,    ambitious,   with      more offences     at  my beck     than I     have     thoughts      to  put them    in,  imagination to  give them      shape,    or    time to    act  them      in.   What      should       such fellows    as    I      do   crawling

between earth      and heaven? We  are  arrant     knaves    all,   believe       none      of    us.   Go   thy ways to    a     nunnery. Where’s  your       father?

OPHELIA.

At    home,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

Let  the  doors     be   shut upon      him, that he   may play the  fool       nowhere but  in’s  own house.    Farewell.

OPHELIA.

O    help him, you sweet     heavens!

HAMLET.

If     thou dost marry,    I’ll    give thee this  plague    for   thy  dowry.    Be       thou as    chaste    as ice,     as    pure as    snow,     thou shalt       not       escape   calumny. Get  thee to    a     nunnery, go: farewell.   Or  if    thou wilt needs   marry,   marry    a    fool;      for wise      men      know      well enough what     monsters     you       make    of  them.     To  a    nunnery,      go; and       quickly  too.

Farewell.

OPHELIA.

O    heavenly powers,  restore   him!

HAMLET.

I      have       heard     of    your paintings too, well enough. God hath       given      you one face, and you       make    yourselves   another.       You      jig, you       amble,  and       you       lisp,      and nickname      God’s     creatures,      and make      your wantonness   your       ignorance.     Go   to,   I’ll no      more    on’t,      it   hath     made     me mad.     I     say,       we will have     no more    marriages.

Those     that are  married  already,  all    but  one, shall live; the  rest shall       keep       as    they are. To   a     nunnery, go.

[ Exit. ]

OPHELIA.

O,    what       a     noble     mind      is     here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s,      soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue,  sword,

Th’expectancy      and rose of    the  fair  state,

The glass      of    fashion   and the  mould    of    form,

Th’observ’d   of    all    observers,      quite,     quite      down!

And I,     of    ladies     most      deject     and wretched,

That suck’d    the  honey     of    his   music     vows,

Now       see  that noble     and most      sovereign      reason,

Like sweet     bells jangled   out  of    tune and harsh,

That unmatch’d     form       and feature   of    blown     youth Blasted with       ecstasy.  O    woe is     me,

T’have    seen what       I      have       seen,      see  what       I      see.

Enter      KING    and POLONIUS .

KING.

Love?     His  affections      do   not  that way tend,

Nor what       he   spake,    though   it     lack’d     form       a     little,

Was not  like  madness.       There’s   something     in    his   soul

O’er which     his   melancholy   sits  on   brood,

And I      do   doubt     the  hatch     and the  disclose

Will be   some      danger,  which     for   to    prevent,

I      have       in    quick      determination

Thus       set   it     down:     he   shall with speed     to    England

For  the  demand of    our  neglected      tribute:

Haply     the  seas and countries different,

With       variable  objects,  shall expel

This something     settled    matter    in    his   heart,

Whereon his   brains     still  beating  puts him thus

From      fashion   of    himself.  What      think      you on’t?

POLONIUS.

It     shall do   well. But  yet  do   I      believe

The origin     and commencement   of    his   grief

Sprung   from       neglected      love. How now,       Ophelia?

You need      not  tell  us    what       Lord Hamlet   said,

We  heard     it     all.   My  lord, do   as    you please,

But  if     you hold it     fit,   after the  play,

Let  his   queen    mother   all    alone      entreat   him

To   show      his   grief,      let   her  be   round     with him,

And I’ll    be   plac’d,    so    please    you, in    the  ear

Of   all    their conference.   If     she  find him not,

To   England  send       him; or    confine   him where

Your       wisdom  best shall think.

KING.

It     shall be   so.

Madness in    great      ones       must      not  unwatch’d     go.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     A     hall  in    the  Castle.

Enter      HAMLET      and certain    PLAYERS .

HAMLET.

Speak     the  speech,  I      pray you, as    I      pronounced  it     to    you,       trippingly       on   the  tongue.

But  if    you       mouth  it,   as  many    of  your      players  do, I      had       as  lief the town-crier spoke my  lines.      Nor do   not       saw the  air   too  much     with your hand,     thus,       but  use  all gently;    for   in    the  very torrent,   tempest, and, as    I      may say,       whirlwind      of    passion, you  must     acquire and       beget    a     temperance that      may      give      it   smoothness. O,  it offends   me  to    the  soul to    hear a     robustious     periwig-pated       fellow     tear a     passion  to tatters,      to    very rags,       to    split       the  ears of    the  groundlings,  who,       for   the  most      part, are capable  of  nothing but inexplicable dumb   shows   and       noise.     I     would   have such    a     fellow     whipped for   o’erdoing       Termagant.    It     out-Herods   Herod.    Pray you avoid      it.

FIRST      PLAYER.

I      warrant  your honour.

HAMLET.

Be   not  too  tame      neither;  but  let   your own discretion      be   your       tutor.      Suit the  action to the word,    the word     to  the action,    with      this       special  observance, that      you o’erstep       not  the  modesty of    nature;   for   anything so    overdone       is       from       the  purpose of     playing,  whose    end, both       at    the       first and now,       was and is,    to    hold as    ’twere     the mirror      up   to  nature;  to  show    virtue    her own      feature, scorn    her  own      image,  and the very age and body      of    the  time his       form       and pressure. Now,      this  overdone,      or come tardy     off,  though it   make    the unskilful       laugh,   cannot  but make      the judicious grieve;    the  censure  of    the  which     one must       in    your allowance      o’erweigh a    whole     theatre   of    others.       O,    there      be   players   that I      have       seen play—and       heard others  praise,    and that highly—not   to    speak     it       profanely,      that, neither   having    the accent     of    Christians,       nor  the  gait of    Christian, pagan,    nor  man,      have       so       strutted and   bellowed that I      have       thought  some      of       Nature’s journeymen   had made     men, and       not  made     them       well, they imitated humanity       so    abominably.

FIRST      PLAYER.

I      hope      we   have       reform’d that indifferently   with us,   sir.

HAMLET.

O    reform    it     altogether.    And let   those      that play your clowns       speak     no   more      than is set      down    for them.    For there      be  of  them    that      will themselves  laugh,   to  set on some quantity       of  barren  spectators    to  laugh    too,      though   in   the meantime    some

necessary      question      of  the play      be  then     to  be  considered.   That’s   villanous,     and shows   a     most      pitiful       ambition in    the  fool that uses it.    Go   make      you ready.

[ Exeunt  PLAYERS . ]

Enter      POLONIUS,  ROSENCRANTZ    and GUILDENSTERN .

How now,       my  lord?

Will the  King hear this  piece      of    work?

POLONIUS.

And the  Queen    too, and that presently.

HAMLET.

Bid  the  players   make      haste.

[ Exit       POLONIUS . ]

Will you two help to    hasten    them?

ROSENCRANTZ     and GUILDENSTERN.

We  will, my  lord.

[ Exeunt  ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN . ]

HAMLET.

What      ho,  Horatio!

Enter      HORATIO .

HORATIO.

Here,      sweet     lord, at    your service.

HAMLET.

Horatio,  thou art   e’en as    just  a     man

As   e’er my  conversation cop’d      withal.

HORATIO.

O    my  dear lord.

HAMLET.

Nay, do   not  think      I      flatter;

For  what       advancement may I      hope      from       thee,

That no   revenue  hast, but  thy  good      spirits

To   feed and clothe     thee?      Why should    the  poor       be   flatter’d?

No,  let   the  candied  tongue   lick  absurd    pomp,

And crook      the  pregnant hinges    of    the  knee

Where    thrift       may follow     fawning. Dost thou hear?

Since      my  dear soul was mistress  of    her  choice,

And could      of    men distinguish,    her  election

Hath       seal’d     thee for   herself.   For  thou hast been

As   one, in    suffering all,   that suffers    nothing,

A     man that Fortune’s buffets    and rewards

Hast ta’en      with equal      thanks.   And bles’d     are  those

Whose    blood     and judgment      are  so    well co-mingled

That they are  not  a     pipe for   Fortune’s finger

To   sound     what       stop she  please.   Give me  that man

That is     not  passion’s slave,      and I      will  wear       him

In    my  heart’s    core,       ay,   in    my  heart      of    heart,

As   I      do   thee.      Something    too  much     of    this.

There     is     a     play tonight   before    the  King.

One scene     of    it     comes    near the  circumstance

Which    I      have       told thee,      of    my  father’s   death.

I      prythee,  when      thou see’st     that act  a-foot,

Even       with the  very comment      of    thy  soul

Observe mine      uncle.     If     his   occulted guilt

Do   not  itself unkennel in    one speech,

It     is     a     damned ghost     that we   have       seen;

And my  imaginations are  as    foul

As   Vulcan’s stithy.     Give him heedful   note;

For  I      mine      eyes will  rivet to    his   face;

And after we   will  both       our  judgments     join

In    censure  of    his   seeming.

HORATIO.

Well,       my  lord.

If     he   steal aught     the  whilst     this  play is     playing,

And scape     detecting,      I      will  pay  the  theft.

HAMLET.

They       are  coming   to    the  play. I      must      be   idle.

Get  you a     place.

Danish    march.    A     flourish.  Enter      KING,    QUEEN,  POLONIUS,       OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ,   GUILDENSTERN   and others.

KING.

How fares       our  cousin    Hamlet?

HAMLET.

Excellent, i’     faith;      of    the  chameleon’s  dish: I      eat  the  air,       promise-crammed:      you cannot    feed capons   so.

KING.

I      have       nothing  with this  answer,  Hamlet;  these      words     are       not  mine.

HAMLET.

No,  nor  mine      now.       [ To Polonius. ]     My  lord, you play’d     once       i’     th’university,  you say?

POLONIUS.

That did  I,     my  lord, and was accounted     a     good      actor.

HAMLET.

What      did  you enact?

POLONIUS.

I      did  enact      Julius      Caesar.   I      was kill’d i’     th’   Capitol.       Brutus    killed      me.

HAMLET.

It     was a     brute      part of    him to    kill   so    capital    a     calf there.       Be   the  players   ready?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Ay,  my  lord; they stay upon      your patience.

QUEEN.

Come     hither,    my  dear Hamlet,  sit    by   me.

HAMLET.

No,  good      mother,  here’s     metal     more      attractive.

POLONIUS.

[ To the  King. ]     O    ho!  do   you mark      that?

HAMLET.

Lady,      shall I      lie    in    your lap?

[ Lying    down      at    OPHELIA’S   feet. ]

OPHELIA.

No,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

I      mean,     my  head      upon      your lap?

OPHELIA.

Ay,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

Do   you think      I      meant    country  matters?

OPHELIA.

I      think      nothing, my  lord.

HAMLET.

That’s     a     fair  thought  to    lie    between maids’    legs.

OPHELIA.

What      is,    my  lord?

HAMLET.

Nothing.

OPHELIA.

You are  merry,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

Who,      I?

OPHELIA.

Ay,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

O    God,       your only jig-maker!     What      should    a     man do   but       be   merry?    For  look you how cheerfully      my  mother   looks,       and my  father     died within’s  two hours.

OPHELIA.

Nay, ’tis   twice      two months,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

So   long?    Nay      then,     let  the devil     wear     black,    for I’ll    have     a    suit       of  sables.  O

heavens! die two       months ago,      and       not forgotten     yet?       Then     there’s  hope     a    great man’s memory       may      outlive    his life half       a    year.     But by’r       lady,     he  must      build churches    then;     or  else      shall     he  suffer    not  thinking on, with      the hobby-horse, whose  epitaph  is     ‘For,       O,    for   O,    the  hobby-horse is     forgot!’

Trumpets       sound.    The dumb     show      enters.

Enter      a     King and a     Queen    very lovingly; the  Queen       embracing     him and he   her.

She kneels,  and       makes   show    of  protestation unto    him.       He takes    her up, and declines his head     upon    her neck.      Lays      him       down    upon    a    bank     of  flowers. She, seeing    him asleep,   leaves     him. Anon      comes    in    a       fellow,    takes      off   his   crown,    kisses

it,    pours     poison    in    the  King’s     ears, and exits.      The Queen       returns,  finds       the  King dead,     and makes    passionate       action.    The Poisoner with some      three      or    four Mutes, comes       in    again,     seeming to    lament   with her. The dead      body       is     carried    away.     The Poisoner woos      the  Queen    with gifts.       She seems    loth and unwilling awhile,   but  in the     end accepts       his   love.

[ Exeunt. ]

OPHELIA.

What      means    this, my  lord?

HAMLET.

Marry,    this  is     miching  mallicho; it     means    mischief.

OPHELIA.

Belike     this  show      imports  the  argument      of    the  play.

Enter      PROLOGUE .

HAMLET.

We  shall know      by   this  fellow:    the  players   cannot   keep       counsel; they’ll     tell  all.

OPHELIA.

Will they tell  us    what       this  show      meant?

HAMLET.

Ay,  or  any       show    that      you’ll    show    him.      Be  not you ashamed     to  show,    he’ll      not shame   to    tell  you what       it     means.

OPHELIA.

You are  naught,  you are  naught:  I’ll    mark      the  play.

PROLOGUE.

For  us,   and for   our  tragedy,

                     Here       stooping to    your clemency,

                     We  beg your hearing  patiently.

HAMLET.

Is     this  a     prologue,      or    the  posy       of    a     ring?

OPHELIA.

’Tis  brief,      my  lord.

HAMLET.

As   woman’s love.

Enter      a     KING    and a     QUEEN .

PLAYER  KING.

Full  thirty      times      hath Phoebus’ cart gone      round

Neptune’s     salt  wash      and Tellus’    orbed     ground,

And thirty      dozen     moons    with borrow’d sheen

About     the  world      have       times      twelve    thirties    been,

Since      love our  hearts,    and Hymen   did  our  hands

Unite      commutual    in    most      sacred    bands.

PLAYER  QUEEN.

So   many      journeys may the  sun  and moon

Make      us    again      count     o’er ere  love be   done.

But, woe is     me, you are  so    sick of    late,

So   far   from       cheer      and from       your former    state,

That I      distrust   you. Yet, though   I      distrust,

Discomfort    you, my  lord, it     nothing  must:

For  women’s fear and love holds      quantity,

In    neither   aught,    or    in    extremity.

Now       what       my  love is,    proof      hath made     you know,

And as    my  love is     siz’d,      my  fear is     so.

Where    love is     great,     the  littlest     doubts   are  fear;

Where    little fears       grow      great,     great      love grows     there.

PLAYER  KING.

Faith,      I      must      leave      thee,      love, and shortly    too:

My  operant  powers   their functions leave      to    do:

And thou shalt       live  in    this  fair  world      behind,

Honour’d,      belov’d,  and haply      one as    kind

For  husband shalt       thou—

PLAYER  QUEEN.

O    confound      the  rest.

Such       love must      needs     be   treason   in    my  breast.

In    second   husband let   me  be   accurst!

None      wed the  second   but  who kill’d the  first.

HAMLET.

[ Aside. ] Wormwood,  wormwood.

PLAYER  QUEEN.

The instances that second   marriage move

Are  base respects of    thrift,      but  none      of    love.

A     second   time I      kill   my  husband dead,

When     second   husband kisses     me  in    bed.

PLAYER  KING.

I      do   believe   you think      what       now you speak;

But  what       we   do   determine,     oft   we   break.

Purpose  is     but  the  slave      to    memory,

Of   violent    birth,      but  poor       validity:

Which    now,       like  fruit unripe,   sticks      on   the  tree,

But  fall   unshaken      when      they mellow   be.

Most      necessary      ’tis   that we   forget

To   pay  ourselves what       to    ourselves is     debt.

What      to    ourselves in    passion  we   propose,

The passion  ending,   doth       the  purpose  lose.

The violence of    either     grief or    joy

Their      own enactures      with themselves    destroy.

Where    joy   most      revels,    grief doth       most      lament;

Grief       joys, joy   grieves,  on   slender   accident.

This world      is     not  for   aye; nor  ’tis   not  strange

That even       our  loves      should    with our  fortunes change,

For  ’tis   a     question left  us    yet  to    prove,

Whether love lead fortune,  or    else fortune   love.

The great      man down,     you mark      his   favourite flies,

The poor       advanc’d makes    friends    of    enemies;

And hitherto  doth       love on   fortune   tend:

For  who not  needs     shall never      lack a     friend,

And who in    want       a     hollow    friend     doth       try,

Directly   seasons  him his   enemy.

But  orderly   to    end where     I      begun,

Our wills and fates       do   so    contrary run

That our  devices   still  are  overthrown.

Our thoughts are  ours,       their ends       none      of    our  own.

So   think      thou wilt  no   second   husband wed,

But  die  thy  thoughts when      thy  first lord is     dead.

PLAYER  QUEEN.

Nor earth      to    me  give food,      nor  heaven   light,

Sport      and repose    lock from       me  day  and night,

To   desperation   turn my  trust and hope,

An   anchor’s cheer      in    prison     be   my  scope,

Each       opposite that blanks    the  face of    joy,

Meet      what       I      would     have       well, and it     destroy!

Both       here and hence     pursue    me  lasting    strife,

If,    once       a     widow,   ever I      be   wife.

HAMLET.

[ To Ophelia. ]       If     she  should    break      it     now.

PLAYER  KING.

’Tis  deeply    sworn.    Sweet,    leave      me  here awhile.

My  spirits     grow      dull, and fain I      would     beguile

The tedious   day  with sleep.

[ Sleeps. ]

PLAYER  QUEEN.

Sleep      rock thy  brain,

And never      come      mischance     between us    twain.

[ Exit. ]

HAMLET.

Madam,  how like  you this  play?

QUEEN.

The lady protests  too  much,     methinks.

HAMLET.

O,    but  she’ll      keep       her  word.

KING.

Have      you heard     the  argument?     Is     there      no   offence   in’t?

HAMLET.

No,  no,  they do   but  jest, poison    in    jest; no   offence   i’     th’       world.

KING.

What      do   you call  the  play?

HAMLET.

The Mousetrap.   Marry,    how?      Tropically.      This play is     the       image     of    a     murder   done in   Vienna. Gonzago      is   the Duke’s    name,   his wife      Baptista:      you       shall     see anon;

’tis   a    knavish piece    of  work:    but what     o’   that?     Your       majesty, and       we that      have free     souls,     it       touches  us    not. Let  the  gall’d      jade wince;    our  withers   are       unwrung.

Enter      LUCIANUS .

This is     one Lucianus, nephew  to    the  King.

OPHELIA.

You are  a     good      chorus,   my  lord.

HAMLET.

I      could      interpret between you and your love, if     I      could      see       the  puppets  dallying.

OPHELIA.

You are  keen,      my  lord, you are  keen.

HAMLET.

It     would     cost you a     groaning to    take off   my  edge.

OPHELIA.

Still  better,    and worse.

HAMLET.

So   you       mistake your      husbands.—Begin,     murderer.    Pox,       leave    thy damnable faces,  and begin.     Come,    the  croaking       raven      doth       bellow    for   revenge.

LUCIANUS.

Thoughts       black,     hands     apt, drugs     fit,   and time agreeing,

Confederate  season,   else no   creature seeing;

Thou      mixture   rank,       of    midnight weeds    collected,

With       Hecate’s ban thrice     blasted,  thrice     infected,

Thy  natural   magic     and dire property

On  wholesome    life   usurp     immediately.

[ Pours   the  poison    into the  sleeper’s ears. ]

HAMLET.

He   poisons him       i’    th’garden     for’s      estate.  His name’s Gonzago.      The       story     is extant,      and written   in    very       choice    Italian.    You shall see  anon      how the  murderer gets       the  love of    Gonzago’s     wife.

OPHELIA.

The King rises.

HAMLET.

What,     frighted  with false fire?

QUEEN.

How fares       my  lord?

POLONIUS.

Give o’er the  play.

KING.

Give me  some      light.      Away.

All.

Lights,    lights,     lights.

[ Exeunt  all    but  HAMLET      and HORATIO . ]

HAMLET.

Why,      let   the  strucken deer go   weep,

The hart ungalled play;

For  some      must      watch,    while      some      must      sleep,

So   runs the  world      away.

Would    not  this, sir,   and a     forest     of    feathers, if     the  rest of       my  fortunes turn Turk with me; with two Provincial      roses      on       my  razed      shoes,    get  me  a     fellowship      in    a cry       of       players,  sir?

HORATIO.

Half a     share.

HAMLET.

A     whole     one, I.

For  thou dost know,     O    Damon   dear,

This realm     dismantled    was

Of   Jove himself,  and now reigns     here

A     very,       very—pajock.

HORATIO.

You might     have       rhymed.

HAMLET.

O    good      Horatio,  I’ll    take the  ghost’s   word      for   a     thousand       pound.   Didst      perceive?

HORATIO.

Very well, my  lord.

HAMLET.

Upon      the  talk  of    the  poisoning?

HORATIO.

I      did  very well note him.

HAMLET.

Ah,  ha!  Come,    some      music.    Come,    the  recorders.

For  if     the  king like  not  the  comedy,

Why then,      belike     he   likes it     not, perdie.

Come,    some      music.

Enter      ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN .

GUILDENSTERN.

Good      my  lord, vouchsafe      me  a     word      with you.

HAMLET.

Sir,  a     whole     history.

GUILDENSTERN.

The King,      sir—

HAMLET.

Ay,  sir,   what       of    him?

GUILDENSTERN.

Is     in    his   retirement,    marvellous    distempered.

HAMLET.

With       drink,      sir?

GUILDENSTERN.

No,  my  lord; rather     with choler.

HAMLET.

Your       wisdom  should    show      itself more      richer     to    signify       this  to    the  doctor,   for   me to     put  him to    his   purgation       would     perhaps  plunge   him into far   more      choler.

GUILDENSTERN.

Good      my  lord, put  your discourse       into some      frame,    and start       not  so    wildly     from my affair.

HAMLET.

I      am  tame,     sir,   pronounce.

GUILDENSTERN.

The Queen    your mother,  in    most      great      affliction of    spirit,       hath sent me  to    you.

HAMLET.

You are  welcome.

GUILDENSTERN.

Nay, good      my  lord, this  courtesy is     not  of    the  right       breed.       If     it     shall please    you to

make      me a    wholesome  answer, I     will do your      mother’s       commandment;  if    not, your      pardon   and my  return     shall       be   the  end of    my  business.

HAMLET.

Sir,  I      cannot.

GUILDENSTERN.

What,     my  lord?

HAMLET.

Make      you a     wholesome    answer.  My  wit’s diseased. But, sir,   such       answer   as    I      can make,      you shall command;     or    rather,       as    you say, my  mother.  Therefore      no   more, but      to    the       matter.   My  mother,  you say,—

ROSENCRANTZ.

Then      thus      she says:     your      behaviour    hath     struck   her  into      amazement and admiration.

HAMLET.

O    wonderful      son, that can  so    stonish   a     mother!  But  is     there       no   sequel    at    the  heels of  this  mother’s admiration?

ROSENCRANTZ.

She desires   to    speak     with you in    her  closet     ere  you go   to       bed.

HAMLET.

We  shall obey,      were       she  ten  times      our  mother.  Have      you       any  further    trade      with us?

ROSENCRANTZ.

My  lord, you once       did  love me.

HAMLET.

And so    I      do   still, by   these      pickers   and stealers.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Good      my  lord, what       is     your cause     of    distemper?    You do       surely     bar  the  door       upon your     own liberty     if     you deny       your griefs      to    your friend.

HAMLET.

Sir,  I      lack advancement.

ROSENCRANTZ.

How can       that      be, when    you       have     the voice    of  the  King      himself for your succession  in    Denmark?

HAMLET.

Ay,  sir,   but  while      the  grass      grows—the   proverb  is       something     musty.

Re-enter the  PLAYERS     with recorders.

O,    the  recorders.      Let  me  see  one.—To withdraw with you, why do       you go   about to recover   the  wind       of    me, as    if     you       would     drive       me  into a     toil?

GUILDENSTERN.

O    my  lord, if     my  duty be   too  bold,      my  love is     too       unmannerly.

HAMLET.

I      do   not  well understand    that. Will you play upon      this  pipe?

GUILDENSTERN.

My  lord, I      cannot.

HAMLET.

I      pray you.

GUILDENSTERN.

Believe   me, I      cannot.

HAMLET.

I      do   beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN.

I      know      no   touch     of    it,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

’Tis  as    easy as    lying:      govern   these      ventages with your finger       and thumb,   give it breath with      your      mouth, and       it   will  discourse     most     eloquent      music.   Look     you, these       are  the  stops.

GUILDENSTERN.

But  these      cannot   I      command      to    any  utterance      of       harmony.       I      have       not  the  skill.

HAMLET.

Why,      look      you       now,     how      unworthy     a    thing    you make    of  me!       You      would   play upon    me; you       would     seem      to    know      my  stops;     you would     pluck       out  the  heart      of my     mystery;       you       would   sound   me  from     my lowest   note     to  the top of  my compass;       and there      is     much     music,    excellent voice,     in    this  little       organ,    yet  cannot you    make    it   speak.   ’Sblood, do you       think     I     am easier   to  be  played  on than     a pipe?       Call me  what       instrument    you will, though   you can  fret  me,       you cannot   play upon      me.

Enter      POLONIUS .

God bless      you, sir.

POLONIUS.

My  lord, the  Queen    would     speak     with you, and presently.

HAMLET.

Do   you see  yonder   cloud      that’s      almost    in    shape     of    a       camel?

POLONIUS.

By   the  mass,     and ’tis   like  a     camel     indeed.

HAMLET.

Methinks it     is     like  a     weasel.

POLONIUS.

It     is     backed   like  a     weasel.

HAMLET.

Or   like  a     whale.

POLONIUS.

Very like  a     whale.

HAMLET.

Then      will  I      come      to    my  mother   by   and by.—They      fool       me  to    the  top  of    my  bent.

—I   will  come      by   and by.

POLONIUS.

I      will  say  so.

[ Exit. ]

HAMLET.

By   and by   is     easily      said. Leave     me, friends.

[ Exeunt  all    but  HAMLET . ]

’Tis  now the  very witching time of    night,

When     churchyards  yawn,     and hell  itself breathes out

Contagion     to    this  world.     Now       could      I      drink      hot       blood,

And do   such bitter      business as    the  day

Would    quake     to    look on.  Soft now,       to    my  mother.

O    heart,     lose not  thy  nature;   let   not  ever

The soul of    Nero       enter      this  firm bosom:

Let  me  be   cruel,      not  unnatural.

I      will  speak     daggers  to    her, but  use  none;

My  tongue   and soul in    this  be   hypocrites.

How in    my  words     somever she  be   shent,

To   give them      seals       never,     my  soul, consent.

[ Exit. ]

SCENE    III.    A     room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      KING,    ROSENCRANTZ    and GUILDENSTERN .

KING.

I      like  him not, nor  stands    it     safe with us

To   let   his   madness range.    Therefore      prepare  you,

I      your commission   will  forthwith dispatch,

And he   to    England  shall along     with you.

The terms     of    our  estate     may not  endure

Hazard   so    near us    as    doth       hourly    grow

Out of    his   lunacies.

GUILDENSTERN.

We  will  ourselves provide.

Most      holy and religious fear it     is

To   keep       those      many      many      bodies    safe

That live  and feed upon      your Majesty.

ROSENCRANTZ.

The single     and peculiar  life   is     bound

With       all    the  strength and armour   of    the  mind,

To   keep       itself from       ’noyance;      but  much     more

That spirit       upon      whose    weal depend  and rest

The lives of    many.     The cease     of    majesty

Dies not  alone;     but  like  a     gulf doth       draw

What’s    near it     with it.    It     is     a     massy     wheel

Fix’d on   the  summit   of    the  highest   mount,

To   whose    huge      spokes    ten  thousand       lesser     things

Are  mortis’d  and adjoin’d; which     when      it     falls,

Each       small      annexment,   petty      consequence,

Attends  the  boist’rous      ruin. Never     alone

Did  the  King sigh, but  with a     general   groan.

KING.

Arm you, I      pray you, to    this  speedy   voyage; For    we   will  fetters       put  upon      this  fear,

Which    now goes       too  free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ     and GUILDENSTERN.

We  will  haste      us.

[ Exeunt  ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN . ]

Enter      POLONIUS .

POLONIUS.

My  lord, he’s going     to    his   mother’s closet.

Behind   the  arras       I’ll    convey   myself

To   hear the  process.  I’ll    warrant  she’ll      tax   him home,

And as    you said, and wisely     was it     said,

’Tis  meet      that some      more      audience than a     mother,

Since      nature    makes    them      partial,    should    o’erhear

The speech   of    vantage. Fare you well, my  liege,

I’ll    call  upon      you ere  you go   to    bed,

And tell  you what       I      know.

KING.

Thanks,  dear my  lord.

[ Exit       POLONIUS . ]

O,    my  offence   is     rank,       it     smells     to    heaven;

It     hath the  primal    eldest     curse      upon’t,—

A     brother’s murder!  Pray can  I      not,

Though  inclination     be   as    sharp      as    will:

My  stronger guilt defeats   my  strong    intent,

And, like  a     man to    double   business bound,

I      stand      in    pause     where     I      shall first begin,

And both       neglect.  What      if     this  cursed    hand

Were      thicker    than itself with brother’s blood,

Is     there      not  rain enough  in    the  sweet     heavens

To   wash      it     white      as    snow?     Whereto serves     mercy

But  to    confront the  visage    of    offence?

And what’s    in    prayer    but  this  twofold   force,

To   be   forestalled     ere  we   come      to    fall,

Or   pardon’d being     down?    Then      I’ll    look up.

My  fault is     past.       But  O,    what       form       of    prayer

Can serve      my  turn?      Forgive   me  my  foul murder!

That cannot   be;  since      I      am  still  possess’d

Of   those      effects    for   which     I      did  the  murder,—

My  crown,    mine      own ambition,       and my  queen.

May one be   pardon’d and retain     th’offence?

In    the  corrupted      currents  of    this  world

Offence’s       gilded     hand      may shove     by   justice,

And oft   ’tis   seen the  wicked    prize       itself

Buys out  the  law. But  ’tis   not  so    above;

There     is     no   shuffling, there      the  action     lies

In    his   true nature,   and we   ourselves compell’d

Even       to    the  teeth      and forehead of    our  faults,

To   give in    evidence.       What      then?      What      rests?

Try  what       repentance    can. What      can  it     not?

Yet  what       can  it,    when      one cannot   repent?

O    wretched state!      O    bosom    black      as    death!

O    limed      soul, that struggling      to    be   free,

Art   more      engag’d! Help,      angels!   Make      assay:

Bow,       stubborn knees;    and heart      with strings    of    steel,

Be   soft as    sinews    of    the  new-born      babe.

All   may be   well.

[ Retires  and kneels. ]

Enter      HAMLET .

HAMLET.

Now       might     I      do   it     pat, now he   is     praying.

And now I’ll    do’t. And so    he   goes       to    heaven;

And so    am  I      reveng’d. That would     be   scann’d:

A     villain     kills my  father,    and for   that

I,     his   sole son, do   this  same      villain     send

To   heaven.  O,    this  is     hire and salary,    not  revenge.

He   took my  father     grossly,   full  of    bread,

With       all    his   crimes    broad     blown,    as    flush       as    May;

And how his   audit      stands,   who knows    save heaven?

But  in    our  circumstance and course    of    thought,

’Tis  heavy     with him. And am  I      then reveng’d,

To   take him in    the  purging  of    his   soul,

When     he   is     fit    and season’d for   his   passage? No.

Up,  sword,    and know      thou a     more      horrid     hent: When    he       is     drunk     asleep;   or    in    his   rage,

Or   in    th’incestuous pleasure of    his   bed,

At    gaming,  swearing;       or    about     some      act

That has  no   relish      of    salvation in’t,

Then      trip  him, that his   heels      may kick at    heaven,

And that his   soul may be   as    damn’d  and black

As   hell, whereto  it     goes.      My  mother   stays.

This physic    but  prolongs thy  sickly      days.

[ Exit. ]

The KING    rises and advances.

KING.

My  words     fly    up,  my  thoughts remain   below.

Words    without  thoughts never      to    heaven   go.

[ Exit. ]

SCENE    IV.   Another  room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      QUEEN        and POLONIUS .

POLONIUS.

He   will  come      straight.  Look       you lay   home     to    him,

Tell  him his   pranks    have       been      too  broad     to    bear with,

And that your Grace     hath screen’d and stood     between

Much     heat and him. I’ll    silence    me  e’en here.

Pray you be   round     with him.

HAMLET.

[ Within. ]       Mother,  mother,  mother.

QUEEN.

I’ll    warrant  you, Fear me  not.

Withdraw,      I      hear him coming.

[POLONIUS   goes       behind   the  arras. ]

Enter      HAMLET .

HAMLET.

Now,      mother,  what’s    the  matter?

QUEEN.

Hamlet,  thou hast thy  father     much     offended.

HAMLET.

Mother,  you have       my  father     much     offended.

QUEEN.

Come,    come,     you answer   with an   idle  tongue.

HAMLET.

Go,  go,  you question with a     wicked    tongue.

QUEEN.

Why,      how now,       Hamlet?

HAMLET.

What’s    the  matter    now?

QUEEN.

Have      you forgot     me?

HAMLET.

No,  by   the  rood,      not  so.

You are  the  Queen,   your husband’s     brother’s wife,

And, would     it     were       not  so.   You are  my  mother.

QUEEN.

Nay, then I’ll    set   those      to    you that can  speak.

HAMLET.

Come,    come,     and sit    you down,     you shall not  budge.

You go   not  till   I      set   you up   a     glass

Where    you may see  the  inmost    part of    you.

QUEEN.

What      wilt  thou do?  Thou      wilt  not  murder   me?

Help,      help,       ho!

POLONIUS.

[ Behind. ]      What,     ho!  help,       help,       help!

HAMLET.

How now?      A     rat? [ Draws. ]

Dead      for   a     ducat,     dead!

[ Makes  a     pass through  the  arras. ]

POLONIUS.

[ Behind. ]      O,    I      am  slain!

[ Falls     and dies. ]

QUEEN.

O    me, what       hast thou done?

HAMLET.

Nay, I      know      not. is     it     the  King?

[ Draws   forth       POLONIUS . ]

QUEEN.

O    what       a     rash and bloody    deed      is     this!

HAMLET.

A     bloody    deed.      Almost   as    bad, good      mother,

As   kill   a     king and marry     with his   brother.

QUEEN.

As   kill   a     king?

HAMLET.

Ay,  lady, ’twas      my  word.—

[ To Polonius. ]     Thou      wretched,      rash,       intruding fool, farewell!

I      took thee for   thy  better.    Take       thy  fortune,

Thou      find’st     to    be   too  busy       is     some      danger.—

Leave     wringing of    your hands.    Peace,    sit    you down,

And let   me  wring      your heart,     for   so    I      shall,

If     it     be   made     of    penetrable     stuff;

If     damned custom   have       not  braz’d     it     so,

That it     is     proof      and bulwark  against   sense.

QUEEN.

What      have       I      done,     that thou dar’st      wag thy  tongue

In    noise      so    rude against   me?

HAMLET.

Such       an   act

That blurs       the  grace      and blush      of    modesty,

Calls virtue     hypocrite,      takes      off   the  rose

From      the  fair  forehead of    an   innocent love,

And sets a     blister     there.     Makes    marriage vows

As   false as    dicers’    oaths.     O    such a     deed

As   from       the  body      of    contraction    plucks

The very soul, and sweet     religion   makes

A     rhapsody of    words.    Heaven’s face doth       glow,

Yea this  solidity   and compound    mass,

With       tristful    visage,    as    against   the  doom,

Is     thought-sick at    the  act.

QUEEN.

Ay   me, what       act,

That roars      so    loud,      and thunders in    the  index?

HAMLET.

Look       here upon      this  picture,   and on   this,

The counterfeit    presentment  of    two brothers.

See  what       a     grace      was seated    on   this  brow,

Hyperion’s     curls,      the  front       of    Jove himself,

An   eye  like  Mars,      to    threaten and command,

A     station    like  the  herald    Mercury

New lighted   on   a     heaven-kissing     hill:

A     combination  and a     form       indeed,

Where    every      god did  seem      to    set   his   seal,

To   give the  world      assurance      of    a     man.

This was your husband. Look       you now what       follows.

Here       is     your husband, like  a     mildew’d ear

Blasting  his   wholesome    brother.  Have      you eyes?

Could     you on   this  fair  mountain      leave      to    feed,

And batten    on   this  moor?    Ha!  have       you eyes?

You cannot   call  it     love; for   at    your age

The hey-day in    the  blood     is     tame,     it’s   humble,

And waits      upon      the  judgment:     and what       judgment

Would    step from       this  to    this? Sense     sure you have,

Else could      you not  have       motion;  but  sure that sense

Is     apoplex’d,     for   madness would     not  err

Nor sense     to    ecstacy   was ne’er      so    thrall’d

But  it     reserv’d  some      quantity of    choice

To   serve      in    such a     difference.     What      devil       was’t

That thus hath cozen’d  you at    hoodman-blind?

Eyes without  feeling,   feeling    without  sight,

Ears without  hands     or    eyes,      smelling sans all,

Or   but  a     sickly      part of    one true sense

Could     not  so    mope.    O    shame!   where     is     thy  blush?

Rebellious     hell,

If     thou canst      mutine   in    a     matron’s bones,

To   flaming   youth     let   virtue     be   as    wax,

And melt in    her  own fire. Proclaim no   shame

When     the  compulsive    ardour    gives      the  charge,

Since      frost itself as    actively   doth       burn,

And reason    panders  will.

QUEEN.

O    Hamlet,  speak     no   more.

Thou      turn’st    mine      eyes into my  very soul,

And there      I      see  such black      and grained  spots

As   will  not  leave      their tinct.

HAMLET.

Nay, but  to    live

In    the  rank sweat     of    an   enseamed     bed,

Stew’d    in    corruption,    honeying       and making   love

Over       the  nasty      sty.

QUEEN.

O    speak     to    me  no   more;

These     words     like  daggers  enter      in    mine      ears;

No   more,     sweet     Hamlet.

HAMLET.

A     murderer       and a     villain;

A     slave      that is     not  twentieth       part the  tithe

Of   your precedent      lord. A     vice of    kings,

A     cutpurse of    the  empire   and the  rule,

That from       a     shelf the  precious diadem   stole

And put  it     in    his   pocket!

QUEEN.

No   more.

HAMLET.

A     king of    shreds    and patches!—

Enter      GHOST .

Save me  and hover     o’er me  with your wings,

You heavenly guards!   What      would     your gracious figure?

QUEEN.

Alas, he’s mad.

HAMLET.

Do   you not  come      your tardy      son  to    chide,

That,      laps’d     in    time and passion,  lets  go   by

The important      acting     of    your dread     command?

O    say!

GHOST.

Do   not  forget.    This visitation

Is     but  to    whet       thy  almost    blunted  purpose.

But  look,       amazement   on   thy  mother   sits.

O    step between her  and her  fighting  soul.

Conceit  in    weakest  bodies    strongest       works.

Speak     to    her, Hamlet.

HAMLET.

How is     it     with you, lady?

QUEEN.

Alas, how is’t   with you,

That you do   bend      your eye  on   vacancy,

And with the  incorporal      air   do   hold discourse?

Forth      at    your eyes your spirits     wildly     peep,

And, as    the  sleeping soldiers  in    the  alarm,

Your       bedded  hairs,      like  life   in    excrements,

Start up   and stand      an   end. O    gentle    son,

Upon      the  heat and flame      of    thy  distemper

Sprinkle  cool patience. Whereon do   you look?

HAMLET.

On  him, on   him! Look       you how pale he   glares,

His  form       and cause     conjoin’d,      preaching      to    stones,

Would    make      them      capable.—Do not  look upon      me,

Lest with this  piteous   action     you convert

My  stern      effects.   Then      what       I      have       to    do

Will want       true colour;    tears       perchance     for   blood.

QUEEN.

To   whom     do   you speak     this?

HAMLET.

Do   you see  nothing  there?

QUEEN.

Nothing  at    all;   yet  all    that is     I      see.

HAMLET.

Nor did  you nothing  hear?

QUEEN.

No,  nothing  but  ourselves.

HAMLET.

Why,      look you there!     look how it     steals     away!

My  father,    in    his   habit      as    he   liv’d!

Look       where     he   goes       even       now out  at    the  portal.

[ Exit       GHOST . ]

QUEEN.

This is     the  very coinage  of    your brain.

This bodiless  creation  ecstasy

Is     very cunning  in.

HAMLET.

Ecstasy!

My  pulse      as    yours      doth       temperately   keep       time,

And makes    as    healthful music.    It     is     not  madness

That I      have       utter’d.   Bring      me  to    the  test,

And I      the  matter    will  re-word; which     madness

Would    gambol  from.      Mother,  for   love of    grace,

Lay  not  that flattering unction  to    your soul

That not  your trespass, but  my  madness speaks.

It     will  but  skin and film the  ulcerous place,

Whilst     rank corruption,    mining   all    within,

Infects    unseen.  Confess  yourself  to    heaven,

Repent   what’s    past,       avoid      what       is     to    come;

And do   not  spread    the  compost on   the  weeds,

To   make      them      ranker.    Forgive   me  this  my  virtue;

For  in    the  fatness   of    these      pursy      times

Virtue     itself of    vice must      pardon   beg,

Yea, curb and woo for   leave      to    do   him good.

QUEEN.

O    Hamlet,  thou hast cleft my  heart      in    twain.

HAMLET.

O    throw     away      the  worser    part of    it,

And live  the  purer      with the  other      half.

Good      night.     But  go   not  to    mine      uncle’s   bed.

Assume  a     virtue,     if     you have       it     not.

That monster custom,  who all    sense     doth       eat,

Of   habits     evil, is     angel      yet  in    this,

That to    the  use  of    actions   fair  and good

He   likewise  gives      a     frock       or    livery

That aptly       is     put  on.  Refrain   tonight,

And that shall lend a     kind of    easiness

To   the  next abstinence.    The next more      easy;

For  use  almost    can  change   the  stamp     of    nature,

And either     curb the  devil,      or    throw     him out

With       wondrous      potency. Once      more,     good      night,

And when      you are  desirous to    be   bles’d,

I’ll    blessing  beg of    you. For  this  same      lord

[ Pointing      to    Polonius. ]

I      do   repent;   but  heaven   hath pleas’d   it     so,

To   punish    me  with this, and this  with me,

That I      must      be   their scourge  and minister.

I      will  bestow   him, and will  answer   well

The death     I      gave       him. So   again,     good      night.

I      must      be   cruel,      only to    be   kind:

Thus       bad begins,   and worse     remains  behind.

One word      more,     good      lady.

QUEEN.

What      shall I      do?

HAMLET.

Not this, by   no   means,   that I      bid  you do:

Let  the  bloat      King tempt     you again      to    bed,

Pinch      wanton   on   your cheek,    call  you his   mouse,

And let   him, for   a     pair of    reechy    kisses,

Or   paddling in    your neck with his   damn’d  fingers,

Make      you to    ravel       all    this  matter    out,

That I      essentially     am  not  in    madness,

But  mad in    craft.      ’Twere    good      you let   him know,

For  who that’s      but  a     queen,    fair, sober,     wise,

Would    from       a     paddock, from       a     bat, a     gib,

Such       dear concernings  hide?      Who       would     do   so?

No,  in    despite   of    sense     and secrecy,

Unpeg    the  basket    on   the  house’s  top,

Let  the  birds       fly,   and like  the  famous   ape,

To   try   conclusions,  in    the  basket    creep

And break      your own neck down.

QUEEN.

Be   thou assur’d,  if     words     be   made     of    breath,

And breath    of    life,  I      have       no   life   to    breathe

What      thou hast said to    me.

HAMLET.

I      must      to    England, you know      that?

QUEEN.

Alack,

I      had forgot.    ’Tis  so    concluded     on.

HAMLET.

There’s   letters     seal’d:    and my  two schoolfellows,

Whom    I      will  trust as    I      will  adders    fang’d,—

They       bear the  mandate,       they must      sweep    my  way

And marshal  me  to    knavery. Let  it     work;

For  ’tis   the  sport      to    have       the  enginer

Hoist      with his   own petard,   and ’t     shall go   hard

But  I      will  delve      one yard below     their mines

And blow       them      at    the  moon.    O,    ’tis   most      sweet,

When     in    one line  two crafts      directly   meet.

This man shall set   me  packing.

I’ll    lug  the  guts into the  neighbour     room.

Mother,  good      night.     Indeed,   this  counsellor

Is     now most      still, most      secret,    and most      grave,

Who       was in    life   a     foolish    peating  knave.

Come,    sir,   to    draw       toward   an   end with you.

Good      night,     mother.

[ Exit       HAMLET      dragging out  POLONIUS . ]

ACT IV

SCENE    I.     A     room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      KING,    QUEEN,  ROSENCRANTZ    and GUILDENSTERN .

KING.

There’s   matter    in    these      sighs.     These     profound       heaves

You must      translate. ’tis   fit    we   understand    them.

Where    is     your son?

QUEEN.

Bestow   this  place      on   us    a     little while.

[ To ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN,        who go   out. ]

Ah,  my  good      lord, what       have       I      seen tonight!

KING.

What,     Gertrude?      How does       Hamlet?

QUEEN.

Mad as    the  sea  and wind,      when      both       contend

Which    is     the  mightier. In    his   lawless   fit

Behind   the  arras       hearing  something     stir,

Whips     out  his   rapier,    cries ‘A    rat,  a     rat!’

And in    this  brainish  apprehension kills

The unseen   good      old  man.

KING.

O    heavy     deed!

It     had been      so    with us,   had we   been      there.

His  liberty     is     full  of    threats   to    all;

To   you yourself, to    us,   to    everyone.

Alas, how shall this  bloody    deed      be   answer’d?

It     will  be   laid  to    us,   whose    providence

Should   have       kept short,     restrain’d,      and out  of    haunt

This mad young    man.      But  so    much     was our  love

We  would     not  understand    what       was most      fit,

But  like  the  owner     of    a     foul disease,

To   keep       it     from       divulging,      let   it     feed

Even       on   the  pith of    life.  Where    is     he   gone?

QUEEN.

To   draw       apart      the  body      he   hath kill’d,

O’er whom     his   very madness,       like  some      ore

Among   a     mineral   of    metals    base,

Shows    itself pure.      He   weeps    for   what       is     done.

KING.

O    Gertrude,       come      away!

The sun  no   sooner    shall the  mountains     touch

But  we   will  ship him hence,    and this  vile  deed

We  must      with all    our  majesty  and skill

Both       countenance and excuse.—Ho, Guildenstern!

Re-enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN .

Friends   both,      go   join you with some      further    aid:

Hamlet   in    madness hath Polonius slain,

And from       his   mother’s closet     hath he   dragg’d  him.

Go   seek him out, speak     fair, and bring      the  body

Into the  chapel.   I      pray you haste      in    this.

[ Exeunt  ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN . ]

Come,    Gertrude,       we’ll call  up   our  wisest     friends,

And let   them      know      both       what       we   mean     to    do

And what’s    untimely done,     so    haply      slander,

Whose    whisper  o’er the  world’s   diameter,

As   level as    the  cannon   to    his   blank,

Transports     his   poison’d shot,       may miss our  name,

And hit   the  woundless     air.  O,    come      away!

My  soul is     full  of    discord   and dismay.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     Another  room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      HAMLET .

HAMLET.

Safely     stowed.

ROSENCRANTZ     and GUILDENSTERN.

[ Within. ]       Hamlet!  Lord Hamlet!

HAMLET.

What      noise?    Who       calls on   Hamlet? O,    here they come.

Enter      ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN .

ROSENCRANTZ.

What      have       you done,     my  lord, with the  dead      body?

HAMLET.

Compounded it     with dust,       whereto  ’tis   kin.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Tell  us    where     ’tis,  that we   may take it     thence,

And bear it     to    the  chapel.

HAMLET.

Do   not  believe   it.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Believe   what?

HAMLET.

That I      can  keep       your counsel, and not  mine      own.       Besides,       to    be   demanded     of    a sponge—what   replication     should       be   made     by   the  son  of    a     king?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Take       you me  for   a     sponge,  my  lord?

HAMLET.

Ay,  sir; that      soaks    up the King’s   countenance,      his rewards, his authorities.  But such      officers   do   the  King best       service    in    the  end: he   keeps     them,     like  an   ape, in the       corner    of    his   jaw; first mouthed,      to    be   last  swallowed:       when      he   needs     what you have       gleaned, it     is     but       squeezing     you, and, sponge,  you shall be   dry  again.

ROSENCRANTZ.

I      understand    you not, my  lord.

HAMLET.

I      am  glad of    it.    A     knavish   speech   sleeps     in    a     foolish       ear.

ROSENCRANTZ.

My  lord, you must      tell  us    where     the  body      is     and go   with       us    to    the  King.

HAMLET.

The body      is     with the  King,      but  the  King is     not  with the body.       The King is     a     thing

—

GUILDENSTERN.

A     thing,     my  lord!

HAMLET.

Of   nothing. Bring      me  to    him. Hide       fox,  and all    after.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    III.    Another  room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      KING,   attended.

KING.

I      have       sent to    seek him and to    find the  body.

How dangerous     is     it     that this  man goes       loose!

Yet  must      not  we   put  the  strong    law  on   him:

He’s lov’d       of    the  distracted      multitude,

Who       like  not  in    their judgment,     but  their eyes;

And where     ’tis   so,   th’offender’s  scourge  is     weigh’d,

But  never      the  offence.  To   bear all    smooth  and even,

This sudden   sending  him away      must      seem

Deliberate     pause.    Diseases desperate      grown

By   desperate      appliance      are  reliev’d,

Or   not  at    all.

Enter      ROSENCRANTZ .

How now?      What      hath befall’n?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Where    the  dead      body      is     bestow’d,      my  lord,

We  cannot   get  from       him.

KING.

But  where     is     he?

ROSENCRANTZ.

Without, my  lord, guarded, to    know      your pleasure.

KING.

Bring      him before    us.

ROSENCRANTZ.

Ho,  Guildenstern! Bring      in    my  lord.

Enter      HAMLET      and GUILDENSTERN .

KING.

Now,      Hamlet,  where’s  Polonius?

HAMLET.

At    supper.

KING.

At    supper?  Where?

HAMLET.

Not where     he   eats, but  where     he   is     eaten.     A     certain       convocation  of    politic     worms are     e’en      at  him.      Your       worm    is   your      only      emperor      for diet.      We fat   all  creatures else      to  fat us, and       we fat ourselves     for   maggots.     Your     fat king      and       your      lean beggar       is     but  variable  service,—two dishes,    but  to    one table.       That’s     the  end.

KING.

Alas, alas!

HAMLET.

A     man      may      fish with      the worm    that      hath     eat of    a    king,     and       eat of  the fish that hath     fed  of    that       worm.

KING.

What      dost thou mean     by   this?

HAMLET.

Nothing  but to  show    you       how      a    king      may      go a     progress      through the guts      of  a beggar.

KING.

Where    is     Polonius?

HAMLET.

In    heaven.  Send      thither    to    see. If     your messenger    find him       not  there,     seek him i’

th’other  place    yourself.       But indeed, if    you       find       him       not within   this       month, you shall      nose       him as    you       go   up   the  stairs      into the  lobby.

KING.

[ To some      Attendants. ]  Go   seek him there.

HAMLET.

He   will  stay till   you come.

[ Exeunt  ATTENDANTS . ]

KING.

Hamlet,  this  deed,      for   thine      especial  safety,—

Which    we   do   tender,   as    we   dearly     grieve

For  that which     thou hast done,—must send       thee hence

With       fiery quickness.     Therefore      prepare  thyself;

The bark is     ready,     and the  wind       at    help,

Th’associates tend,      and everything     is     bent

For  England.

HAMLET.

For  England?

KING.

Ay,  Hamlet.

HAMLET.

Good.

KING.

So   is     it,    if     thou knew’st   our  purposes.

HAMLET.

I      see  a     cherub   that sees them.     But, come;     for   England!       Farewell, dear mother.

KING.

Thy  loving     father,    Hamlet.

HAMLET.

My  mother.  Father    and mother   is     man and wife; man and wife is       one flesh;      and so,   my  mother.  Come,    for   England.

[ Exit. ]

KING.

Follow    him at    foot. Tempt    him with speed     aboard;

Delay      it     not; I’ll    have       him hence     tonight.

Away,     for   everything     is     seal’d     and done

That else leans      on   th’affair.  Pray you make      haste.

[ Exeunt  ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN . ]

And England, if     my  love thou hold’st    at    aught,—

As   my  great      power     thereof   may give thee sense, Since   yet  thy       cicatrice looks      raw  and red

After       the  Danish    sword,    and thy  free awe

Pays homage to    us,—thou      mayst     not  coldly     set

Our sovereign      process,  which     imports  at    full,

By   letters     conjuring       to    that effect,

The present   death     of    Hamlet.  Do   it,    England;

For  like  the  hectic     in    my  blood     he   rages,

And thou must      cure me. Till   I      know      ’tis   done,

Howe’er my  haps,      my  joys were       ne’er      begun.

[ Exit. ]

SCENE    IV.   A     plain       in    Denmark.

Enter      FORTINBRAS      and FORCES       marching.

FORTINBRAS.

Go,  Captain, from       me  greet      the  Danish    king.

Tell  him that by   his   license,   Fortinbras

Craves    the  conveyance   of    a     promis’d march

Over       his   kingdom.       You know      the  rendezvous.

If     that his   Majesty  would     aught     with us,

We  shall express   our  duty in    his   eye;

And let   him know      so.

CAPTAIN.

I      will  do’t, my  lord.

FORTINBRAS.

Go   softly      on.

[ Exeunt  all    but  the  CAPTAIN . ]

Enter      HAMLET,      ROSENCRANTZ,    GUILDENSTERN    &C .

HAMLET.

Good      sir,   whose    powers   are  these?

CAPTAIN.

They       are  of    Norway,  sir.

HAMLET.

How purpos’d,       sir,   I      pray you?

CAPTAIN.

Against   some      part of    Poland.

HAMLET.

Who       commands    them,     sir?

CAPTAIN.

The nephew  to    old  Norway,  Fortinbras.

HAMLET.

Goes      it     against   the  main      of    Poland,   sir,

Or   for   some      frontier?

CAPTAIN.

Truly       to    speak,    and with no   addition,

We  go   to    gain a     little patch     of    ground

That hath in    it     no   profit      but  the  name.

To   pay  five  ducats,   five, I      would     not  farm it;

Nor will  it     yield       to    Norway  or    the  Pole

A     ranker    rate, should    it     be   sold in    fee.

HAMLET.

Why,      then the  Polack    never      will  defend   it.

CAPTAIN.

Yes, it     is     already   garrison’d.

HAMLET.

Two thousand       souls      and twenty    thousand       ducats

Will not  debate   the  question of    this  straw!

This is     th’imposthume     of    much     wealth    and peace,

That inward    breaks,   and shows     no   cause     without

Why the  man dies. I      humbly   thank     you, sir.

CAPTAIN.

God b’    wi’   you, sir.

[ Exit. ]

ROSENCRANTZ.

Will’t      please    you go,  my  lord?

HAMLET.

I’ll    be   with you straight.  Go   a     little before.

[ Exeunt  all    but  HAMLET . ]

How all    occasions      do   inform    against   me,

And spur my  dull revenge. What      is     a     man

If     his   chief       good      and market   of    his   time

Be   but  to    sleep      and feed?      A     beast,     no   more.

Sure he   that made     us    with such large      discourse,

Looking  before    and after,      gave       us    not

That capability      and godlike   reason

To   fust in    us    unus’d.   Now       whether  it     be

Bestial    oblivion, or    some      craven    scruple

Of   thinking  too  precisely on   th’event,—

A     thought  which,    quarter’d,      hath but  one part wisdom

And ever three      parts      coward,—I     do   not  know

Why yet  I      live  to    say  this  thing’s    to    do,

Sith I      have       cause,    and will, and strength, and means

To   do’t. Examples       gross      as    earth      exhort    me,

Witness  this  army      of    such mass      and charge,

Led  by   a     delicate  and tender    prince,

Whose    spirit,      with divine     ambition puff’d,

Makes    mouths  at    the  invisible  event,

Exposing what       is     mortal    and unsure

To   all    that fortune,  death,    and danger   dare,

Even       for   an   eggshell. Rightly    to    be   great

Is     not  to    stir  without  great      argument,

But  greatly    to    find quarrel   in    a     straw

When     honour’s at    the  stake.     How stand      I      then,

That have       a     father     kill’d,      a     mother   stain’d,

Excitements   of    my  reason    and my  blood,

And let   all    sleep,     while      to    my  shame    I      see

The imminent      death     of    twenty    thousand       men

That,      for   a     fantasy   and trick of    fame,

Go   to    their graves    like  beds,      fight for   a     plot

Whereon the  numbers cannot   try   the  cause,

Which    is     not  tomb      enough  and continent

To   hide the  slain?      O,    from       this  time forth,

My  thoughts be   bloody    or    be   nothing  worth.

[ Exit. ]

SCENE    V.    Elsinore. A     room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      QUEEN, HORATIO      and a     GENTLEMAN .

QUEEN.

I      will  not  speak     with her.

GENTLEMAN.

She is     importunate, indeed    distract.

Her  mood     will  needs     be   pitied.

QUEEN.

What      would     she  have?

GENTLEMAN.

She speaks    much     of    her  father;    says she  hears

There’s   tricks      i’     th’   world,     and hems,     and beats      her heart, Spurns    enviously at    straws,    speaks    things     in    doubt,

That carry       but  half sense.     Her  speech   is     nothing,

Yet  the  unshaped      use  of    it     doth       move

The hearers   to    collection;     they aim at    it,

And botch     the  words     up   fit    to    their own thoughts,

Which,    as    her  winks,     and nods,      and gestures yield       them,

Indeed    would     make      one think      there      might     be   thought,

Though  nothing  sure,       yet  much     unhappily.

’Twere    good      she  were       spoken   with,       for   she  may strew

Dangerous    conjectures   in    ill-breeding   minds.

QUEEN.

Let  her  come      in.

[ Exit       GENTLEMAN . ]

To   my  sick soul, as    sin’s true nature    is,

Each       toy  seems    prologue to    some      great      amiss.

So   full  of    artless    jealousy  is     guilt,

It     spills       itself in    fearing   to    be   spilt.

Enter      OPHELIA .

OPHELIA.

Where    is     the  beauteous     Majesty  of    Denmark?

QUEEN.

How now,       Ophelia?

OPHELIA.

[ Sings. ]

How should    I      your true love know

From      another  one?

By   his   cockle    bat  and staff

And his   sandal    shoon.

QUEEN.

Alas, sweet     lady, what       imports  this  song?

OPHELIA.

Say  you?       Nay, pray you mark.

[ Sings. ]

He   is     dead      and gone,     lady,

He   is     dead      and gone,

At    his   head      a     grass      green     turf,

At    his   heels      a     stone.

QUEEN.

Nay, but  Ophelia—

OPHELIA.

Pray you mark.

[ Sings. ]

White     his   shroud   as    the  mountain      snow.

Enter      KING .

QUEEN.

Alas, look here,      my  lord!

OPHELIA.

[ Sings. ]

Larded    all    with sweet     flowers;

Which    bewept   to    the  grave      did  go

With       true-love       showers.

KING.

How do   you, pretty     lady?

OPHELIA.

Well,       God      dild       you!      They     say the owl was       a    baker’s   daughter.     Lord,     we know

what       we   are, but  know      not  what       we   may be.  God be   at       your table!

KING.

Conceit  upon      her  father.

OPHELIA.

Pray you, let’s have       no   words     of    this; but  when      they ask  you       what       it     means,   say you   this:

[ Sings. ]

Tomorrow     is     Saint      Valentine’s    day,

All   in    the  morning betime,

And I      a     maid      at    your window,

To   be   your Valentine.

Then      up   he   rose and donn’d   his   clothes,

And dupp’d   the  chamber door,

Let  in    the  maid,      that out  a     maid

Never     departed more.

KING.

Pretty     Ophelia!

OPHELIA.

Indeed    la,    without  an   oath,      I’ll    make      an   end on’t.

[ Sings. ]

By   Gis  and by   Saint      Charity,

Alack,     and fie   for   shame!

Young    men will  do’t if     they come      to’t;

By   Cock,      they are  to    blame.

Quoth    she, before    you tumbled me,

You promis’d me  to    wed.

So   would     I      ha’  done,     by   yonder   sun,

An   thou hadst      not  come      to    my  bed.

KING.

How long hath she  been      thus?

OPHELIA.

I      hope     all  will be  well.      We must     be  patient. But I     cannot   choose but weep,   to think they would     lay   him i’     th’       cold ground.  My  brother   shall know      of    it.    And so I  thank       you for   your good      counsel. Come,    my  coach!    Good     night,       ladies;    good night,   sweet     ladies;    good      night,     good       night.

[ Exit. ]

KING.

Follow    her  close;     give her  good      watch,    I      pray you.

[ Exit       HORATIO . ]

O,    this  is     the  poison    of    deep      grief;      it     springs

All   from       her  father’s   death.    O    Gertrude,       Gertrude,

When     sorrows  come,     they come      not  single     spies,

But  in    battalions.     First, her  father     slain;

Next,      your son  gone;     and he   most      violent    author

Of   his   own just  remove;  the  people    muddied,

Thick      and and unwholesome       in    their thoughts and whispers

For  good      Polonius’ death;    and we   have       done      but  greenly

In    hugger-mugger   to    inter him. Poor       Ophelia

Divided   from       herself    and her  fair  judgment,

Without  the  which     we   are  pictures  or    mere      beasts.

Last, and as    much     containing     as    all    these,

Her  brother   is     in    secret     come      from       France,

Feeds     on   his   wonder,  keeps     himself   in    clouds,

And wants     not  buzzers  to    infect      his   ear

With       pestilent speeches of    his   father’s   death,

Wherein necessity,      of    matter    beggar’d,

Will nothing  stick our  person    to    arraign

In    ear  and ear. O    my  dear Gertrude,       this,

Like to    a     murdering     piece,     in    many      places

Gives      me  superfluous   death.

[ A   noise      within. ]

QUEEN.

Alack,     what       noise      is     this?

KING.

Where    are  my  Switzers? Let  them      guard     the  door.

Enter      a     GENTLEMAN .

What      is     the  matter?

GENTLEMAN.

Save yourself, my  lord.

The ocean,    overpeering   of    his   list,

Eats not  the  flats with more      impetuous     haste Than    young       Laertes,  in    a     riotous   head,

O’erbears      your offices.   The rabble    call  him lord,

And, as    the  world      were       now but  to    begin,

Antiquity forgot,    custom   not  known,

The ratifiers   and props     of    every      word,

They       cry   ‘Choose  we!  Laertes   shall be   king!’

Caps,      hands,    and tongues  applaud  it     to    the  clouds,

‘Laertes  shall be   king,       Laertes   king.’

QUEEN.

How cheerfully      on   the  false trail they cry.

O,    this  is     counter, you false Danish    dogs.

[ A   noise      within. ]

KING.

The doors     are  broke.

Enter      LAERTES,     armed; DANES     following.

LAERTES.

Where    is     this  king?—Sirs,   stand      you all    without.

Danes.

No,  let’s come      in.

LAERTES.

I      pray you, give me  leave.

DANES.

We  will, we   will.

[ They     retire      without  the  door. ]

LAERTES.

I      thank     you. Keep      the  door.      O    thou vile  king,

Give me  my  father.

QUEEN.

Calmly,   good      Laertes.

LAERTES.

That drop       of    blood     that’s      calm       proclaims      me  bastard;

Cries       cuckold  to    my  father,    brands    the  harlot

Even       here between the  chaste    unsmirched   brow Of  my  true       mother.

KING.

What      is     the  cause,    Laertes,

That thy  rebellion looks      so    giant-like?—

Let  him go,  Gertrude.       Do   not  fear our  person.

There’s   such divinity   doth       hedge    a     king,

That treason   can  but  peep      to    what       it     would,

Acts little of    his   will.—Tell      me, Laertes,

Why thou art   thus incens’d.—Let       him go,  Gertrude:—

Speak,    man.

LAERTES.

Where    is     my  father?

KING.

Dead.

QUEEN.

But  not  by   him.

KING.

Let  him demand his   fill.

LAERTES.

How came      he   dead?     I’ll    not  be   juggled   with.

To   hell, allegiance!     Vows,     to    the  blackest  devil!

Conscience    and grace,     to    the  profoundest  pit!

I      dare damnation.    To   this  point      I      stand,

That both       the  worlds,   I      give to    negligence,

Let  come      what       comes;   only I’ll    be   reveng’d

Most      throughly      for   my  father.

KING.

Who       shall stay you?

LAERTES.

My  will, not  all    the  world.

And for   my  means,   I’ll    husband them      so    well,

They       shall go   far   with little.

KING.

Good      Laertes,

If     you desire     to    know      the  certainty

Of   your dear father’s   death,    is’t   writ in    your revenge

That,      sweepstake,   you will  draw       both       friend     and foe,

Winner   and loser?

LAERTES.

None      but  his   enemies.

KING.

Will you know      them      then?

LAERTES.

To   his   good      friends    thus wide       I’ll    ope my  arms;

And, like  the  kind life-rendering pelican,

Repast    them      with my  blood.

KING.

Why,      now you speak

Like a     good      child       and a     true gentleman.

That I      am  guiltless  of    your father’s   death,

And am  most      sensibly  in    grief for   it,

It     shall as    level to    your judgment      ’pear

As   day  does       to    your eye.

DANES.

[ Within. ]       Let  her  come      in.

LAERTES.

How now!       What      noise      is     that?

Re-enter OPHELIA,    fantastically   dressed  with straws    and flowers.

O    heat,      dry  up   my  brains.    Tears      seven     times      salt,

Burn       out  the  sense     and virtue     of    mine      eye.

By   heaven,  thy  madness shall be   paid by   weight,

Till   our  scale      turn the  beam.     O    rose of    May!

Dear       maid,      kind sister,     sweet     Ophelia!

O    heavens, is’t   possible  a     young    maid’s    wits

Should   be   as    mortal    as    an   old  man’s     life?

Nature    is     fine in    love, and where     ’tis   fine,

It     sends     some      precious instance of    itself

After       the  thing      it     loves.

OPHELIA.

[ Sings. ]

They       bore       him barefac’d on   the  bier,

Hey no   nonny,    nonny,    hey  nonny

And on   his   grave      rain’d     many      a     tear.—

Fare you well, my  dove!

LAERTES.

Hadst     thou thy  wits, and didst       persuade revenge,

It     could      not  move      thus.

OPHELIA.

You must     sing      ‘Down   a-down,      and       you       call him       a-down-a.’  O,  how      the wheel becomes   it!    It     is     the       false steward  that stole       his   master’s daughter.

LAERTES.

This nothing’s more      than matter.

OPHELIA.

There’s   rosemary,    that’s    for remembrance;    pray      love,     remember.    And      there    is pansies,    that’s      for   thoughts.

LAERTES.

A     document     in    madness,       thoughts and remembrance fitted.

OPHELIA.

There’s   fennel     for   you, and columbines.   There’s   rue  for   you; and       here’s     some      for me.   We  may call  it     herb of    grace      o’       Sundays. O    you must      wear       your rue  with a difference.       There’s   a     daisy.     I      would     give you some      violets,   but       they wither’d  all when my  father     died.       They       say  he       made     a     good      end.

[ Sings. ]

For  bonny    sweet     Robin     is     all    my  joy.

LAERTES.

Thought and affliction, passion,  hell  itself

She turns      to    favour    and to    prettiness.

OPHELIA.

[ Sings. ]

And will  he   not  come      again?

And will  he   not  come      again?

No,  no,  he   is     dead,

Go   to    thy  death-bed,

He   never      will  come      again.

                     His  beard     was as    white      as    snow,

All   flaxen     was his   poll.

He   is     gone,     he   is     gone,

And we   cast away      moan.

God ha’  mercy     on   his   soul.

And of    all    Christian souls,     I      pray God.       God b’    wi’   ye.

[ Exit. ]

LAERTES.

Do   you see  this, O    God?

KING.

Laertes,  I      must      commune      with your grief,

Or   you deny       me  right.      Go   but  apart,

Make      choice    of    whom     your wisest     friends    you will,

And they shall hear and judge     ’twixt      you and me.

If     by   direct     or    by   collateral hand

They       find us    touch’d,  we   will  our  kingdom give,

Our crown,    our  life,  and all    that we   call  ours

To   you in    satisfaction;   but  if     not,

Be   you content  to    lend your patience to    us,

And we   shall jointly     labour    with your soul

To   give it     due content.

LAERTES.

Let  this  be   so;

His  means    of    death,    his   obscure  burial,—

No   trophy,   sword,    nor  hatchment    o’er his   bones,

No   noble     rite, nor  formal    ostentation,—

Cry  to    be   heard,    as    ’twere     from       heaven   to    earth,

That I      must      call’t in    question.

KING.

So   you shall.

And where     th’offence      is     let   the  great      axe  fall.

I      pray you go   with me.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    VI.   Another  room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      HORATIO    and a     SERVANT .

HORATIO.

What      are  they that would     speak     with me?

SERVANT.

Sailors,   sir.   They       say  they have       letters     for   you.

HORATIO.

Let  them      come      in.

[ Exit       SERVANT . ]

I      do   not  know      from       what       part of    the  world

I      should    be   greeted, if     not  from       Lord Hamlet.

Enter      SAILORS .

FIRST      SAILOR.

God bless      you, sir.

HORATIO.

Let  him bless      thee too.

FIRST      SAILOR.

He   shall,     sir, and’t     please   him.      There’s a    letter    for you, sir. It   comes  from th’ambassador   that was bound    for       England; if     your name     be   Horatio,  as    I      am  let to       know      it     is.

HORATIO.

[ Reads. ] ‘Horatio, when      thou shalt       have       overlooked    this, give       these      fellows    some means  to    the  King.      They       have       letters     for   him. Ere  we   were       two days old  at    sea, a pirate       of    very warlike   appointment gave       us    chase.    Finding       ourselves too  slow of sail,    we put on a    compelled   valour,  and in   the grapple I     boarded       them.    On the instant   they got clear     of  our ship,     so  I     alone    became their     prisoner. They     have dealt    with me  like  thieves   of    mercy.    But       they knew      what       they did; I      am  to    do   a good   turn for       them.     Let  the  King have       the  letters     I      have       sent,       and repair     thou to me     with as    much     haste      as    thou       wouldst  fly    death.    I      have       words     to    speak     in    thine ear  will  make      thee dumb;    yet  are  they much     too  light for   the       bore       of    the  matter.

These     good    fellows  will bring    thee      where   I     am.       Rosencrantz  and       Guildenstern hold      their course    for   England:       of    them      I      have       much     to    tell  thee.      Farewell.

He   that thou knowest thine,

HAMLET.’

Come,    I      will  give you way for   these      your letters,

And do’t the  speedier, that you may direct     me To     him from       whom     you brought  them.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    VII.  Another  room      in    the  Castle.

Enter      KING    and LAERTES .

KING.

Now       must      your conscience    my  acquittance   seal,

And you must      put  me  in    your heart      for   friend,

Sith you have       heard,    and with a     knowing ear,

That he   which     hath your noble     father     slain

Pursu’d   my  life.

LAERTES.

It     well appears. But  tell  me

Why you proceeded     not  against   these      feats,

So   crimeful  and so    capital    in    nature,

As   by   your safety,    wisdom, all    things     else,

You mainly    were       stirr’d     up.

KING.

O,    for   two special    reasons,

Which    may to    you, perhaps, seem      much     unsinew’d,

But  yet  to    me  they are  strong.   The Queen    his   mother

Lives       almost    by   his   looks;     and for   myself,—

My  virtue     or    my  plague,   be   it     either     which,—

She’s      so    conjunctive    to    my  life   and soul,

That,      as    the  star moves    not  but  in    his   sphere,

I      could      not  but  by   her. The other      motive,

Why to    a     public     count     I      might     not  go,

Is     the  great      love the  general   gender   bear him,

Who,      dipping  all    his   faults      in    their affection,

Would    like  the  spring     that turneth   wood      to    stone,

Convert  his   gyves     to    graces;   so    that my  arrows,

Too slightly   timber’d for   so    loud a     wind,

Would    have       reverted to    my  bow again,

And not  where     I      had aim’d      them.

LAERTES.

And so    have       I      a     noble     father     lost,

A     sister      driven     into desperate      terms,

Whose    worth,    if     praises   may go   back       again,

Stood     challenger     on   mount    of    all    the  age

For  her  perfections.   But  my  revenge  will  come.

KING.

Break      not  your sleeps     for   that. You must      not  think

That we   are  made     of    stuff so    flat  and dull

That we   can  let   our  beard     be   shook     with danger,

And think      it     pastime. You shortly    shall hear more.

I      lov’d       your father,    and we   love ourself,

And that, I      hope,     will  teach      you to    imagine—

Enter      a     MESSENGER .

How now?      What      news?

MESSENGER.

Letters,   my  lord, from       Hamlet.

This to    your Majesty; this  to    the  Queen.

KING.

From      Hamlet!  Who       brought  them?

MESSENGER.

Sailors,   my  lord, they say; I      saw them      not.

They       were       given      me  by   Claudio.  He   receiv’d  them

Of   him that brought  them.

KING.

Laertes,  you shall hear them.

Leave     us.

[ Exit       MESSENGER . ]

[ Reads. ] ‘High    and       mighty, you       shall     know    I     am set   naked   on your      kingdom.

Tomorrow     shall     I     beg       leave    to  see your      kingly   eyes.      When   I     shall,     first       asking your  pardon thereunto,     recount the occasions    of  my sudden and       more      strange return.

HAMLET.’

What      should    this  mean?    Are  all    the  rest come      back?

Or   is     it     some      abuse,    and no   such thing?

LAERTES.

Know      you the  hand?

KING.

’Tis  Hamlet’s character.      ’Naked!’

And in    a     postscript      here he   says ‘alone.’

Can you advise    me?

LAERTES.

I      am  lost  in    it,    my  lord. But  let   him come,

It     warms    the  very sickness  in    my  heart

That I      shall live  and tell  him to    his   teeth,

‘Thus      diest       thou.’

KING.

If     it     be   so,   Laertes,—

As   how should    it     be   so?  How otherwise?—

Will you be   rul’d by   me?

LAERTES.

Ay,  my  lord;

So   you will  not  o’errule  me  to    a     peace.

KING.

To   thine      own peace.    If     he   be   now return’d,

As   checking at    his   voyage,  and that he   means

No   more      to    undertake      it,    I      will  work       him

To   exploit,   now ripe in    my  device,

Under     the  which     he   shall not  choose   but  fall;

And for   his   death     no   wind       shall breathe,

But  even       his   mother   shall uncharge       the  practice

And call  it     accident.

LAERTES.

My  lord, I      will  be   rul’d;

The rather     if     you could      devise    it     so

That I      might     be   the  organ.

KING.

It     falls right.

You have       been      talk’d      of    since      your travel      much,

And that in    Hamlet’s hearing,  for   a     quality

Wherein they say  you shine.     Your       sum of    parts

Did  not  together pluck      such envy       from       him

As   did  that one, and that, in    my  regard,

Of   the  unworthiest   siege.

LAERTES.

What      part is     that, my  lord?

KING.

A     very riband    in    the  cap  of    youth,

Yet  needful   too, for   youth     no   less becomes

The light and careless  livery      that it     wears

Than      settled    age his   sables     and his   weeds,

Importing      health    and graveness.     Two months  since

Here       was a     gentleman     of    Normandy,—

I’ve  seen myself,   and serv’d     against,  the  French,

And they can  well on   horseback,     but  this  gallant

Had witchcraft      in’t. He   grew       unto his   seat,

And to    such wondrous      doing     brought  his   horse,

As   had he   been      incorps’d and demi-natur’d

With       the  brave      beast.     So   far   he   topp’d    my  thought

That I      in    forgery   of    shapes   and tricks,

Come     short      of    what       he   did.

LAERTES.

A     Norman  was’t?

KING.

A     Norman.

LAERTES.

Upon      my  life,  Lamond.

KING.

The very same.

LAERTES.

I      know      him well. He   is     the  brooch   indeed

And gem of    all    the  nation.

KING.

He   made     confession     of    you,

And gave       you such a     masterly report

For  art   and exercise  in    your defence,

And for   your rapier     most      especially,

That he   cried       out  ’twould   be   a     sight       indeed

If     one could      match    you. The scrimers of    their nation

He   swore     had neither   motion,  guard,    nor  eye,

If     you oppos’d  them.     Sir,  this  report     of    his

Did  Hamlet   so    envenom       with his   envy

That he   could      nothing  do   but  wish and beg

Your       sudden   coming   o’er to    play with him.

Now,      out  of    this,—

LAERTES.

What      out  of    this, my  lord?

KING.

Laertes,  was your father     dear to    you?

Or   are  you like  the  painting of    a     sorrow,

A     face without  a     heart?

LAERTES.

Why ask  you this?

KING.

Not that I      think      you did  not  love your father,

But  that I      know      love is     begun    by   time,

And that I      see, in    passages of    proof,

Time       qualifies the  spark      and fire  of    it.

There     lives within     the  very flame      of    love

A     kind of    wick or    snuff       that will  abate     it;

And nothing  is     at    a     like  goodness      still,

For  goodness,     growing  to    a     pleurisy,

Dies in    his   own too  much.     That we   would     do,

We  should    do   when      we   would;    for   this  ‘would’   changes,

And hath abatements   and delays    as    many

As   there      are  tongues, are  hands,    are  accidents;

And then this  ‘should’  is     like  a     spendthrift    sigh

That hurts      by   easing.   But  to    the  quick      o’    th’ulcer:

Hamlet   comes    back:      what       would     you undertake

To   show      yourself  your father’s   son  in    deed,

More      than in    words?

LAERTES.

To   cut  his   throat     i’     th’   church.

KING.

No   place,     indeed,   should    murder   sanctuarize;

Revenge should    have       no   bounds.  But  good      Laertes,

Will you do   this, keep       close      within     your chamber.

Hamlet   return’d  shall know      you are  come      home:

We’ll       put  on   those      shall praise     your excellence,

And set   a     double   varnish   on   the  fame

The Frenchman    gave       you, bring      you in    fine together

And wager     on   your heads.    He,  being     remiss,

Most      generous,      and free from       all    contriving,

Will not  peruse    the  foils; so    that with ease,

Or   with a     little shuffling, you may choose

A     sword     unbated, and in    a     pass of    practice,

Requite  him for   your father.

LAERTES.

I      will  do’t.

And for   that purpose  I’ll    anoint    my  sword.

I      bought   an   unction  of    a     mountebank

So   mortal    that, but  dip  a     knife       in    it,

Where    it     draws     blood     no   cataplasm     so    rare,

Collected       from       all    simples   that have       virtue

Under     the  moon,    can  save the  thing      from       death

This is     but  scratch’d withal.    I’ll    touch     my  point

With       this  contagion,     that if     I      gall  him slightly,

It     may be   death.

KING.

Let’s further    think      of    this,

Weigh    what       convenience  both       of    time and means

May fit    us    to    our  shape.    If     this  should    fail,

And that our  drift look through  our  bad performance.

’Twere    better     not  assay’d.  Therefore      this  project

Should   have       a     back       or    second,  that might     hold

If     this  did  blast       in    proof.     Soft, let   me  see.

We’ll       make      a     solemn   wager     on   your cunnings,—

I      ha’t! When     in    your motion   you are  hot  and dry,

As   make      your bouts     more      violent    to    that end,

And that he   calls for   drink,      I’ll    have       prepar’d him A     chalice       for   the  nonce;    whereon but  sipping,

If     he   by   chance   escape   your venom’d stuck,

Our purpose  may hold there.

Enter      QUEEN .

How now,       sweet     Queen?

QUEEN.

One woe doth       tread      upon      another’s heel,

So   fast  they follow.    Your       sister’s    drown’d, Laertes.

LAERTES.

Drown’d! O,    where?

QUEEN.

There     is     a     willow     grows     aslant     a     brook,

That shows     his   hoary     leaves     in    the  glassy     stream.

There     with fantastic garlands did  she  make

Of   crow-flowers, nettles,   daisies,   and long purples,

That liberal     shepherds     give a     grosser   name,

But  our  cold maids     do   dead      men’s     fingers    call  them.

There     on   the  pendant boughs   her  coronet  weeds

Clamb’ring    to    hang,     an   envious  sliver      broke,

When     down      her  weedy    trophies  and herself

Fell  in    the  weeping brook.    Her  clothes   spread    wide,

And mermaid-like, awhile    they bore       her  up,

Which    time she  chaunted       snatches of    old  tunes,

As   one incapable      of    her  own distress,

Or   like  a     creature native     and indued

Unto       that element. But  long it     could      not  be

Till   that her  garments,      heavy     with their drink,

Pull’d      the  poor       wretch    from       her  melodious     lay

To   muddy   death.

LAERTES.

Alas, then she  is     drown’d?

QUEEN.

Drown’d, drown’d.

LAERTES.

Too much     of    water      hast thou,      poor       Ophelia, And therefore I       forbid     my  tears.      But  yet

It     is     our  trick;       nature    her  custom   holds,

Let  shame    say  what       it     will. When     these      are  gone,

The woman   will  be   out. Adieu,    my  lord,

I      have       a     speech   of    fire, that fain would     blaze,

But  that this  folly douts     it.

[ Exit. ]

KING.

Let’s follow,    Gertrude;

How much     I      had to    do   to    calm       his   rage!

Now       fear I      this  will  give it     start again;

Therefore      let’s follow.

[ Exeunt. ]

ACT V

SCENE    I.     A     churchyard.

Enter      two CLOWNS     with spades,   &c.

FIRST      CLOWN.

Is     she to  be  buried   in   Christian      burial,   when    she wilfully    seeks    her own salvation?

SECOND CLOWN.

I      tell  thee she  is,    and therefore make      her  grave      straight.  The       crowner  hath sat   on her,   and finds       it     Christian burial.

FIRST      CLOWN.

How can  that be,  unless    she  drowned herself    in    her  own defence?

SECOND CLOWN.

Why,      ’tis   found     so.

FIRST      CLOWN.

It     must     be  se  offendendo, it   cannot  be  else.      For here lies the point:    if    I     drown myself      wittingly, it     argues       an   act:  and an   act  hath three      branches.      It     is     to    act,       to do,     and to    perform: argal,      she  drowned herself    wittingly.

SECOND CLOWN.

Nay, but  hear you, goodman      delver,—

FIRST      CLOWN.

Give me  leave.     Here       lies  the  water;     good.     Here       stands       the  man;      good.     If     the  man go  to  this       water    and       drown   himself, it   is,  will he  nill he, he  goes,—mark you that. But  if     the  water      come      to    him and drown    him, he       drowns   not  himself.  Argal, he that is     not  guilty      of    his   own       death     shortens not  his   own life.

SECOND CLOWN.

But  is     this  law?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Ay,  marry,    is’t,  crowner’s      quest      law.

SECOND CLOWN.

Will you ha’  the  truth       on’t?       If     this  had not  been      a       gentlewoman,      she  should    have been     buried    out  o’       Christian burial.

FIRST      CLOWN.

Why,      there    thou     say’st.   And      the more    pity       that       great    folk       should  have countenance     in   this       world      to  drown   or  hang     themselves  more    than     their even Christian.    Come,   my spade.  There    is   no ancient gentlemen     but gardeners, ditchers,    and grave-makers:      they hold       up   Adam’s   profession.

SECOND CLOWN.

Was he   a     gentleman?

FIRST      CLOWN.

He   was the  first that ever bore       arms.

SECOND CLOWN.

Why,      he   had none.

FIRST      CLOWN.

What,     art a    heathen?     How     dost      thou     understand  the  Scripture?    The       Scripture says     Adam     digg’d.    Could       he   dig  without  arms?     I’ll    put  another  question to    thee.

If     thou answerest      me  not  to    the  purpose, confess   thyself—

SECOND CLOWN.

Go   to.

FIRST      CLOWN.

What      is   he  that      builds   stronger       than     either    the mason,   the shipwright,   or  the carpenter?

SECOND CLOWN.

The gallows-maker;     for   that frame     outlives  a     thousand       tenants.

FIRST      CLOWN.

I      like  thy  wit   well in    good      faith,      the  gallows   does       well.       But  how does       it     well?       It does    well      to  those    that       do ill.  Now,     thou     dost      ill   to  say the gallows is   built stronger than     the church; argal,    the gallows may      do well to  thee.     To’t       again, come.

SECOND CLOWN.

Who       builds     stronger than a     mason,   a     shipwright,    or    a       carpenter?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Ay,  tell  me  that, and unyoke.

SECOND CLOWN.

Marry,    now I      can  tell.

FIRST      CLOWN.

To’t.

SECOND CLOWN.

Mass,     I      cannot   tell.

Enter      HAMLET      and HORATIO ,   at    a     distance.

FIRST      CLOWN.

Cudgel   thy  brains     no   more      about     it,    for   your dull ass  will       not  mend     his   pace       with beating; and       when    you       are  asked    this       question      next,     say ‘a   grave-maker’.     The houses    he   makes    last  till   doomsday.    Go,  get  thee to       Yaughan;       fetch      me  a     stoup     of liquor.

[ Exit       SECOND      CLOWN . ]

[ Digs     and sings. ]

In    youth     when      I      did  love, did  love,

Methought    it     was very sweet;

To   contract, O,    the  time for,  a,    my  behove,

O    methought    there      was nothing  meet.

HAMLET.

Has this  fellow     no   feeling    of    his   business, that he   sings      at       grave-making?

HORATIO.

Custom  hath made     it     in    him a     property of    easiness.

HAMLET.

’Tis  e’en so;   the  hand      of    little employment  hath the  daintier       sense.

FIRST      CLOWN.

[ Sings. ]

But  age with his   stealing  steps

Hath       claw’d    me  in    his   clutch,

And hath shipp’d   me  into the  land,

As   if     I      had never      been      such.

[ Throws up   a     skull. ]

HAMLET.

That skull had a     tongue   in    it,    and could      sing once.      How the       knave     jowls      it     to    th’

ground,  as    if     ’twere     Cain’s     jawbone, that did  the  first murder!       This might     be   the pate of  a    politician     which   this       ass  now      o’er-offices, one       that      would   circumvent God,       might     it     not?

HORATIO.

It     might,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

Or   of  a    courtier,       which   could    say ‘Good   morrow,       sweet     lord!     How     dost      thou, good   lord?’      This might       be   my  lord such-a-one,  that praised   my  lord such-a-one’s horse      when      he   meant    to    beg it,    might     it     not?

HORATIO.

Ay,  my  lord.

HAMLET.

Why,      e’en      so: and       now      my Lady     Worm’s;       chapless, and       knocked       about   the mazard  with a     sexton’s       spade.    Here’s    fine revolution,     an   we   had the  trick to    see’t.

Did  these      bones     cost no   more      the  breeding but  to    play at       loggets   with ’em?       Mine ache     to    think      on’t.

FIRST      CLOWN.

[ Sings. ]

A     pickaxe   and a     spade,    a     spade,

For  and a     shrouding-sheet;

O,    a     pit   of    clay for   to    be   made

For  such a     guest      is     meet.

[ Throws up   another  skull. ]

HAMLET.

There’s   another.       Why      may      not that      be  the skull      of    a    lawyer? Where  be  his quiddits  now,     his quillets, his cases,     his tenures, and       his tricks?   Why      does     he suffer       this       rude     knave   now      to  knock   him       about   the  sconce  with      a    dirty      shovel, and  will not tell him       of    his action   of  battery? Hum.    This      fellow   might   be  in’s time a    great    buyer    of  land,     with      his statutes,      his   recognizances,    his fines,    his double    vouchers,      his       recoveries.     Is     this  the  fine of    his   fines,      and the  recovery       of his      recoveries,     to    have       his   fine pate full  of    fine dirt?       Will his   vouchers vouch     him no   more      of    his   purchases,       and double   ones       too, than the  length    and breadth  of    a pair of  indentures?  The       very      conveyances of  his lands    will  scarcely lie  in   this box;       and must      the  inheritor himself       have       no   more,     ha?

HORATIO.

Not a     jot   more,     my  lord.

HAMLET.

Is     not  parchment    made     of    sheep-skins?

HORATIO.

Ay,  my  lord, and of    calf-skins      too.

HAMLET.

They       are  sheep     and calves     which     seek out  assurance      in       that. I      will  speak     to    this fellow.—Whose     grave’s   this, sir?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Mine,      sir.

[ Sings. ]

O,    a     pit   of    clay for   to    be   made

For  such a     guest      is     meet.

HAMLET.

I      think      it     be   thine      indeed,   for   thou liest in’t.

FIRST      CLOWN.

You lie    out  on’t, sir,   and therefore ’tis   not  yours.

For  my  part, I      do   not  lie    in’t, yet  it     is     mine.

HAMLET.

Thou      dost      lie  in’t,       to  be  in’t and       say it   is   thine.     ’Tis for the dead,    not for the quick;     therefore thou liest.

FIRST      CLOWN.

’Tis  a     quick      lie,   sir;   ’t     will  away      again      from       me  to       you.

HAMLET.

What      man dost thou dig  it     for?

FIRST      CLOWN.

For  no   man,      sir.

HAMLET.

What      woman   then?

FIRST      CLOWN.

For  none      neither.

HAMLET.

Who       is     to    be   buried    in’t?

FIRST      CLOWN.

One that was a     woman,  sir;   but, rest her  soul, she’s      dead.

HAMLET.

How absolute      the knave   is!  We must     speak    by  the card,       or  equivocation       will undo      us.   By   the  Lord,       Horatio,  these      three      years      I      have       taken      note of       it,    the  age is grown so    picked    that the  toe  of    the  peasant       comes    so    near the  heel of    the  courtier he     galls his   kibe.—How long hast thou been      a     grave-maker?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Of   all    the  days i’     th’   year,       I      came      to’t  that day  that our       last  King Hamlet   o’ercame Fortinbras.

HAMLET.

How long is     that since?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Cannot   you       tell that?     Every    fool       can       tell that.     It     was       the very      day       that      young Hamlet     was       born,—he      that is     mad,      and sent into England.

HAMLET.

Ay,  marry,    why was he   sent into England?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Why,      because he   was mad;      he   shall recover   his   wits there;       or    if     he   do   not, it’s   no great matter    there.

HAMLET.

Why?

FIRST      CLOWN.

’Twill      not  be   seen in    him there;     there      the  men are  as    mad       as    he.

HAMLET.

How came      he   mad?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Very strangely,      they say.

HAMLET.

How strangely?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Faith,      e’en with losing     his   wits.

HAMLET.

Upon      what       ground?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Why,      here in    Denmark.      I      have       been      sexton    here,       man and boy, thirty      years.

HAMLET.

How long will  a     man lie    i’     th’earth  ere  he   rot?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Faith,      if    he  be  not rotten   before   he  die,—as we have     many      pocky   corses nowadays that will  scarce    hold the  laying       in,—he   will  last  you some      eight      year or    nine year.       A       tanner    will  last  you nine year.

HAMLET.

Why he   more      than another?

FIRST      CLOWN.

Why,      sir,   his   hide is     so    tann’d    with his   trade      that he   will       keep       out  water      a     great while.   And your water      is     a       sore decayer  of    your whoreson      dead      body.      Here’s    a skull now;       this  skull hath lain  in    the  earth      three-and-twenty years.

HAMLET.

Whose    was it?

FIRST      CLOWN.

A     whoreson,     mad fellow’s   it     was. Whose    do   you think      it       was?

HAMLET.

Nay, I      know      not.

FIRST      CLOWN.

A     pestilence      on   him for   a     mad rogue!    A     pour’d    a       flagon    of    Rhenish  on   my  head once.    This same      skull,       sir,   was Yorick’s  skull,      the  King’s     jester.

HAMLET.

This?

FIRST      CLOWN.

E’en that.

HAMLET.

Let  me  see. [ Takes   the  skull. ]     Alas, poor       Yorick.    I      knew       him, Horatio,  a     fellow     of infinite       jest, of    most      excellent       fancy.     He   hath borne     me  on   his   back       a     thousand times;     and now,       how abhorred in    my  imagination   it     is!    My       gorge     rises at    it.    Here hung     those      lips  that I      have       kiss’d      I      know      not  how oft.  Where    be   your gibes      now?

your gambols?      your songs?    your flashes    of    merriment,    that were       wont      to    set   the table on a    roar?     Not       one       now,       to  mock    your      own      grinning?     Quite    chop-fallen?

Now       get you       to  my lady’s    chamber,     and       tell her,       let  her paint     an  inch      thick,    to this   favour   she must      come.   Make    her laugh    at  that.—Prythee,   Horatio, tell  me one thing.

HORATIO.

What’s    that, my  lord?

HAMLET.

Dost thou think      Alexander      looked    o’    this  fashion   i’     th’earth?

HORATIO.

E’en so.

HAMLET.

And smelt      so?  Pah!

[ Throws down      the  skull. ]

HORATIO.

E’en so,   my  lord.

HAMLET.

To   what       base uses we   may return,    Horatio!  Why may not       imagination   trace      the noble       dust of    Alexander      till   he       find it     stopping a     bung-hole?

HORATIO.

’Twere    to    consider too  curiously to    consider so.

HAMLET.

No,  faith,     not a    jot. But to  follow   him       thither  with      modesty enough,       and likelihood     to    lead it;    as    thus.       Alexander      died,       Alexander      was buried,   Alexander returneth       into      dust;     the dust      is   earth;    of  earth    we   make    loam;    and       why      of  that loam     whereto  he       was converted      might     they not  stop a     beer-barrel?

Imperious      Caesar,   dead      and turn’d     to    clay,

Might     stop a     hole to    keep       the  wind       away.

O,    that that earth      which     kept the  world      in    awe

Should   patch     a     wall t’expel    the  winter’s  flaw.

But  soft! but  soft! aside!     Here       comes    the  King.

Enter      PRIESTS,      &C,        in    procession;    the  corpse    of    OPHELIA,       LAERTES       and MOURNERS   following; KING,    QUEEN,        their Trains,    &c.

The Queen,   the  courtiers. Who       is     that they follow?

And with such maimed  rites?      This doth       betoken The  corse      they       follow     did  with desperate      hand

Fordo     it     own life.  ’Twas      of    some      estate.

Couch    we   awhile    and mark.

[ Retiring with HORATIO . ]

LAERTES.

What      ceremony      else?

HAMLET.

That is     Laertes,  a     very noble     youth.    Mark.

LAERTES.

What      ceremony      else?

PRIEST.

Her  obsequies      have       been      as    far   enlarg’d

As   we   have       warranties.    Her  death     was doubtful;

And but  that great      command      o’ersways      the  order,

She should    in    ground   unsanctified   have       lodg’d

Till   the  last  trumpet. For  charitable      prayers,

Shards,   flints,      and pebbles  should    be   thrown   on   her.

Yet  here she  is     allowed  her  virgin      rites,

Her  maiden   strewments,   and the  bringing home

Of   bell  and burial.

LAERTES.

Must      there      no   more      be   done?

PRIEST.

No   more      be   done.

We  should    profane  the  service    of    the  dead

To   sing sage requiem and such rest to    her

As   to    peace-parted souls.

LAERTES.

Lay  her  i’     th’earth,

And from       her  fair  and unpolluted    flesh

May violets    spring.    I      tell  thee,      churlish  priest,

A     minist’ring     angel      shall my  sister      be

When     thou liest howling.

HAMLET.

What,     the  fair  Ophelia?

QUEEN.

[ Scattering    flowers. ] Sweets   to    the  sweet.    Farewell.

I      hop’d     thou shouldst have       been      my  Hamlet’s wife;

I      thought  thy  bride-bed      to    have       deck’d,   sweet     maid,

And not  have       strew’d   thy  grave.

LAERTES.

O,    treble     woe

Fall  ten  times      treble     on   that cursed    head

Whose    wicked    deed      thy  most      ingenious      sense

Depriv’d thee of.   Hold       off   the  earth      a     while,

Till   I      have       caught   her  once       more      in    mine      arms.

[ Leaps   into the  grave. ]

Now       pile  your dust upon      the  quick      and dead,

Till   of    this  flat  a     mountain      you have       made,

To   o’ertop   old  Pelion     or    the  skyish     head

Of   blue Olympus.

HAMLET.

[ Advancing. ]

What      is     he   whose    grief

Bears      such an   emphasis?     whose    phrase    of    sorrow

Conjures the  wand’ring      stars,      and makes    them      stand

Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is     I,

Hamlet   the  Dane.

[ Leaps   into the  grave. ]

LAERTES.

[ Grappling    with him. ]      The devil       take thy  soul!

HAMLET.

Thou      pray’st    not  well.

I      prythee  take thy  fingers    from       my  throat;

For  though   I      am  not  splenative      and rash,

Yet  have       I      in    me  something     dangerous,

Which    let   thy  wiseness fear. Away      thy  hand!

KING.

Pluck      them      asunder.

QUEEN.

Hamlet!  Hamlet!

All.

Gentlemen!

HORATIO.

Good      my  lord, be   quiet.

[ The      ATTENDANTS     part them,     and they come      out  of    the       grave. ]

HAMLET.

Why,      I      will  fight with him upon      this  theme

Until my  eyelids    will  no   longer    wag.

QUEEN.

O    my  son, what       theme?

HAMLET.

I      lov’d       Ophelia; forty thousand       brothers

Could     not, with all    their quantity of    love,

Make      up   my  sum.       What      wilt  thou do   for   her?

KING.

O,    he   is     mad,      Laertes.

QUEEN.

For  love of    God forbear   him!

HAMLET.

’Swounds,      show      me  what       thou’lt    do:

Woul’t    weep?    woul’t     fight?      woul’t     fast? woul’t     tear thyself?

Woul’t    drink      up   eisel?      eat  a     crocodile?

I’ll    do’t. Dost thou come      here to    whine?

To   outface   me  with leaping   in    her  grave?

Be   buried    quick      with her, and so    will  I.

And if     thou prate      of    mountains,    let   them      throw

Millions  of    acres      on   us,   till   our  ground,

Singeing his   pate against   the  burning  zone,

Make      Ossa       like  a     wart.       Nay, an   thou’lt    mouth,

I’ll    rant as    well as    thou.

QUEEN.

This is     mere      madness:

And thus awhile    the  fit    will  work       on   him;

Anon,     as    patient   as    the  female    dove,

When     that her  golden   couplets are  disclos’d,

His  silence    will  sit    drooping.

HAMLET.

Hear       you, sir;

What      is     the  reason    that you use  me  thus?

I      lov’d       you ever.       But  it     is     no   matter.

Let  Hercules himself   do   what       he   may,

The cat  will  mew,      and dog will  have       his   day.

[ Exit. ]

KING.

I      pray thee,      good      Horatio,  wait upon      him.

[ Exit       HORATIO . ]

[ To Laertes]

Strengthen    your patience in    our  last  night’s    speech;

We’ll       put  the  matter    to    the  present   push.—

Good      Gertrude,       set   some      watch     over your son.

This grave      shall have       a     living      monument.

An   hour       of    quiet      shortly    shall we   see;

Till   then in    patience our  proceeding    be.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     A     hall  in    the  Castle.

Enter      HAMLET      and HORATIO .

HAMLET.

So   much     for   this, sir.   Now       let   me  see  the  other;

You do   remember     all    the  circumstance?

HORATIO.

Remember    it,    my  lord!

HAMLET.

Sir,  in    my  heart      there      was a     kind of    fighting

That would     not  let   me  sleep.     Methought    I      lay

Worse    than the  mutinies in    the  bilboes.  Rashly,

And prais’d    be   rashness for   it,—let    us    know,

Our indiscretion   sometime      serves     us    well,

When     our  deep      plots       do   pall; and that should    teach      us

There’s   a     divinity   that shapes   our  ends,

Rough-hew   them      how we   will.

HORATIO.

That is     most      certain.

HAMLET.

Up   from       my  cabin,

My  sea-gown      scarf’d    about     me, in    the  dark

Grop’d    I      to    find out  them;     had my  desire,

Finger’d  their packet,   and in    fine, withdrew

To   mine      own room      again,     making   so    bold,

My  fears       forgetting      manners, to    unseal

Their      grand     commission;  where     I      found,    Horatio,

Oh  royal       knavery! an   exact      command,

Larded    with many      several   sorts       of    reasons,

Importing      Denmark’s     health,    and England’s      too,

With       ho!  such bugs       and goblins   in    my  life,

That on   the  supervise,      no   leisure    bated,

No,  not  to    stay the  grinding of    the  axe,

My  head      should    be   struck     off.

HORATIO.

Is’t   possible?

HAMLET.

Here’s    the  commission,  read it     at    more      leisure.

But  wilt  thou hear me  how I      did  proceed?

HORATIO.

I      beseech you.

HAMLET.

Being     thus benetted round     with villanies,—

Or   I      could      make      a     prologue to    my  brains,

They       had begun    the  play,—I   sat   me  down,

Devis’d   a     new commission,  wrote     it     fair:

I      once       did  hold it,    as    our  statists   do,

A     baseness to    write       fair, and labour’d much

How to    forget     that learning; but, sir,   now

It     did  me  yeoman’s      service.   Wilt thou know The      effect      of       what       I      wrote?

HORATIO.

Ay,  good      my  lord.

HAMLET.

An   earnest   conjuration    from       the  King,

As   England  was his   faithful   tributary,

As   love between them      like  the  palm      might     flourish,

As   peace     should    still  her  wheaten garland  wear

And stand      a     comma   ’tween    their amities,

And many      such-like ‘as’es      of    great      charge,

That on   the  view and know      of    these      contents,

Without  debatement  further,   more      or    less,

He   should    the  bearers   put  to    sudden   death,

Not shriving-time allow’d.

HORATIO.

How was this  seal’d?

HAMLET.

Why,      even       in    that was heaven   ordinant.

I      had my  father’s   signet     in    my  purse,

Which    was the  model    of    that Danish    seal:

Folded    the  writ up   in    the  form       of    the  other,

Subscrib’d     it:    gave’t     th’impression; plac’d     it     safely,

The changeling    never      known.   Now,      the  next day

Was our  sea-fight,      and what       to    this  was sequent

Thou      know’st  already.

HORATIO.

So   Guildenstern  and Rosencrantz  go   to’t.

HAMLET.

Why,      man,      they did  make      love to    this  employment.

They       are  not  near my  conscience;   their defeat

Does      by   their own insinuation    grow.

’Tis  dangerous     when      the  baser      nature    comes

Between the  pass and fell   incensed points

Of   mighty   opposites.

HORATIO.

Why,      what       a     king is     this!

HAMLET.

Does      it     not, thinks’t   thee,      stand      me  now upon,—

He   that hath kill’d my  king,       and whor’d    my  mother,

Popp’d   in    between th’election     and my  hopes,

Thrown   out  his   angle      for   my  proper    life,

And with such cozenage—is’t      not  perfect   conscience

To   quit him with this  arm?       And is’t   not  to    be   damn’d

To   let   this  canker    of    our  nature    come

In    further    evil?

HORATIO.

It     must      be   shortly    known    to    him from       England

What      is     the  issue      of    the  business there.

HAMLET.

It     will  be   short.     The interim   is     mine;

And a     man’s     life’s no   more      than to    say  ‘One’.

But  I      am  very sorry,      good      Horatio,

That to    Laertes   I      forgot     myself;

For  by   the  image     of    my  cause     I      see

The portraiture     of    his.  I’ll    court      his   favours.

But  sure the  bravery   of    his   grief did  put  me

Into a     tow’ring  passion.

HORATIO.

Peace,    who comes    here?

Enter      OSRIC .

OSRIC.

Your       lordship  is     right       welcome back       to    Denmark.

HAMLET.

I      humbly   thank     you, sir.   Dost know      this  waterfly?

HORATIO.

No,  my  good      lord.

HAMLET.

Thy  state       is     the  more      gracious; for   ’tis   a     vice to    know       him. He   hath much     land, and fertile;   let  a    beast    be  lord       of  beasts,  and       his crib       shall     stand    at  the king’s mess;   ’tis   a     chough;  but, as    I      say, spacious in    the       possession    of    dirt.

OSRIC.

Sweet     lord, if     your lordship  were       at    leisure,   I      should       impart    a     thing      to    you from his  Majesty.

HAMLET.

I      will  receive   it     with all    diligence of    spirit.      Put  your bonnet       to    his   right       use; ’tis for     the  head.

OSRIC.

I      thank     your lordship, ’tis   very hot.

HAMLET.

No,  believe   me, ’tis   very cold,       the  wind       is     northerly.

OSRIC.

It     is     indifferent     cold,       my  lord, indeed.

HAMLET.

Methinks it     is     very sultry      and hot  for   my  complexion.

OSRIC.

Exceedingly,  my lord;      it   is   very      sultry,—as   ’twere—I      cannot   tell how.     But,      my lord,       his   Majesty  bade      me       signify    to    you that he   has  laid  a     great      wager     on   your head.      Sir,  this  is     the  matter,—

HAMLET.

I      beseech you, remember,—

[HAMLET      moves    him to    put  on   his   hat. ]

OSRIC.

Nay, in    good      faith;      for   mine      ease,      in    good      faith.       Sir,  here is     newly     come      to    court Laertes; believe   me, an       absolute gentleman,    full  of    most      excellent differences,    of very soft society   and great      showing. Indeed,   to    speak     feelingly       of    him, he   is     the card  or    calendar of    gentry;   for   you shall       find in    him the  continent      of    what       part a gentleman       would     see.

HAMLET.

Sir,  his definement  suffers  no perdition      in   you,      though I      know,   to  divide   him inventorially would   dizzy     th’arithmetic  of  memory,      and       yet but yaw      neither, in respect   of    his   quick      sail. But, in    the  verity      of    extolment,     I       take him to    be   a     soul of    great    article   and       his infusion  of  such     dearth  and       rareness       as, to  make    true diction    of  him,      his semblable    is   his mirror   and       who else      would   trace     him       his umbrage,       nothing more.

OSRIC.

Your       lordship  speaks    most      infallibly of    him.

HAMLET.

The concernancy, sir?  Why do   we   wrap       the  gentleman     in    our       more      rawer      breath?

OSRIC.

Sir?

HORATIO.

Is’t   not  possible  to    understand    in    another  tongue?  You will  do’t,       sir,   really.

HAMLET.

What      imports  the  nomination   of    this  gentleman?

OSRIC.

Of   Laertes?

HORATIO.

His  purse      is     empty    already,  all’s golden   words     are  spent.

HAMLET.

Of   him, sir.

OSRIC.

I      know      you are  not  ignorant,—

HAMLET.

I      would     you did, sir;   yet  in    faith if     you did, it     would     not       much     approve  me. Well, sir?

OSRIC.

You are  not  ignorant of    what       excellence     Laertes   is,—

HAMLET.

I      dare      not confess that,     lest I     should  compare      with him       in   excellence;   but to know a     man well were       to       know      himself.

OSRIC.

I      mean,   sir, for his weapon;      but in   the imputation   laid       on him,      by  them    in   his meed      he’s unfellowed.

HAMLET.

What’s    his   weapon?

OSRIC.

Rapier    and dagger.

HAMLET.

That’s     two of    his   weapons.       But  well.

OSRIC.

The King,     sir, hath     wager’d with      him       six  Barbary horses,   against the which   he has  imponed,       as    I      take it,       six   French    rapiers    and poniards, with their assigns,  as girdle, hangers, and       so. Three    of  the carriages,     in   faith,     are very dear      to  fancy, very   responsive     to    the  hilts, most       delicate  carriages,      and of    very liberal     conceit.

HAMLET.

What      call  you the  carriages?

HORATIO.

I      knew      you must      be   edified    by   the  margin   ere  you had       done.

OSRIC.

The carriages,      sir,   are  the  hangers.

HAMLET.

The phrase    would     be   more      german  to    the  matter    if     we       could      carry       cannon   by   our sides.       I      would     it       might     be   hangers  till   then.      But  on.  Six   Barbary  horses       against six     French    swords,   their assigns,  and three      liberal       conceited      carriages:      that’s      the French     bet  against   the       Danish.   Why is     this  all    imponed,       as    you call  it?

OSRIC.

The King,      sir,   hath laid  that in    a     dozen     passes    between you       and him, he   shall not exceed    you       three    hits.      He hath laid       on twelve   for nine.     And      it   would   come    to immediate trial if     your lordship  would     vouchsafe      the  answer.

HAMLET.

How if     I      answer   no?

OSRIC.

I      mean,     my  lord, the  opposition     of    your person    in    trial.

HAMLET.

Sir,  I      will  walk here in    the  hall. If     it     please    his   Majesty, it       is     the  breathing      time of day     with me. Let  the  foils be       brought, the  gentleman     willing,   and the  King hold his  purpose, I       will  win  for   him if     I      can; if     not, I      will  gain nothing  but       my  shame and    the  odd hits.

OSRIC.

Shall       I      re-deliver      you e’en so?

HAMLET.

To   this  effect,     sir;   after what       flourish   your nature    will.

OSRIC.

I      commend      my  duty to    your lordship.

HAMLET.

Yours,     yours.

[ Exit       OSRIC . ]

He   does       well to    commend      it     himself,  there      are  no       tongues  else for’s turn.

HORATIO.

This lapwing  runs away      with the  shell on   his   head.

HAMLET.

He   did  comply   with his   dug before    he   suck’d    it.    Thus       has       he,—and many      more of  the  same      bevy       that I      know       the  drossy    age dotes      on,—      only got  the  tune of    the time       and outward habit      of    encounter;     a     kind of    yeasty       collection,     which     carries them  through  and through  the  most       fanned   and winnowed     opinions; and do   but blow them      to       their trial, the  bubbles  are  out,

Enter      a     LORD .

LORD.

My  lord, his   Majesty  commended  him to    you by   young    Osric,       who brings     back to   him that you attend    him in    the  hall. He       sends     to    know      if     your pleasure hold to play    with Laertes       or    that you will  take longer    time.

HAMLET.

I      am constant      to  my purposes,     they      follow   the King’s     pleasure.      If    his fitness speaks,     mine      is     ready.       Now       or    whensoever,  provided I      be   so    able as    now.

LORD.

The King and Queen    and all    are  coming   down.

HAMLET.

In    happy     time.

LORD.

The Queen  desires  you       to  use some    gentle   entertainment      to  Laertes before   you fall to    play.

HAMLET.

She well instructs me.

[ Exit       LORD . ]

HORATIO.

You will  lose this  wager,    my  lord.

HAMLET.

I      do   not  think      so.   Since      he   went       into France,   I      have       been      in    continual practice. I shall     win at  the odds.    But thou wouldst not think     how      ill   all’s       here      about   my heart:     but  it     is     no   matter.

HORATIO.

Nay, good      my  lord.

HAMLET.

It     is     but  foolery;   but  it     is     such a     kind of    gain-giving   as       would     perhaps  trouble   a woman.

HORATIO.

If     your mind      dislike     anything, obey       it.    I      will  forestall  their       repair     hither,    and say you   are  not  fit.

HAMLET.

Not a     whit,       we   defy augury.   There’s   a     special    providence       in    the  fall   of    a     sparrow.

If     it     be   now,       ’tis   not  to    come;     if     it     be   not  to       come,     it     will  be   now;       if     it     be   not  now, yet it     will       come.     The readiness       is     all.   Since      no   man has  aught       of    what       he   leaves, what   is’t   to    leave      betimes?

Enter      KING,    QUEEN,  LAERTES, LORDS,   OSRIC    and ATTENDANTS      with foils &c.

KING.

Come,    Hamlet,  come,     and take this  hand      from       me.

[ The      KING    puts LAERTES’S   hand      into HAMLET’S . ]

HAMLET.

Give me  your pardon,  sir.   I      have       done      you wrong;

But  pardon’t as    you are  a     gentleman.

This presence knows,    and you must      needs     have       heard,

How I      am  punish’d with sore distraction.

What      I      have       done

That might     your nature,   honour,  and exception

Roughly  awake,    I      here proclaim was madness.

Was’t      Hamlet   wrong’d  Laertes?  Never     Hamlet.

If     Hamlet   from       himself   be   ta’en      away,

And when      he’s not  himself   does       wrong    Laertes,

Then      Hamlet   does       it     not, Hamlet   denies    it.

Who       does       it,    then?      His  madness.       If’t   be   so, Hamlet       is     of    the  faction    that is     wrong’d;

His  madness is     poor       Hamlet’s enemy.

Sir,  in    this  audience,

Let  my  disclaiming    from       a     purpos’d evil

Free me  so    far   in    your most      generous       thoughts

That I      have       shot my  arrow     o’er the  house

And hurt my  brother.

LAERTES.

I      am  satisfied  in    nature,

Whose    motive    in    this  case should    stir  me  most

To   my  revenge. But  in    my  terms     of    honour

I      stand      aloof,      and will  no   reconcilement

Till   by   some      elder      masters  of    known    honour

I      have       a     voice      and precedent      of    peace

To   keep       my  name     ungor’d. But  till   that time

I      do   receive   your offer’d    love like  love,

And will  not  wrong    it.

HAMLET.

I      embrace it     freely,

And will  this  brother’s wager     frankly    play.—

Give us    the  foils; come      on.

LAERTES.

Come,    one for   me.

HAMLET.

I’ll    be   your foil,  Laertes;  in    mine      ignorance

Your       skill shall like  a     star i’     th’   darkest   night,

Stick fiery off   indeed.

LAERTES.

You mock      me, sir.

HAMLET.

No,  by   this  hand.

KING.

Give them      the  foils, young    Osric.     Cousin    Hamlet,

You know      the  wager?

HAMLET.

Very well, my  lord.

Your       Grace     has  laid  the  odds       o’    the  weaker   side.

KING.

I      do   not  fear it.    I      have       seen you both;

But  since      he   is     better’d, we   have       therefore odds.

LAERTES.

This is     too  heavy.    Let  me  see  another.

HAMLET.

This likes me  well. These     foils have       all    a     length?

[ They     prepare  to    play. ]

OSRIC.

Ay,  my  good      lord.

KING.

Set  me  the  stoups    of    wine upon      that table.

If     Hamlet   give the  first or    second   hit,

Or   quit in    answer   of    the  third       exchange,

Let  all    the  battlements   their ordnance       fire;

The King shall drink      to    Hamlet’s better     breath,

And in    the  cup an   union     shall he   throw

Richer     than that which     four successive     kings

In    Denmark’s     crown     have       worn.      Give me  the  cups;

And let   the  kettle      to    the  trumpet  speak,

The trumpet  to    the  cannoneer     without,

The cannons to    the  heavens, the  heavens to    earth,

‘Now      the  King drinks     to    Hamlet.’ Come,    begin.

And you, the  judges,   bear a     wary       eye.

HAMLET.

Come     on,  sir.

LAERTES.

Come,    my  lord.

[ They     play. ]

HAMLET.

One.

LAERTES.

No.

HAMLET.

Judgment.

OSRIC.

A     hit,  a     very palpable hit.

LAERTES.

Well;       again.

KING.

Stay,       give me  drink.      Hamlet,  this  pearl      is     thine;

Here’s    to    thy  health.

[ Trumpets     sound,    and cannon   shot off   within. ]

Give him the  cup.

HAMLET.

I’ll    play this  bout       first; set   it     by   awhile.

[ They     play. ]

Come.    Another  hit;  what       say  you?

LAERTES.

A     touch,    a     touch,    I      do   confess.

KING.

Our son  shall win.

QUEEN.

He’s fat,  and scant      of    breath.

Here,      Hamlet,  take my  napkin,   rub  thy  brows.

The Queen    carouses to    thy  fortune,  Hamlet.

HAMLET.

Good      madam.

KING.

Gertrude,       do   not  drink.

QUEEN.

I      will, my  lord; I      pray you pardon   me.

KING.

[ Aside. ] It     is     the  poison’d cup; it     is     too  late.

HAMLET.

I      dare not  drink      yet,  madam.  By   and by.

QUEEN.

Come,    let   me  wipe       thy  face.

LAERTES.

My  lord, I’ll    hit   him now.

KING.

I      do   not  think’t.

LAERTES.

[ Aside. ] And yet  ’tis   almost    ’gainst    my  conscience.

HAMLET.

Come     for   the  third,      Laertes.  You do   but  dally.

I      pray you pass with your best violence.

I      am  afeard    you make      a     wanton   of    me.

LAERTES.

Say  you so?  Come     on.

[ They     play. ]

OSRIC.

Nothing  neither   way.

LAERTES.

Have      at    you now.

[LAERTES      wounds  HAMLET;     then,      in    scuffling, they change       rapiers,   and HAMLET

wounds  LAERTES . ]

KING.

Part them;     they are  incens’d.

HAMLET.

Nay, come      again!

[ The      QUEEN        falls. ]

OSRIC.

Look       to    the  Queen    there,     ho!

HORATIO.

They       bleed      on   both       sides.      How is     it,    my  lord?

OSRIC.

How is’t,  Laertes?

LAERTES.

Why,      as    a     woodcock      to    my  own springe,  Osric.

I      am  justly      kill’d with mine      own treachery.

HAMLET.

How does       the  Queen?

KING.

She swoons   to    see  them      bleed.

QUEEN.

No,  no,  the  drink,      the  drink!     O    my  dear Hamlet!

The drink,      the  drink!     I      am  poison’d.

[ Dies. ]

HAMLET.

O    villany!   Ho!  Let  the  door       be   lock’d:

Treachery!     Seek       it     out.

[LAERTES      falls. ]

LAERTES.

It     is     here,      Hamlet.  Hamlet,  thou art   slain.

No   medicine in    the  world      can  do   thee good.

In    thee there      is     not  half an   hour       of    life;

The treacherous   instrument    is     in    thy  hand,

Unbated and envenom’d.   The foul practice

Hath       turn’d     itself on   me. Lo,   here I      lie,

Never     to    rise  again.     Thy  mother’s poison’d.

I      can  no   more.     The King,      the  King’s     to    blame.

HAMLET.

The point      envenom’d    too!

Then,      venom,   to    thy  work.

[ Stabs    the  KING . ]

OSRIC     and LORDS.

Treason! treason!

KING.

O    yet  defend   me, friends.   I      am  but  hurt.

HAMLET.

Here,      thou incestuous,    murderous,    damned Dane,

Drink      off   this  potion.   Is     thy  union     here?

Follow    my  mother.

[KING     dies. ]

LAERTES.

He   is     justly      serv’d.

It     is     a     poison    temper’d by   himself.

Exchange      forgiveness    with me, noble     Hamlet.

Mine      and my  father’s   death     come      not  upon      thee,

Nor thine      on   me.

[ Dies. ]

HAMLET.

Heaven  make      thee free of    it!    I      follow     thee.

I      am  dead,      Horatio.  Wretched      Queen,   adieu.

You that look pale and tremble  at    this  chance,

That are  but  mutes     or    audience to    this  act,

Had I      but  time,—as       this  fell   sergeant, death,

Is     strict       in    his   arrest,—O,     I      could      tell  you,—

But  let   it     be.  Horatio,  I      am  dead,

Thou      liv’st;      report     me  and my  cause     aright

To   the  unsatisfied.

HORATIO.

Never     believe   it.

I      am  more      an   antique  Roman   than a     Dane.

Here’s    yet  some      liquor     left.

HAMLET.

As   th’art      a     man,

Give me  the  cup. Let  go;  by   Heaven,  I’ll    have’t.

O    good      Horatio,  what       a     wounded       name,

Things    standing thus unknown,      shall live  behind   me.

If     thou didst       ever hold me  in    thy  heart,

Absent   thee from       felicity    awhile,

And in    this  harsh      world      draw       thy  breath    in    pain,

To   tell  my  story.

[ March  afar off,  and shot within. ]

What      warlike   noise      is     this?

OSRIC.

Young    Fortinbras,     with conquest come      from       Poland,

To   the  ambassadors of    England  gives

This warlike   volley.

HAMLET.

O,    I      die,  Horatio.

The potent    poison    quite      o’er-crows     my  spirit:

I      cannot   live  to    hear the  news      from       England,

But  I      do   prophesy       th’election     lights

On  Fortinbras.     He   has  my  dying      voice.

So   tell  him, with the  occurrents     more      and less,

Which    have       solicited. The rest is     silence.

[ Dies. ]

HORATIO.

Now       cracks     a     noble     heart.     Good      night,     sweet       prince,

And flights     of    angels    sing thee to    thy  rest.

Why does       the  drum      come      hither?

[ March  within. ]

Enter      FORTINBRAS,      THE ENGLISH AMBASSADORS   and others.

FORTINBRAS.

Where    is     this  sight?

HORATIO.

What      is     it     you would     see?

If     aught     of    woe or    wonder,  cease     your search.

FORTINBRAS.

This quarry    cries on   havoc.    O    proud     death,

What      feast       is     toward   in    thine      eternal   cell,

That thou so    many      princes   at    a     shot

So   bloodily  hast struck?

FIRST      AMBASSADOR.

The sight       is     dismal;

And our  affairs     from       England  come      too  late.

The ears are  senseless that should    give us    hearing,

To   tell  him his   commandment     is     fulfill’d,

That Rosencrantz  and Guildenstern  are  dead.

Where    should    we   have       our  thanks?

HORATIO.

Not from       his   mouth,

Had it     th’ability of    life   to    thank     you.

He   never      gave       commandment     for   their death.

But  since,     so    jump      upon      this  bloody    question,

You from       the  Polack    wars,      and you from       England

Are  here arriv’d,    give order      that these      bodies

High       on   a     stage      be   placed    to    the  view,

And let   me  speak     to    th’   yet  unknowing    world

How these      things     came      about.    So   shall you hear

Of   carnal,    bloody    and unnatural      acts,

Of   accidental     judgments,    casual    slaughters,

Of   deaths    put  on   by   cunning  and forc’d     cause,

And, in    this  upshot,   purposes mistook

Fall’n      on   the  inventors’      heads.    All   this  can  I

Truly       deliver.

FORTINBRAS.

Let  us    haste      to    hear it,

And call  the  noblest   to    the  audience.

For  me, with sorrow    I      embrace my  fortune.

I      have       some      rights     of    memory in    this  kingdom,

Which    now to    claim      my  vantage  doth       invite      me.

HORATIO.

Of   that I      shall have       also cause     to    speak,

And from       his   mouth    whose    voice      will  draw       on   more.

But  let   this  same      be   presently perform’d,

Even       while      men’s     minds     are  wild, lest  more      mischance

On  plots       and errors     happen.

FORTINBRAS.

Let  four captains

Bear Hamlet   like  a     soldier    to    the  stage,

For  he   was likely,      had he   been      put  on,

To   have       prov’d    most      royally;   and for   his   passage,

The soldiers’  music     and the  rites of    war

Speak     loudly     for   him.

Take       up   the  bodies.   Such       a     sight       as    this

Becomes the  field,       but  here shows     much     amiss.

Go,  bid  the  soldiers  shoot.

[ A   dead      march. ]

[ Exeunt, bearing  off   the  bodies,   after which     a     peal of    ordnance       is     shot off. ]

Contents
THE PROLOGUE.
ACT I
Scene     I. A  public     place.
Scene     II. A Street.

Scene     III. Room in    Capulet’s House.

Scene     IV.   A     Street.

Scene     V.   A     Hall in    Capulet’s House.

ACT II

CHORUS.

Scene     I. An open      place      adjoining       Capulet’s Garden.

Scene     II. Capulet’s   Garden.

Scene     III. Friar   Lawrence’s    Cell.

Scene     IV.   A     Street.

Scene     V.   Capulet’s Garden.

Scene     VI.   Friar Lawrence’s    Cell.

ACT III

Scene     I. A  public     Place.

Scene     II. A Room     in    Capulet’s House.

Scene     III. Friar   Lawrence’s    cell.

Scene     IV.   A     Room     in    Capulet’s House.

Scene     V.   An   open      Gallery    to    Juliet’s    Chamber,       overlooking   the  Garden.

ACT IV

Scene     I. Friar     Lawrence’s    Cell.

Scene     II. Hall     in    Capulet’s House.

Scene     III. Juliet’s       Chamber.

Scene     IV.   Hall in    Capulet’s House.

Scene     V.   Juliet’s    Chamber;      Juliet      on   the  bed.

ACT V

Scene     I. Mantua.      A     Street.

Scene     II. Friar    Lawrence’s    Cell.

Scene     III. A churchyard;   in    it     a     Monument    belonging      to       the  Capulets.

Dramatis Personæ

ESCALUS,      Prince     of    Verona.

MERCUTIO,    kinsman to    the  Prince,    and friend     to    Romeo.

PARIS,    a     young    Nobleman,    kinsman to    the  Prince.

Page      to    Paris.

MONTAGUE,  head      of    a     Veronese       family     at    feud with the       Capulets.

LADY      MONTAGUE,  wife to    Montague.

ROMEO, son  to    Montague.

BENVOLIO,    nephew  to    Montague,    and friend     to    Romeo.

ABRAM,  servant   to    Montague.

BALTHASAR,  servant   to    Romeo.

CAPULET,      head      of    a     Veronese       family     at    feud with the       Montagues.

LADY      CAPULET,      wife to    Capulet.

JULIET,    daughter to    Capulet.

TYBALT,  nephew  to    Lady       Capulet.

CAPULET’S    COUSIN, an   old  man.

NURSE    to    Juliet.

PETER,    servant   to    Juliet’s    Nurse.

SAMPSON,    servant   to    Capulet.

GREGORY,     servant   to    Capulet.

Servants.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE,   a     Franciscan.

FRIAR     JOHN,    of    the  same      Order.

An   Apothecary.

CHORUS.

Three     Musicians.

An   Officer.

Citizens  of    Verona;  several   Men and Women, relations to    both       houses;  Maskers, Guards,  Watchmen    and Attendants.

SCENE.   During    the  greater   part of    the  Play in Verona;      once,       in    the  Fifth Act, at    Mantua.

THE PROLOGUE

Enter      CHORUS .

CHORUS.

Two households,   both       alike in    dignity,

In    fair  Verona,  where     we   lay   our  scene,

From      ancient   grudge   break      to    new mutiny,

Where    civil blood     makes    civil hands     unclean.

From      forth       the  fatal loins of    these      two foes A     pair of    star-cross’d   lovers     take their life; Whose    misadventur’d      piteous       overthrows

Doth       with their death     bury their parents’  strife.

The fearful    passage  of    their death-mark’d love, And       the       continuance  of    their parents’  rage, Which,  but  their children’s       end, nought   could      remove, Is      now the  two hours’     traffic       of    our  stage; The      which,    if     you with patient   ears attend,

What      here shall miss,      our  toil  shall strive      to    mend.

[ Exit. ]

ACT I

SCENE    I.     A     public     place.

Enter      SAMPSON   and GREGORY   armed    with swords   and       bucklers.

SAMPSON.

Gregory, on   my  word,      we’ll not  carry       coals.

GREGORY.

No,  for   then we   should    be   colliers.

SAMPSON.

I      mean,     if     we   be   in    choler,    we’ll draw.

GREGORY.

Ay,  while      you live, draw       your neck out  o’    the  collar.

SAMPSON.

I      strike      quickly,   being     moved.

GREGORY.

But  thou art   not  quickly   moved    to    strike.

SAMPSON.

A     dog of    the  house     of    Montague     moves    me.

GREGORY.

To   move      is     to    stir;  and to    be   valiant    is     to    stand:       therefore,      if     thou art   moved,   thou runn’st  away.

SAMPSON.

A     dog of    that house     shall move      me  to    stand.

I      will  take the  wall of    any  man or    maid      of    Montague’s.

GREGORY.

That shows     thee a     weak      slave,      for   the  weakest  goes       to       the  wall.

SAMPSON.

True,      and therefore women,  being     the  weaker   vessels,   are  ever       thrust     to    the  wall: therefore       I      will  push       Montague’s       men from       the  wall, and thrust     his   maids     to    the

wall.

GREGORY.

The quarrel   is     between our  masters  and us    their men.

SAMPSON.

’Tis  all    one, I      will  show      myself    a     tyrant:    when      I      have       fought    with the  men I      will be    civil with the  maids,    I      will       cut  off   their heads.

GREGORY.

The heads     of    the  maids?

SAMPSON.

Ay,  the  heads     of    the  maids,    or    their maidenheads; take it     in       what       sense     thou wilt.

GREGORY.

They       must      take it     in    sense     that feel  it.

SAMPSON.

Me  they shall feel  while      I      am  able to    stand:     and ’tis   known    I       am  a     pretty     piece      of flesh.

GREGORY.

’Tis  well      thou     art not fish;      if    thou     hadst,   thou     hadst      been     poor     John.    Draw     thy tool;       here comes       of    the  house     of    Montagues.

Enter      ABRAM       and BALTHASAR .

SAMPSON.

My  naked     weapon  is     out: quarrel,  I      will  back       thee.

GREGORY.

How?      Turn thy  back       and run?

SAMPSON.

Fear me  not.

GREGORY.

No,  marry;    I      fear thee!

SAMPSON.

Let  us    take the  law  of    our  sides;      let   them      begin.

GREGORY.

I      will  frown     as    I      pass by,   and let   them      take it     as    they       list.

SAMPSON.

Nay, as    they dare.      I      will  bite my  thumb    at    them,     which       is     disgrace to    them      if     they bear       it.

ABRAM.

Do   you bite your thumb    at    us,   sir?

SAMPSON.

I      do   bite my  thumb,   sir.

ABRAM.

Do   you bite your thumb    at    us,   sir?

SAMPSON.

Is     the  law  of    our  side if     I      say  ay?

GREGORY.

No.

SAMPSON.

No   sir,   I      do   not  bite my  thumb    at    you, sir;   but  I      bite my       thumb,   sir.

GREGORY.

Do   you quarrel,  sir?

ABRAM.

Quarrel,  sir?  No,  sir.

SAMPSON.

But  if     you do,  sir,   am  for   you. I      serve      as    good      a     man       as    you.

ABRAM.

No   better.

SAMPSON.

Well,       sir.

Enter      BENVOLIO .

GREGORY.

Say  better;    here comes    one of    my  master’s kinsmen.

SAMPSON.

Yes, better,    sir.

ABRAM.

You lie.

SAMPSON.

Draw,     if     you be   men.      Gregory, remember     thy  washing blow.

[ They     fight. ]

BENVOLIO.

Part, fools!      put  up   your swords,   you know      not  what       you do.

[ Beats    down      their swords. ]

Enter      TYBALT .

TYBALT.

What,     art   thou drawn     among   these      heartless hinds?

Turn thee Benvolio, look upon      thy  death.

BENVOLIO.

I      do   but  keep       the  peace,    put  up   thy  sword,

Or   manage  it     to    part these      men with me.

TYBALT.

What,     drawn,    and talk  of    peace?   I      hate the  word As  I      hate       hell, all    Montagues,   and thee:

Have      at    thee,      coward.

[ They     fight. ]

Enter      three      or    four CITIZENS     with clubs.

FIRST      CITIZEN.

Clubs,     bills and partisans!      Strike!     Beat them      down!

Down     with the  Capulets! Down     with the  Montagues!

Enter      CAPULET     in    his   gown,     and LADY    CAPULET .

CAPULET.

What      noise      is     this? Give me  my  long sword,    ho!

LADY      CAPULET.

A     crutch,    a     crutch!   Why call  you for   a     sword?

CAPULET.

My  sword,    I      say! Old  Montague     is     come,

And flourishes      his   blade      in    spite       of    me.

Enter      MONTAGUE       and his   LADY    MONTAGUE .

MONTAGUE.

Thou      villain     Capulet! Hold       me  not, let   me  go.

LADY      MONTAGUE.

Thou      shalt       not  stir  one foot to    seek a     foe.

Enter      PRINCE ESCALUS,      with ATTENDANTS .

PRINCE.

Rebellious     subjects, enemies to    peace,

Profaners       of    this  neighbour-stained      steel,—

Will they not  hear?      What,     ho!  You men,      you beasts, That       quench   the  fire  of    your pernicious     rage With      purple       fountains issuing   from       your veins, On pain of    torture,   from       those      bloody    hands Throw  your mistemper’d  weapons to    the       ground And   hear the  sentence of    your moved    prince.

Three     civil brawls,   bred       of    an   airy  word,

By   thee,      old  Capulet, and Montague,

Have      thrice     disturb’d the  quiet      of    our  streets, And   made       Verona’s ancient   citizens

Cast by   their grave      beseeming    ornaments,

To   wield      old  partisans,      in    hands     as    old,

Canker’d with peace,    to    part your canker’d hate.

If     ever you disturb   our  streets    again,

Your       lives shall pay  the  forfeit     of    the  peace.

For  this  time all    the  rest depart    away:

You, Capulet, shall go   along     with me,

And Montague,    come      you this  afternoon,

To   know      our  farther    pleasure in    this  case,

To   old  Free-town,    our  common judgement-place.

Once      more,     on   pain of    death,    all    men depart.

[ Exeunt  PRINCE       and ATTENDANTS;     CAPULET,      LADY       CAPULET,      TYBALT,  CITIZENS       and Servants. ]

MONTAGUE.

Who       set   this  ancient   quarrel   new abroach?

Speak,    nephew, were       you by   when      it     began?

BENVOLIO.

Here       were       the  servants of    your adversary

And yours,     close      fighting  ere  I      did  approach.

I      drew       to    part them,     in    the  instant    came

The fiery Tybalt,    with his   sword     prepar’d, Which,   as    he   breath’d       defiance to    my  ears,

He   swung    about     his   head,      and cut  the  winds, Who    nothing       hurt withal,    hiss’d     him in    scorn.

While     we   were       interchanging thrusts    and blows Came   more       and more,     and fought    on   part and part, Till  the  Prince       came,     who parted    either     part.

LADY      MONTAGUE.

O    where     is     Romeo,  saw you him today?

Right      glad I      am  he   was not  at    this  fray.

BENVOLIO.

Madam,  an   hour       before    the  worshipp’d    sun

Peer’d    forth       the  golden   window  of    the  east, A    troubled mind       drave      me  to    walk abroad,

Where    underneath   the  grove     of    sycamore

That westward       rooteth   from       this  city  side,

So   early       walking  did  I      see  your son.

Towards him I      made,     but  he   was ware       of    me,

And stole       into the  covert     of    the  wood.

I,     measuring     his   affections      by   my  own,

Which    then most      sought   where     most      might     not  be       found, Being  one too  many      by   my  weary     self,

Pursu’d   my  humour, not  pursuing his,

And gladly     shunn’d  who gladly     fled from       me.

MONTAGUE.

Many      a     morning hath he   there      been      seen,

With       tears       augmenting  the  fresh       morning’s      dew, Adding       to    clouds    more      clouds    with his   deep      sighs; But       all       so    soon       as    the  all-cheering   sun

Should   in    the  farthest  east begin     to    draw

The shady     curtains  from       Aurora’s bed,

Away      from       light steals     home     my  heavy     son,

And private    in    his   chamber pens       himself,

Shuts      up   his   windows, locks      fair  daylight  out And  makes       himself   an   artificial  night.

Black      and portentous    must      this  humour  prove, Unless good       counsel  may the  cause     remove.

BENVOLIO.

My  noble     uncle,     do   you know      the  cause?

MONTAGUE.

I      neither   know      it     nor  can  learn      of    him.

BENVOLIO.

Have      you importun’d    him by   any  means?

MONTAGUE.

Both       by   myself    and many      other      friends;

But  he,  his   own affections’     counsellor,

Is     to    himself—I      will  not  say  how true—

But  to    himself   so    secret     and so    close,

So   far   from       sounding       and discovery,

As   is     the  bud bit   with an   envious  worm

Ere  he   can  spread    his   sweet     leaves     to    the  air, Or     dedicate       his   beauty    to    the  sun.

Could     we   but  learn      from       whence  his   sorrows  grow, We       would     as    willingly  give cure as    know.

Enter      ROMEO .

BENVOLIO.

See, where     he   comes.   So   please    you step aside; I’ll know      his       grievance      or    be   much     denied.

MONTAGUE.

I      would     thou wert so    happy     by   thy  stay

To   hear true shrift.      Come,    madam,  let’s away,

[ Exeunt  MONTAGUE       and LADY    MONTAGUE . ]

BENVOLIO.

Good      morrow, cousin.

ROMEO.

Is     the  day  so    young?

BENVOLIO.

But  new struck     nine.

ROMEO.

Ay   me, sad  hours     seem      long.

Was that my  father     that went       hence     so    fast?

BENVOLIO.

It     was. What      sadness  lengthens      Romeo’s hours?

ROMEO.

Not having    that which,    having,   makes    them      short.

BENVOLIO.

In    love?

ROMEO.

Out.

BENVOLIO.

Of   love?

ROMEO.

Out of    her  favour    where     I      am  in    love.

BENVOLIO.

Alas that love so    gentle    in    his   view,

Should   be   so    tyrannous      and rough     in    proof.

ROMEO.

Alas that love, whose    view is     muffled  still, Should,   without  eyes,       see  pathways       to    his   will!

Where    shall we   dine?      O    me! What      fray was here?

Yet  tell  me  not, for   I      have       heard     it     all.

Here’s    much     to    do   with hate,      but  more      with love: Why,       then,      O    brawling love!       O    loving     hate!

O    anything, of    nothing  first create!

O    heavy     lightness!      serious   vanity!

Misshapen     chaos     of    well-seeming forms!

Feather   of    lead,       bright     smoke,   cold fire, sick health!

Still-waking   sleep,     that is     not  what       it     is!

This love feel  I,     that feel  no   love in    this.

Dost thou not  laugh?

BENVOLIO.

No   coz, I      rather     weep.

ROMEO.

Good      heart,     at    what?

BENVOLIO.

At    thy  good      heart’s    oppression.

ROMEO.

Why such is     love’s     transgression.

Griefs     of    mine      own lie    heavy     in    my  breast,

Which    thou wilt  propagate     to    have       it     prest

With       more      of    thine.     This love that thou hast shown Doth   add       more      grief to    too  much     of    mine      own.

Love       is     a     smoke    made     with the  fume      of    sighs; Being       purg’d,   a     fire  sparkling in    lovers’    eyes; Being    vex’d,     a       sea  nourish’d with lovers’    tears: What    is     it     else?       A       madness most      discreet,

A     choking  gall, and a     preserving     sweet.

Farewell, my  coz.

[ Going. ]

BENVOLIO.

Soft! I      will  go   along:

And if     you leave      me  so,   you do   me  wrong.

ROMEO.

Tut! I      have       lost  myself;   I      am  not  here.

This is     not  Romeo,  he’s some      other      where.

BENVOLIO.

Tell  me  in    sadness  who is     that you love?

ROMEO.

What,     shall I      groan     and tell  thee?

BENVOLIO.

Groan!    Why,      no;  but  sadly      tell  me  who.

ROMEO.

Bid  a     sick man in    sadness  make      his   will,

A     word      ill     urg’d      to    one that is     so    ill.

In    sadness, cousin,   I      do   love a     woman.

BENVOLIO.

I      aim’d      so    near when      I      suppos’d you lov’d.

ROMEO.

A     right       good      markman,      and she’s      fair  I      love.

BENVOLIO.

A     right       fair  mark,      fair  coz, is     soonest  hit.

ROMEO.

Well,       in    that hit   you miss:      she’ll      not  be   hit With  Cupid’s       arrow,     she  hath Dian’s     wit;

And in    strong    proof      of    chastity  well arm’d, From   love’s     weak       childish  bow she  lives uncharm’d.

She will  not  stay the  siege      of    loving     terms Nor      bide       th’encounter  of    assailing eyes,

Nor ope her  lap  to    saint-seducing     gold:

O    she’s      rich in    beauty,   only poor

That when      she  dies, with beauty    dies her  store.

BENVOLIO.

Then      she  hath sworn     that she  will  still  live  chaste?

ROMEO.

She hath,      and in    that sparing   makes    huge      waste; For       beauty    starv’d    with her  severity,

Cuts beauty    off   from       all    posterity.

She is     too  fair, too  wise;       wisely     too  fair, To    merit      bliss by       making   me  despair.

She hath forsworn to    love, and in    that vow

Do   I      live  dead,      that live  to    tell  it     now.

BENVOLIO.

Be   rul’d by   me, forget     to    think      of    her.

ROMEO.

O    teach      me  how I      should    forget     to    think.

BENVOLIO.

By   giving     liberty     unto thine      eyes;

Examine other      beauties.

ROMEO.

’Tis  the  way

To   call  hers,       exquisite, in    question more.

These     happy     masks     that kiss  fair  ladies’    brows, Being  black,       puts us    in    mind      they hide the  fair; He   that is     strucken blind       cannot   forget

The precious treasure  of    his   eyesight lost.

Show      me  a     mistress  that is     passing  fair, What      doth       her       beauty    serve      but  as    a     note

Where    I      may read who pass’d    that passing  fair?

Farewell, thou canst      not  teach      me  to    forget.

BENVOLIO.

I’ll    pay  that doctrine, or    else die  in    debt.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     A     Street.

Enter      CAPULET,     PARIS    and SERVANT .

CAPULET.

But  Montague     is     bound    as    well as    I,

In    penalty   alike;      and ’tis   not  hard,      I      think, For       men so       old  as    we   to    keep       the  peace.

PARIS.

Of   honourable   reckoning      are  you both,

And pity ’tis   you liv’d at    odds       so    long.

But  now my  lord, what       say  you to    my  suit?

CAPULET.

But  saying    o’er what       I      have       said before.

My  child       is     yet  a     stranger in    the  world,

She hath not  seen the  change   of    fourteen years; Let       two more       summers wither     in    their pride

Ere  we   may think      her  ripe to    be   a     bride.

PARIS.

Younger than she  are  happy     mothers made.

CAPULET.

And too  soon       marr’d    are  those      so    early       made.

The earth      hath swallowed     all    my  hopes     but  she, She  is     the       hopeful  lady of    my  earth:

But  woo her, gentle    Paris,      get  her  heart,

My  will  to    her  consent  is     but  a     part;

And she  agree,     within     her  scope     of    choice

Lies my  consent  and fair  according      voice.

This night      I      hold an   old  accustom’d   feast,

Whereto I      have       invited    many      a     guest, Such    as    I      love,       and you among   the  store,

One more,     most      welcome,       makes    my  number  more.

At    my  poor       house     look to    behold   this  night

Earth-treading      stars that make      dark heaven   light: Such     comfort       as    do   lusty young    men feel

When     well apparell’d      April       on   the  heel

Of   limping   winter     treads,    even       such delight Among      fresh       female    buds       shall you this  night Inherit   at    my  house.    Hear       all,   all    see,

And like  her  most      whose    merit      most      shall be: Which,     on       more      view of    many,     mine,      being     one, May stand      in       number, though   in    reckoning      none.

Come,    go   with me. Go,  sirrah,     trudge    about

Through fair  Verona;  find those      persons  out Whose     names    are       written   there,     [ gives    a     paper]    and to    them      say, My       house     and welcome on   their pleasure stay.

[ Exeunt  CAPULET     and PARIS . ]

SERVANT.

Find them    out whose   names  are written  here!     It   is   written   that      the shoemaker should      meddle with      his yard and       the tailor     with      his last,      the fisher    with      his pencil,      and the  painter   with his   nets;       but  I      am  sent to       find those      persons  whose names are  here writ, and can  never       find what       names    the  writing    person    hath here writ. I      must       to    the  learned.  In    good      time!

Enter      BENVOLIO and ROMEO .

BENVOLIO.

Tut, man,      one fire  burns     out  another’s burning, One pain is       lessen’d  by   another’s anguish;

Turn giddy,     and be   holp by   backward      turning; One  desperate       grief cures      with another’s languish: Take      thou some      new       infection to    thy  eye,

And the  rank poison    of    the  old  will  die.

ROMEO.

Your       plantain  leaf  is     excellent for   that.

BENVOLIO.

For  what,      I      pray thee?

ROMEO.

For  your broken   shin.

BENVOLIO.

Why,      Romeo,  art   thou mad?

ROMEO.

Not mad,      but  bound    more      than a     madman is:

Shut up   in    prison,    kept without  my  food,

Whipp’d and tormented     and—God-den,    good      fellow.

SERVANT.

God gi’   go-den.  I      pray,       sir,   can  you read?

ROMEO.

Ay,  mine      own fortune   in    my  misery.

SERVANT.

Perhaps  you have       learned   it     without  book.

But  I      pray,       can  you read anything you see?

ROMEO.

Ay,  If     I      know      the  letters     and the  language.

SERVANT.

Ye   say  honestly, rest you merry!

ROMEO.

Stay,       fellow;    I      can  read.

[ He reads      the  letter. ]

Signior   Martino  and his   wife and daughters; County Anselmo and his       beauteous     sisters; The    lady widow    of    Utruvio;

Signior   Placentio and his   lovely     nieces; Mercutio   and his   brother       Valentine;

Mine      uncle      Capulet, his   wife, and daughters; My      fair  niece       Rosaline and Livia;

Signior   Valentio and his   cousin    Tybalt; Lucio  and the  lively       Helena.

A     fair  assembly.      [ Gives    back       the  paper]    Whither  should       they come?

SERVANT.

Up.

ROMEO.

Whither  to    supper?

SERVANT.

To   our  house.

ROMEO.

Whose    house?

SERVANT.

My  master’s.

ROMEO.

Indeed    I      should    have       ask’d      you that before.

SERVANT.

Now       I’ll    tell  you without  asking.   My  master    is     the  great       rich Capulet, and if     you be    not  of    the  house     of       Montagues,   I      pray come      and crush      a     cup of    wine.       Rest you merry.

[ Exit. ]

BENVOLIO.

At    this  same      ancient   feast       of    Capulet’s

Sups       the  fair  Rosaline whom     thou so    lov’st; With    all    the       admired beauties of    Verona.

Go   thither    and with unattainted   eye,

Compare her  face with some      that I      shall show, And     I      will       make      thee think      thy  swan      a     crow.

ROMEO.

When     the  devout   religion   of    mine      eye

Maintains      such falsehood,     then turn tears       to    fire; And these       who,       often      drown’d, could      never      die, Transparent       heretics, be   burnt      for   liars.

One fairer      than my  love?      The all-seeing      sun Ne’er       saw her       match    since      first the  world      begun.

BENVOLIO.

Tut, you saw her  fair, none      else being     by,

Herself   pois’d     with herself    in    either     eye:

But  in    that crystal    scales     let   there      be   weigh’d

Your       lady’s     love against   some      other      maid That      I      will       show      you shining   at    this  feast, And      she  shall scant      show       well that now shows     best.

ROMEO.

I’ll    go   along,     no   such sight       to    be   shown,

But  to    rejoice    in    splendour      of    my  own.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    III.    Room     in    Capulet’s House.

Enter      LADY    CAPULET      and NURSE .

LADY      CAPULET.

Nurse,    where’s  my  daughter?      Call her  forth       to    me.

NURSE.

Now,      by   my  maidenhead, at    twelve    year old,

I      bade      her  come.     What,     lamb!     What      ladybird!

God forbid!    Where’s  this  girl? What,     Juliet!

Enter      JULIET .

JULIET.

How now,       who calls?

NURSE.

Your       mother.

JULIET.

Madam,  I      am  here.      What      is     your will?

LADY      CAPULET.

This is     the  matter.   Nurse,    give leave      awhile, We     must      talk       in    secret.    Nurse,    come      back       again, I   have       remember’d  me, thou’s     hear our  counsel.

Thou      knowest my  daughter’s     of    a     pretty     age.

NURSE.

Faith,      I      can  tell  her  age unto an   hour.

LADY      CAPULET.

She’s      not  fourteen.

NURSE.

I’ll    lay   fourteen of    my  teeth,

And yet,  to    my  teen be   it     spoken,  I      have       but  four, She is       not  fourteen. How long is     it     now

To   Lammas-tide?

LADY      CAPULET.

A     fortnight and odd days.

NURSE.

Even       or    odd, of    all    days in    the  year,

Come     Lammas Eve  at    night      shall she  be   fourteen.

Susan     and she,—God     rest all    Christian souls!—

Were      of    an   age. Well,       Susan     is     with God;

She was too  good      for   me. But  as    I      said,

On  Lammas Eve  at    night      shall she  be   fourteen; That       shall she,       marry;    I      remember     it     well.

’Tis  since      the  earthquake    now eleven    years; And     she  was       wean’d,—I     never      shall forget     it—, Of   all    the  days of    the       year,       upon      that day: For  I      had then laid  wormwood    to       my  dug,

Sitting    in    the  sun  under     the  dovehouse    wall; My  lord and you       were       then at    Mantua:

Nay, I      do   bear a     brain.     But  as    I      said,

When     it     did  taste       the  wormwood    on   the  nipple Of my  dug       and felt  it     bitter,     pretty     fool,

To   see  it     tetchy,    and fall   out  with the  dug!

Shake,    quoth     the  dovehouse:   ’twas      no   need,      I      trow, To       bid  me  trudge.

And since      that time it     is     eleven    years;

For  then she  could      stand      alone;     nay, by   th’rood She   could       have       run  and waddled all    about;

For  even       the  day  before    she  broke     her  brow, And      then my       husband,—God    be   with his   soul!

A     was a     merry     man,—took   up   the  child:

‘Yea,’      quoth     he,  ‘dost       thou fall   upon      thy  face?

Thou      wilt  fall   backward      when      thou hast more      wit; Wilt  thou       not, Jule?’      and, by   my  holidame,

The pretty     wretch    left  crying,    and said ‘Ay’.

To   see  now how a     jest  shall come      about.

I      warrant,  and I      should    live  a     thousand       years, I    never       should    forget     it.    ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’      quoth     he; And,       pretty     fool, it     stinted,   and said ‘Ay.’

LADY      CAPULET.

Enough  of    this; I      pray thee hold thy  peace.

NURSE.

Yes, madam,  yet  I      cannot   choose   but  laugh,

To   think      it     should    leave      crying,    and say  ‘Ay’; And yet  I       warrant  it     had upon      it     brow

A     bump     as    big  as    a     young    cockerel’s      stone;

A     perilous  knock,    and it     cried       bitterly.

‘Yea,’      quoth     my  husband, ‘fall’st     upon      thy  face?

Thou      wilt  fall   backward      when      thou comest   to    age; Wilt thou       not, Jule?’      it     stinted,   and said ‘Ay’.

JULIET.

And stint thou too, I      pray thee,      Nurse,    say  I.

NURSE.

Peace,    I      have       done.     God mark      thee to    his   grace Thou       wast the  prettiest babe      that e’er I      nurs’d: And    I      might       live  to    see  thee married  once,      I      have       my  wish.

LADY      CAPULET.

Marry,    that marry     is     the  very theme

I      came      to    talk  of.   Tell  me, daughter Juliet, How     stands    your       disposition    to    be   married?

JULIET.

It     is     an   honour   that I      dream    not  of.

NURSE.

An   honour!  Were      not  I      thine      only nurse,

I      would     say  thou hadst      suck’d    wisdom  from       thy  teat.

LADY      CAPULET.

Well,       think      of    marriage now:       younger than you, Here      in       Verona,  ladies     of    esteem,

Are  made     already   mothers. By   my  count

I      was your mother   much     upon      these      years

That you are  now a     maid.      Thus,      then,      in    brief;

The valiant    Paris       seeks      you for   his   love.

NURSE.

A     man,      young    lady!       Lady,      such a     man

As   all    the  world—why   he’s a     man of    wax.

LADY      CAPULET.

Verona’s summer  hath not  such a     flower.

NURSE.

Nay, he’s a     flower,    in    faith a     very flower.

LADY      CAPULET.

What      say  you, can  you love the  gentleman?

This night      you shall behold   him at    our  feast; Read     o’er the       volume   of    young    Paris’      face,

And find delight   writ there      with beauty’s pen.

Examine every      married  lineament,

And see  how one another  lends      content;

And what       obscur’d in    this  fair  volume   lies, Find written   in    the       margent of    his   eyes.

This precious book      of    love, this  unbound lover, To beautify  him, only       lacks       a     cover:

The fish  lives in    the  sea; and ’tis   much     pride For fair  without  the       fair  within     to    hide.

That book      in    many’s   eyes doth       share      the  glory, That     in       gold clasps     locks      in    the  golden   story; So shall you share       all    that he   doth       possess, By    having    him, making   yourself       no   less.

NURSE.

No   less, nay  bigger.   Women  grow      by   men.

LADY      CAPULET.

Speak     briefly,    can  you like  of    Paris’      love?

JULIET.

I’ll    look to    like, if     looking   liking      move:

But  no   more      deep      will  I      endart    mine      eye

Than      your consent  gives      strength to    make      it     fly.

Enter      a     SERVANT .

SERVANT.

Madam,  the  guests    are  come,     supper    served    up,  you called,       my  young    lady asked for,      the  Nurse     cursed    in    the       pantry,   and everything     in    extremity.      I      must      hence       to wait,   I      beseech you follow     straight.

LADY      CAPULET.

We  follow     thee.

[ Exit       SERVANT . ]

Juliet,     the  County   stays.

NURSE.

Go,  girl, seek happy     nights     to    happy     days.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    IV.   A     Street.

Enter      ROMEO,      MERCUTIO,    BENVOLIO,   with five  or    six   MASKERS;      TORCHBEARERS   and others.

ROMEO.

What,     shall this  speech   be   spoke     for   our  excuse?

Or   shall we   on   without  apology?

BENVOLIO.

The date is     out  of    such prolixity:

We’ll       have       no   Cupid     hoodwink’d   with a     scarf, Bearing a       Tartar’s   painted  bow of    lath,

Scaring   the  ladies     like  a     crow-keeper;

Nor no   without-book prologue,      faintly     spoke After    the prompter,       for   our  entrance:

But  let   them      measure us    by   what       they will,

We’ll       measure them      a     measure, and be   gone.

ROMEO.

Give me  a     torch,     I      am  not  for   this  ambling; Being     but       heavy     I      will  bear the  light.

MERCUTIO.

Nay, gentle    Romeo,  we   must      have       you dance.

ROMEO.

Not I,     believe   me, you have       dancing  shoes,

With       nimble    soles,      I      have       a     soul of    lead So   stakes       me  to    the  ground   I      cannot   move.

MERCUTIO.

You are  a     lover,      borrow   Cupid’s   wings,

And soar with them      above     a     common bound.

ROMEO.

I      am  too  sore enpierced      with his   shaft

To   soar with his   light feathers, and so    bound, I  cannot   bound    a       pitch      above     dull woe.

Under     love’s     heavy     burden   do   I      sink.

MERCUTIO.

And, to    sink in    it,    should    you burden   love; Too great       oppression    for   a     tender    thing.

ROMEO.

Is     love a     tender    thing?     It     is     too  rough,

Too rude,      too  boisterous;    and it     pricks     like  thorn.

MERCUTIO.

If     love be   rough     with you, be   rough     with love; Prick      love for       pricking, and you beat love down.

Give me  a     case to    put  my  visage    in:   [ Putting on   a     mask. ]

A     visor       for   a     visor.      What      care I

What      curious   eye  doth       quote     deformities?

Here       are  the  beetle-brows shall blush      for   me.

BENVOLIO.

Come,    knock     and enter;     and no   sooner    in

But  every      man betake    him to    his   legs.

ROMEO.

A     torch      for   me: let   wantons, light of    heart, Tickle   the  senseless       rushes    with their heels; For       I      am  proverb’d      with a       grandsire       phrase, I’ll      be   a     candle-holder      and look on,

The game     was ne’er      so    fair, and I      am  done.

MERCUTIO.

Tut, dun’s      the  mouse,   the  constable’s    own word: If   thou art   dun,       we’ll draw       thee from       the  mire

Or   save your reverence      love, wherein  thou stickest Up     to    the  ears.       Come,    we   burn       daylight, ho.

ROMEO.

Nay, that’s      not  so.

MERCUTIO.

I      mean     sir,   in    delay

We  waste     our  lights      in    vain, light lights      by   day.

Take       our  good      meaning, for   our  judgment      sits Five  times       in    that ere  once       in    our  five  wits.

ROMEO.

And we   mean     well in    going     to    this  mask;

But  ’tis   no   wit   to    go.

MERCUTIO.

Why,      may one ask?

ROMEO.

I      dreamt   a     dream    tonight.

MERCUTIO.

And so    did  I.

ROMEO.

Well what       was yours?

MERCUTIO.

That dreamers       often      lie.

ROMEO.

In    bed asleep,   while      they do   dream    things     true.

MERCUTIO.

O,    then,      I      see  Queen    Mab hath been      with you.

She is     the  fairies’    midwife, and she  comes

In    shape     no   bigger    than an   agate-stone

On  the  fore-finger    of    an   alderman,

Drawn    with a     team      of    little atomies

Over       men’s     noses     as    they lie    asleep:

Her  waggon-spokes   made     of    long spinners’ legs; The cover,     of       the  wings     of    grasshoppers;

Her  traces,    of    the  smallest  spider’s  web;

The collars,   of    the  moonshine’s  watery    beams; Her    whip       of       cricket’s  bone;     the  lash, of    film; Her waggoner,     a     small       grey-coated  gnat,

Not half so    big  as    a     round     little worm

Prick’d    from       the  lazy finger     of    a     maid:

Her  chariot   is     an   empty    hazelnut,

Made     by   the  joiner     squirrel   or    old  grub,

Time       out  o’    mind      the  fairies’    coachmakers.

And in    this  state       she  gallops   night      by   night Through       lovers’    brains,    and then they dream    of    love; O’er       courtiers’       knees,    that dream    on   curtsies  straight; O’er lawyers’  fingers,       who straight  dream    on   fees; O’er       ladies’    lips, who straight       on   kisses     dream, Which oft   the  angry     Mab with blisters       plagues, Because  their breaths   with sweetmeats   tainted   are: Sometime      she  gallops   o’er a     courtier’s nose, And      then dreams       he   of    smelling out  a     suit;

And sometime      comes    she  with a     tithe-pig’s     tail, Tickling   a       parson’s nose       as    a     lies  asleep,

Then      dreams   he   of    another  benefice:

Sometime      she  driveth   o’er a     soldier’s  neck, And      then dreams       he   of    cutting   foreign   throats, Of     breaches,      ambuscados,       Spanish  blades,

Of   healths   five  fathom   deep;      and then anon

Drums    in    his   ear, at    which     he   starts      and wakes; And,       being     thus frighted, swears    a     prayer    or    two, And sleeps       again.     This is     that very Mab

That plats       the  manes    of    horses    in    the  night; And     bakes       the  elf-locks in    foul sluttish   hairs, Which,  once       untangled,       much     misfortune     bodes: This    is     the  hag, when      maids       lie    on   their backs, That    presses   them,     and learns     them       first to    bear, Making them      women   of    good      carriage:

This is     she,—

ROMEO.

Peace,    peace,    Mercutio,       peace,

Thou      talk’st     of    nothing.

MERCUTIO.

True,      I      talk  of    dreams,

Which    are  the  children  of    an   idle  brain,

Begot     of    nothing  but  vain fantasy,

Which    is     as    thin of    substance      as    the  air,

And more      inconstant     than the  wind,      who wooes Even   now the       frozen    bosom    of    the  north,

And, being     anger’d,  puffs       away      from       thence, Turning    his       side to    the  dew-dropping      south.

BENVOLIO.

This wind       you talk  of    blows     us    from       ourselves: Supper is       done,     and we   shall come      too  late.

ROMEO.

I      fear too  early:      for   my  mind      misgives

Some     consequence yet  hanging in    the  stars,

Shall       bitterly   begin     his   fearful    date

With       this  night’s    revels;    and expire     the  term Of  a     despised       life,  clos’d     in    my  breast

By   some      vile  forfeit     of    untimely death.

But  he   that hath the  steerage of    my  course

Direct     my  suit. On,  lusty gentlemen!

BENVOLIO.

Strike,     drum.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    V.    A     Hall in    Capulet’s House.

Musicians      waiting.  Enter      SERVANTS .

FIRST      SERVANT.

Where’s  Potpan,  that he   helps      not  to    take away?

He   shift a     trencher! He   scrape    a     trencher!

SECOND SERVANT.

When     good      manners shall lie    all    in    one or    two men’s       hands,    and they unwash’d too,       ’tis   a     foul thing.

FIRST      SERVANT.

Away      with      the join-stools,  remove the court-cupboard, look to  the plate.    Good thou,  save me  a     piece      of       marchpane;   and as    thou loves      me, let   the  porter     let   in

Susan     Grindstone    and Nell. Antony   and Potpan!

SECOND SERVANT.

Ay,  boy, ready.

FIRST      SERVANT.

You are  looked    for   and called     for,  asked     for   and sought   for,       in    the  great      chamber.

SECOND SERVANT.

We  cannot   be   here and there      too. Cheerly,  boys.      Be   brisk       awhile,   and the  longer liver    take all.

[ Exeunt. ]

Enter      CAPULET,    &c.  with the  Guests    and Gentlewomen to    the       Maskers.

CAPULET.

Welcome,      gentlemen,    ladies     that have       their toes Unplagu’d       with corns      will  have       a     bout       with you.

Ah   my  mistresses,     which     of    you all

Will now deny       to    dance?   She that makes    dainty, She    I’ll       swear     hath corns.     Am  I      come      near ye    now?

Welcome,      gentlemen!    I      have       seen the  day

That I      have       worn      a     visor,      and could      tell

A     whispering    tale in    a     fair  lady’s     ear,

Such       as    would     please;   ’tis   gone,     ’tis   gone,     ’tis   gone, You are  welcome,       gentlemen!    Come,    musicians,     play.

A     hall, a     hall, give room!     And foot it,    girls.

[ Music   plays,     and they dance. ]

More      light,      you knaves;   and turn the  tables     up, And  quench       the  fire, the  room      is     grown    too  hot.

Ah   sirrah,     this  unlook’d-for  sport      comes    well.

Nay sit,   nay  sit,   good      cousin    Capulet,

For  you and I      are  past our  dancing  days;

How long is’t   now since      last  yourself  and I Were    in    a     mask?

CAPULET’S    COUSIN.

By’r Lady,      thirty      years.

CAPULET.

What,     man,      ’tis   not  so    much,     ’tis   not  so    much:

’Tis  since      the  nuptial   of    Lucentio, Come    Pentecost      as       quickly   as    it     will,

Some     five  and twenty    years;     and then we   mask’d.

CAPULET’S    COUSIN.

’Tis  more,     ’tis   more,     his   son  is     elder,      sir; His    son  is    thirty.

CAPULET.

Will you tell  me  that?

His  son  was but  a     ward       two years      ago.

ROMEO.

What      lady is     that, which     doth       enrich     the  hand Of  yonder       knight?

SERVANT.

I      know      not, sir.

ROMEO.

O,    she  doth       teach      the  torches   to    burn       bright!

It     seems    she  hangs     upon      the  cheek     of    night

As   a     rich jewel      in    an   Ethiop’s  ear;

Beauty    too  rich for   use, for   earth      too  dear!

So   shows     a     snowy    dove       trooping with crows

As   yonder   lady o’er her  fellows    shows.

The measure done,     I’ll    watch     her  place      of    stand, And       touching hers,       make      blessed   my  rude hand.

Did  my  heart      love till   now?      Forswear it,    sight!

For  I      ne’er      saw true beauty    till   this  night.

TYBALT.

This by   his   voice,     should    be   a     Montague.

Fetch      me  my  rapier,    boy. What,     dares      the  slave Come       hither,    cover’d   with an   antic       face,

To   fleer and scorn      at    our  solemnity?

Now       by   the  stock      and honour   of    my  kin,

To   strike      him dead      I      hold it     not  a     sin.

CAPULET.

Why how now,       kinsman!

Wherefore     storm     you so?

TYBALT.

Uncle,     this  is     a     Montague,    our  foe;

A     villain     that is     hither     come      in    spite,

To   scorn      at    our  solemnity      this  night.

CAPULET.

Young    Romeo,  is     it?

TYBALT.

’Tis  he,  that villain     Romeo.

CAPULET.

Content  thee,      gentle    coz, let   him alone,

A     bears      him like  a     portly     gentleman;

And, to    say  truth,      Verona   brags      of    him

To   be   a     virtuous  and well-govern’d youth.

I      would     not  for   the  wealth    of    all    the  town

Here       in    my  house     do   him disparagement.

Therefore      be   patient,  take no   note of    him,

It     is     my  will; the  which     if     thou respect,

Show      a     fair  presence and put  off   these      frowns, An     ill-beseeming    semblance     for   a     feast.

TYBALT.

It     fits   when      such a     villain     is     a     guest:

I’ll    not  endure   him.

CAPULET.

He   shall be   endur’d.

What,     goodman      boy! I      say  he   shall,      go   to;

Am  I      the  master    here,      or    you?       Go   to.

You’ll      not  endure   him! God shall mend     my  soul, You’ll     make       a     mutiny   among   my  guests!

You will  set   cock-a-hoop, you’ll      be   the  man!

TYBALT.

Why,      uncle,     ’tis   a     shame.

CAPULET.

Go   to,   go   to!

You are  a     saucy     boy. Is’t   so,   indeed?

This trick may chance   to    scathe    you, I      know      what.

You must      contrary me! Marry,    ’tis   time.

Well said, my  hearts!—You are  a     princox;  go: Be     quiet,     or—More       light,      more      light!—For     shame!

I’ll    make      you quiet.     What,     cheerly,  my  hearts.

TYBALT.

Patience perforce with wilful      choler     meeting Makes     my  flesh       tremble  in    their different greeting.

I      will  withdraw:      but  this  intrusion shall,

Now       seeming sweet,    convert   to    bitter      gall.

[ Exit. ]

ROMEO.

[ To Juliet. ]    If     I      profane  with my  unworthiest   hand This      holy       shrine,    the  gentle    sin   is     this,

My  lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready      stand To smooth  that rough       touch     with a     tender    kiss.

JULIET.

Good      pilgrim,   you do   wrong    your hand      too  much, Which       mannerly devotion shows     in    this;

For  saints     have       hands     that pilgrims’ hands     do   touch, And       palm      to    palm      is     holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO.

Have      not  saints     lips, and holy palmers  too?

JULIET.

Ay,  pilgrim,   lips  that they must      use  in    prayer.

ROMEO.

O,    then,      dear saint,      let   lips  do   what       hands     do: They pray,       grant      thou,      lest  faith turn to    despair.

JULIET.

Saints     do   not  move,     though   grant      for   prayers’  sake.

ROMEO.

Then      move      not  while      my  prayer’s  effect      I      take.

Thus       from       my  lips, by   thine      my  sin   is     purg’d.

[ Kissing her. ]

JULIET.

Then      have       my  lips  the  sin   that they have       took.

ROMEO.

Sin  from       my  lips? O    trespass  sweetly   urg’d!

Give me  my  sin   again.

JULIET.

You kiss  by   the  book.

NURSE.

Madam,  your mother   craves    a     word      with you.

ROMEO.

What      is     her  mother?

NURSE.

Marry,    bachelor,

Her  mother   is     the  lady of    the  house,

And a     good      lady, and a     wise and virtuous.

I      nurs’d     her  daughter that you talk’d      withal.

I      tell  you, he   that can  lay   hold of    her

Shall       have       the  chinks.

ROMEO.

Is     she  a     Capulet?

O    dear account! My  life   is     my  foe’s       debt.

BENVOLIO.

Away,     be   gone;     the  sport      is     at    the  best.

ROMEO.

Ay,  so    I      fear; the  more      is     my  unrest.

CAPULET.

Nay, gentlemen,    prepare  not  to    be   gone,

We  have       a     trifling    foolish    banquet towards.

Is     it     e’en so?  Why then,      I      thank     you all;

I      thank     you, honest    gentlemen;    good      night.

More      torches   here!      Come     on   then,      let’s to    bed.

Ah,  sirrah,     by   my  fay,  it     waxes     late,

I’ll    to    my  rest.

[ Exeunt  all    but  JULIET and NURSE . ]

JULIET.

Come     hither,    Nurse.    What      is     yond      gentleman?

NURSE.

The son  and heir of    old  Tiberio.

JULIET.

What’s    he   that now is     going     out  of    door?

NURSE.

Marry,    that I      think      be   young    Petruchio.

JULIET.

What’s    he   that follows   here,      that would     not  dance?

NURSE.

I      know      not.

JULIET.

Go   ask  his   name.     If     he   be   married,

My  grave      is     like  to    be   my  wedding bed.

NURSE.

His  name     is     Romeo,  and a     Montague,

The only son  of    your great      enemy.

JULIET.

My  only love sprung   from       my  only hate!

Too early       seen unknown,      and known    too  late!

Prodigious     birth       of    love it     is     to    me,

That I      must      love a     loathed  enemy.

NURSE.

What’s    this? What’s    this?

JULIET.

A     rhyme    I      learn’d    even       now

Of   one I      danc’d    withal.

[ One      calls within,    ‘Juliet’. ]

NURSE.

Anon,     anon!

Come     let’s away,     the  strangers all    are  gone.

[ Exeunt. ]

ACT II

Enter      CHORUS .

CHORUS.

Now       old  desire     doth       in    his   deathbed      lie,

And young    affection gapes     to    be   his   heir;

That fair  for   which     love groan’d  for   and would     die, With tender       Juliet      match’d, is     now not  fair.

Now       Romeo   is     belov’d,  and loves      again,

Alike       bewitched     by   the  charm    of    looks;

But  to    his   foe  suppos’d he   must      complain,

And she  steal love’s     sweet     bait from       fearful    hooks: Being  held       a     foe, he   may not  have       access

To   breathe  such vows      as    lovers     use  to    swear; And     she  as       much     in    love, her  means    much     less To    meet      her  new       beloved  anywhere.

But  passion  lends      them      power,    time means,   to    meet, Tempering     extremities    with extreme  sweet.

[ Exit. ]

SCENE    I.     An   open      place      adjoining       Capulet’s Garden.

Enter      ROMEO .

ROMEO.

Can I      go   forward  when      my  heart      is     here?

Turn back,      dull earth,     and find thy  centre    out.

[ He climbs    the  wall and leaps      down      within     it. ]

Enter      BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO .

BENVOLIO.

Romeo!  My  cousin    Romeo!  Romeo!

MERCUTIO.

He   is     wise,

And on   my  life   hath stol’n      him home     to    bed.

BENVOLIO.

He   ran  this  way, and leap’d     this  orchard  wall: Call, good      Mercutio.

MERCUTIO.

Nay, I’ll    conjure   too.

Romeo!  Humours!      Madman!      Passion! Lover!

Appear   thou in    the  likeness  of    a     sigh,

Speak     but  one rhyme,    and I      am  satisfied;

Cry  but  ‘Ah  me!’ Pronounce    but  Love       and dove; Speak   to    my       gossip    Venus     one fair  word,

One nickname      for   her  purblind son  and heir, Young    Abraham       Cupid,    he   that shot so    trim

When     King Cophetua      lov’d       the  beggar-maid.

He   heareth  not, he   stirreth   not, he   moveth  not; The  ape is    dead,       and I      must      conjure   him.

I      conjure   thee by   Rosaline’s      bright     eyes,

By   her  high forehead and her  scarlet    lip,

By   her  fine foot, straight  leg,  and quivering       thigh, And     the       demesnes      that there      adjacent lie,

That in    thy  likeness  thou appear   to    us.

BENVOLIO.

An   if     he   hear thee,      thou wilt  anger     him.

MERCUTIO.

This cannot   anger     him. ’Twould  anger     him

To   raise a     spirit       in    his   mistress’ circle,

Of   some      strange   nature,   letting    it     there      stand Till she  had       laid  it,    and conjur’d  it     down; That    were       some      spite.       My  invocation

Is     fair  and honest,   and, in    his   mistress’ name, I   conjure   only but       to    raise up   him.

BENVOLIO.

Come,    he   hath hid  himself   among   these      trees To  be       consorted      with the  humorous     night.

Blind      is     his   love, and best befits      the  dark.

MERCUTIO.

If     love be   blind,      love cannot   hit   the  mark.

Now       will  he   sit    under     a     medlar   tree,

And wish his   mistress  were       that kind of    fruit As   maids     call       medlars  when      they laugh     alone.

O    Romeo,  that she  were,      O    that she  were

An   open-arse     and thou a     poperin  pear!

Romeo,  good      night.     I’ll    to    my  truckle-bed.

This field-bed       is     too  cold for   me  to    sleep.

Come,    shall we   go?

BENVOLIO.

Go   then;      for   ’tis   in    vain

To   seek him here that means    not  to    be   found.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     Capulet’s Garden.

Enter      ROMEO .

ROMEO.

He   jests at    scars      that never      felt  a     wound.

JULIET    appears  above     at    a     window.

But  soft, what       light through  yonder   window  breaks?

It     is     the  east, and Juliet      is     the  sun!

Arise       fair  sun  and kill   the  envious  moon,

Who       is     already   sick and pale with grief,

That thou her  maid      art   far   more      fair  than she.

Be   not  her  maid      since      she  is     envious;

Her  vestal     livery      is     but  sick and green,

And none      but  fools       do   wear       it;    cast it     off.

It     is     my  lady, O    it     is     my  love!

O,    that she  knew      she  were!

She speaks,   yet  she  says nothing. What      of    that?

Her  eye  discourses,    I      will  answer   it.

I      am  too  bold,      ’tis   not  to    me  she  speaks.

Two of    the  fairest     stars in    all    the  heaven, Having     some       business, do   entreat   her  eyes

To   twinkle   in    their spheres  till   they return.

What      if     her  eyes were       there,     they in    her  head?

The brightness     of    her  cheek     would     shame    those      stars, As       daylight  doth       a     lamp;      her  eyes in    heaven Would       through  the  airy  region    stream    so    bright That    birds       would     sing and think      it     were       not  night.

See  how she  leans      her  cheek     upon      her  hand.

O    that I      were       a     glove      upon      that hand,

That I      might     touch     that cheek.

JULIET.

Ay   me.

ROMEO.

She speaks.

O    speak     again      bright     angel,     for   thou art

As   glorious  to    this  night,     being     o’er my  head, As is     a       winged   messenger    of    heaven

Unto       the  white-upturned    wondering     eyes

Of   mortals   that fall   back       to    gaze       on   him

When     he   bestrides the  lazy-puffing  clouds

And sails upon      the  bosom    of    the  air.

JULIET.

O    Romeo,  Romeo,  wherefore      art   thou Romeo?

Deny      thy  father     and refuse     thy  name.

Or   if     thou wilt  not, be   but  sworn     my  love,

And I’ll    no   longer    be   a     Capulet.

ROMEO.

[ Aside. ] Shall       I      hear more,     or    shall I      speak     at    this?

JULIET.

’Tis  but  thy  name     that is     my  enemy;

Thou      art   thyself,   though   not  a     Montague.

What’s    Montague?    It     is     nor  hand      nor  foot,

Nor arm, nor  face, nor  any  other      part

Belonging      to    a     man.      O    be   some      other      name.

What’s    in    a     name?    That which     we   call  a     rose By   any       other      name     would     smell      as    sweet;

So   Romeo   would,    were       he   not  Romeo   call’d,

Retain    that dear perfection      which     he   owes

Without  that title. Romeo,  doff thy  name, And     for   thy  name,       which     is     no   part of    thee, Take      all    myself.

ROMEO.

I      take thee at    thy  word.

Call me  but  love, and I’ll    be   new baptis’d; Henceforth    I      never       will  be   Romeo.

JULIET.

What      man art   thou that, thus bescreen’d    in    night So  stumblest       on   my  counsel?

ROMEO.

By   a     name

I      know      not  how to    tell  thee who I      am:

My  name,     dear saint,      is     hateful   to    myself,

Because it     is     an   enemy    to    thee.

Had I      it     written,   I      would     tear the  word.

JULIET.

My  ears have       yet  not  drunk     a     hundred words

Of   thy  tongue’s utterance,      yet  I      know      the  sound.

Art   thou not  Romeo,  and a     Montague?

ROMEO.

Neither,  fair  maid,      if     either     thee dislike.

JULIET.

How cam’st    thou hither,    tell  me, and wherefore?

The orchard  walls       are  high and hard to    climb, And     the  place       death,    considering   who thou art, If      any  of    my  kinsmen find       thee here.

ROMEO.

With       love’s     light wings     did  I      o’erperch       these      walls, For       stony      limits      cannot   hold love out,

And what       love can  do,  that dares      love attempt: Therefore       thy       kinsmen are  no   stop to    me.

JULIET.

If     they do   see  thee,      they will  murder   thee.

ROMEO.

Alack,     there      lies  more      peril in    thine      eye Than twenty    of       their swords.   Look       thou but  sweet, And     I      am  proof       against   their enmity.

JULIET.

I      would     not  for   the  world      they saw thee here.

ROMEO.

I      have       night’s    cloak      to    hide me  from       their eyes, And       but  thou love me, let   them      find me  here.

My  life   were       better     ended    by   their hate

Than      death     prorogued,    wanting  of    thy  love.

JULIET.

By   whose    direction found’st  thou out  this  place?

ROMEO.

By   love, that first did  prompt   me  to    enquire; He    lent me  counsel,       and I      lent him eyes.

I      am  no   pilot;      yet  wert thou as    far

As   that vast shore      wash’d   with the  farthest  sea, I       should       adventure      for   such merchandise.

JULIET.

Thou      knowest the  mask      of    night      is     on   my  face, Else       would     a     maiden   blush      bepaint  my  cheek

For  that which     thou hast heard     me  speak     tonight.

Fain would     I      dwell      on   form,      fain, fain deny What     I      have       spoke;    but  farewell  compliment.

Dost thou love me? I      know      thou wilt  say  Ay, And  I      will  take thy       word.      Yet, if     thou swear’st, Thou      mayst     prove     false.       At    lovers’    perjuries, They      say  Jove laughs.   O    gentle       Romeo,

If     thou dost love, pronounce    it     faithfully.

Or   if     thou thinkest  I      am  too  quickly   won,

I’ll    frown     and be   perverse, and say  thee nay, So   thou wilt  woo.       But  else, not  for   the  world.

In    truth,      fair  Montague,    I      am  too  fond;

And therefore thou mayst     think      my  ’haviour  light: But trust me,       gentleman,    I’ll    prove     more      true Than      those      that have       more      cunning  to    be   strange.

I      should    have       been      more      strange,  I      must      confess, But  that thou overheard’st, ere  I      was ’ware, My       true-love       passion;  therefore pardon   me,

And not  impute   this  yielding  to    light love, Which   the  dark night       hath so    discovered.

ROMEO.

Lady,      by   yonder   blessed   moon     I      vow,

That tips  with silver      all    these      fruit-tree tops,—

JULIET.

O    swear     not  by   the  moon,    th’inconstant moon, That    monthly       changes in    her  circled    orb,

Lest that thy  love prove     likewise  variable.

ROMEO.

What      shall I      swear     by?

JULIET.

Do   not  swear     at    all.

Or   if     thou wilt, swear     by   thy  gracious self, Which     is     the  god       of    my  idolatry,

And I’ll    believe   thee.

ROMEO.

If     my  heart’s    dear love,—

JULIET.

Well,       do   not  swear.    Although I      joy   in    thee, I     have       no       joy   of    this  contract tonight;

It     is     too  rash,       too  unadvis’d,      too  sudden,

Too like  the  lightning,       which     doth       cease     to    be Ere    one       can  say  It     lightens. Sweet,    good      night.

This bud of    love, by   summer’s      ripening breath, May   prove     a       beauteous     flower     when      next we   meet.

Good      night,     good      night.     As   sweet     repose    and rest Come     to    thy  heart      as    that within     my  breast.

ROMEO.

O    wilt  thou leave      me  so    unsatisfied?

JULIET.

What      satisfaction    canst      thou have       tonight?

ROMEO.

Th’exchange  of    thy  love’s     faithful   vow for   mine.

JULIET.

I      gave       thee mine      before    thou didst       request   it; And    yet  I       would     it     were       to    give again.

ROMEO.

Would’st thou withdraw it?    For  what       purpose, love?

JULIET.

But  to    be   frank      and give it     thee again.

And yet  I      wish but  for   the  thing      I      have;

My  bounty   is     as    boundless     as    the  sea,

My  love as    deep;      the  more      I      give to    thee,

The more      I      have,      for   both       are  infinite.

I      hear some      noise      within.    Dear       love, adieu.

[ Nurse   calls within. ]

Anon,     good      Nurse!—Sweet     Montague     be   true.

Stay but  a     little,       I      will  come      again.

[ Exit. ]

ROMEO.

O    blessed,  blessed   night.     I      am  afeard,

Being     in    night,     all    this  is     but  a     dream,

Too flattering sweet     to    be   substantial.

Enter      JULIET above.

JULIET.

Three     words,    dear Romeo,  and good      night      indeed.

If     that thy  bent of    love be   honourable,

Thy  purpose  marriage,       send       me  word      tomorrow, By one that       I’ll    procure  to    come      to    thee,

Where    and what       time thou wilt  perform  the  rite, And all    my       fortunes at    thy  foot I’ll    lay

And follow     thee my  lord throughout    the  world.

NURSE.

[ Within. ]       Madam.

JULIET.

I      come,     anon.—  But  if     thou meanest not  well,

I      do   beseech thee,—

NURSE.

[ Within. ]       Madam.

JULIET.

By   and by   I      come—

To   cease     thy  strife       and leave      me  to    my  grief.

Tomorrow     will  I      send.

ROMEO.

So   thrive     my  soul,—

JULIET.

A     thousand       times      good      night.

[ Exit. ]

ROMEO.

A     thousand       times      the  worse,    to    want       thy  light.

Love       goes       toward   love as    schoolboys    from       their books, But  love from       love, towards  school    with heavy     looks.

[ Retiring slowly. ]

Re-enter JULIET, above.

JULIET.

Hist! Romeo,  hist! O    for   a     falconer’s      voice To lure this  tassel-gentle    back       again.

Bondage is     hoarse    and may not  speak     aloud,

Else would     I      tear the  cave where     Echo       lies, And make      her       airy  tongue   more      hoarse    than mine With     repetition      of       my  Romeo’s name.

ROMEO.

It     is     my  soul that calls upon      my  name.

How silver-sweet   sound     lovers’    tongues  by   night, Like      softest       music     to    attending      ears.

JULIET.

Romeo.

ROMEO.

My  nyas?

JULIET.

What      o’clock   tomorrow

Shall       I      send       to    thee?

ROMEO.

By   the  hour       of    nine.

JULIET.

I      will  not  fail.  ’Tis  twenty    years      till   then.

I      have       forgot     why I      did  call  thee back.

ROMEO.

Let  me  stand      here till   thou remember     it.

JULIET.

I      shall forget,    to    have       thee still  stand      there, Remembering       how I      love thy  company.

ROMEO.

And I’ll    still  stay, to    have       thee still  forget, Forgetting any  other       home     but  this.

JULIET.

’Tis  almost    morning; I      would     have       thee gone, And     yet  no       farther    than a     wanton’s bird,

That lets  it     hop a     little from       her  hand,

Like a     poor       prisoner  in    his   twisted   gyves,

And with a     silk  thread    plucks    it     back       again, So loving-jealous       of    his   liberty.

ROMEO.

I      would     I      were       thy  bird.

JULIET.

Sweet,    so    would     I:

Yet  I      should    kill   thee with much     cherishing.

Good      night,     good      night.     Parting   is     such sweet     sorrow That I      shall say  good      night      till   it     be   morrow.

[ Exit. ]

ROMEO.

Sleep      dwell      upon      thine      eyes,      peace     in    thy  breast.

Would    I      were       sleep      and peace,    so    sweet     to    rest.

The grey-ey’d      morn      smiles     on   the  frowning night, Chequering       the  eastern   clouds    with streaks   of    light; And       darkness       fleckled  like  a     drunkard reels From     forth       day’s      pathway,       made     by   Titan’s    wheels Hence will  I      to    my  ghostly   Sire’s       cell,

His  help to    crave      and my  dear hap to    tell.

[ Exit. ]

SCENE    III.    Friar Lawrence’s    Cell.

Enter      FRIAR    LAWRENCE   with a     basket.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Now,      ere  the  sun  advance his   burning  eye,

The day  to    cheer,     and night’s    dank       dew to    dry, I       must       upfill       this  osier       cage       of    ours

With       baleful    weeds    and precious-juiced    flowers.

The earth      that’s      nature’s  mother,  is     her  tomb; What   is     her       burying  grave,     that is     her  womb: And    from       her  womb       children  of    divers     kind

We  sucking  on   her  natural   bosom    find.

Many      for   many      virtues    excellent,

None      but  for   some,     and yet  all    different.

O,    mickle    is     the  powerful grace      that lies

In    plants,    herbs,     stones,   and their true qualities.

For  naught   so    vile  that on   the  earth      doth       live But   to    the       earth      some      special    good      doth       give; Nor aught     so       good      but, strain’d   from       that fair  use, Revolts   from       true       birth,      stumbling      on   abuse.

Virtue     itself turns      vice being     misapplied,

And vice sometime’s    by   action     dignified.

Enter      ROMEO .

Within    the  infant     rind of    this  weak      flower

Poison    hath residence,      and medicine power:

For  this, being     smelt,     with that part cheers    each       part; Being       tasted,    slays       all    senses    with the  heart.

Two such opposed kings      encamp  them      still

In    man as    well as    herbs,—grace and rude will; And where     the       worser    is     predominant,

Full  soon       the  canker    death     eats up   that plant.

ROMEO.

Good      morrow, father.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Benedicite!

What      early       tongue   so    sweet     saluteth  me?

Young    son, it     argues    a     distemper’d   head

So   soon       to    bid  good      morrow  to    thy  bed.

Care keeps     his   watch     in    every      old  man’s     eye, And where       care lodges    sleep      will  never      lie; But    where     unbruised       youth     with unstuff’d brain Doth     couch     his   limbs,     there       golden   sleep      doth       reign.

Therefore      thy  earliness doth       me  assure

Thou      art   uprous’d with some      distemperature; Or      if     not  so,       then here I      hit   it     right,

Our Romeo   hath not  been      in    bed tonight.

ROMEO.

That last  is     true; the  sweeter  rest was mine.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

God pardon   sin.  Wast      thou with Rosaline?

ROMEO.

With       Rosaline, my  ghostly   father?    No.

I      have       forgot     that name,     and that name’s   woe.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

That’s     my  good      son. But  where     hast thou been      then?

ROMEO.

I’ll    tell  thee ere  thou ask  it     me  again.

I      have       been      feasting  with mine      enemy,

Where    on   a     sudden   one hath wounded       me

That’s     by   me  wounded.      Both       our  remedies

Within    thy  help and holy physic    lies.

I      bear no   hatred,   blessed   man;      for   lo,

My  intercession   likewise  steads    my  foe.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Be   plain,      good      son, and homely   in    thy  drift; Riddling       confession     finds       but  riddling  shrift.

ROMEO.

Then      plainly    know      my  heart’s    dear love is     set On    the  fair       daughter of    rich Capulet.

As   mine      on   hers,       so    hers is     set   on   mine;

And all    combin’d,      save what       thou must      combine

By   holy marriage.       When,    and where,    and how We  met, we       woo’d,    and made     exchange      of    vow, I’ll   tell  thee as    we       pass;      but  this  I      pray, That      thou consent  to    marry     us       today.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Holy Saint      Francis!  What      a     change   is     here!

Is     Rosaline, that thou didst       love so    dear,

So   soon       forsaken?       Young    men’s     love then lies Not   truly in       their hearts,    but  in    their eyes.

Jesu Maria,     what       a     deal of    brine

Hath       wash’d   thy  sallow     cheeks    for   Rosaline!

How much     salt  water      thrown   away      in    waste,

To   season   love, that of    it     doth       not  taste.

The sun  not  yet  thy  sighs      from       heaven   clears, Thy     old       groans    yet  ring in    mine      ancient   ears.

Lo   here upon      thy  cheek     the  stain       doth       sit

Of   an   old  tear that is     not  wash’d   off   yet.

If     ere  thou wast thyself,   and these      woes      thine, Thou    and       these      woes      were       all    for   Rosaline,

And art   thou chang’d? Pronounce    this  sentence then, Women may fall,       when      there’s    no   strength in    men.

ROMEO.

Thou      chidd’st  me  oft   for   loving     Rosaline.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

For  doting,   not  for   loving,    pupil      mine.

ROMEO.

And bad’st     me  bury love.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Not in    a     grave

To   lay   one in,   another  out  to    have.

ROMEO.

I      pray thee chide      me  not, her  I      love now

Doth       grace      for   grace      and love for   love allow.

The other      did  not  so.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

O,    she  knew      well

Thy  love did  read by   rote, that could      not  spell.

But  come      young    waverer, come      go   with me,

In    one respect   I’ll    thy  assistant be;

For  this  alliance  may so    happy     prove,

To   turn your households’   rancour  to    pure love.

ROMEO.

O    let   us    hence;    I      stand      on   sudden   haste.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Wisely    and slow;      they stumble  that run  fast.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    IV.   A     Street.

Enter      BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO .

MERCUTIO.

Where    the  devil       should    this  Romeo   be?  Came     he   not       home     tonight?

BENVOLIO.

Not to    his   father’s;  I      spoke     with his   man.

MERCUTIO.

Why,      that same      pale hard-hearted wench,   that Rosaline, torments       him so    that he will    sure run  mad.

BENVOLIO.

Tybalt,    the  kinsman to    old  Capulet, hath sent a     letter      to    his       father’s   house.

MERCUTIO.

A     challenge,     on   my  life.

BENVOLIO.

Romeo   will  answer   it.

MERCUTIO.

Any man that can  write       may answer   a     letter.

BENVOLIO.

Nay, he   will  answer   the  letter’s    master,   how he   dares,     being       dared.

MERCUTIO.

Alas poor       Romeo,  he   is     already   dead,      stabbed  with a       white      wench’s  black      eye;

run  through  the  ear  with a     love song,      the  very pin  of    his   heart       cleft with the  blind bow-boy’s   butt-shaft.     And is     he   a     man       to    encounter     Tybalt?

BENVOLIO.

Why,      what       is     Tybalt?

MERCUTIO.

More      than     Prince   of  cats.     O,  he’s      the courageous captain   of  compliments.      He fights      as    you sing prick-song,       keeps     time,      distance, and proportion.    He   rests his minim      rest, one,      two,      and       the third     in   your      bosom: the very butcher of  a    silk button,   a     duellist,  a     duellist;  a       gentleman     of    the  very first house,    of    the  first and second       cause.    Ah,  the  immortal passado, the  punto     reverso,  the  hay.

BENVOLIO.

The what?

MERCUTIO.

The pox  of    such antic       lisping,   affecting phantasies;    these      new       tuners    of    accent.

By   Jesu,       a     very good      blade,     a     very tall  man,      a     very       good      whore.    Why,      is     not  this a      lamentable    thing,       grandsire,      that we   should    be   thus afflicted  with these       strange flies,  these      fashion-mongers, these      pardon-me’s, who       stand      so    much     on   the  new form       that they cannot   sit       at    ease on   the  old  bench?   O    their bones,    their bones!

Enter      ROMEO .

BENVOLIO.

Here       comes    Romeo,  here comes    Romeo!

MERCUTIO.

Without  his   roe, like  a     dried      herring.  O    flesh,      flesh,      how       art   thou fishified! Now is    he  for the numbers      that      Petrarch flowed  in.  Laura,   to  his lady,     was       but a kitchen   wench,—marry,  she had       a    better   love      to  berhyme her:       Dido     a    dowdy; Cleopatra       a     gypsy;       Helen     and Hero       hildings  and harlots;   Thisbe    a     grey eye       or    so, but    not to  the purpose.      Signior  Romeo, bonjour!       There’s a    French  salutation    to your French    slop. You gave       us    the  counterfeit    fairly       last  night.

ROMEO.

Good      morrow  to    you both.      What      counterfeit    did  I      give       you?

MERCUTIO.

The slip  sir,   the  slip; can  you not  conceive?

ROMEO.

Pardon,  good      Mercutio,       my  business was great,     and in    such       a     case as    mine      a     man

may strain      courtesy.

MERCUTIO.

That’s     as  much    as  to  say,       such     a    case      as  yours      constrains    a    man      to  bow      in   the hams.

ROMEO.

Meaning,       to    curtsy.

MERCUTIO.

Thou      hast most      kindly     hit   it.

ROMEO.

A     most      courteous      exposition.

MERCUTIO.

Nay, I      am  the  very pink of    courtesy.

ROMEO.

Pink for   flower.

MERCUTIO.

Right.

ROMEO.

Why,      then is     my  pump     well flowered.

MERCUTIO.

Sure wit,  follow     me  this  jest  now,       till   thou hast worn      out  thy       pump,    that when      the single      sole of    it     is     worn,      the       jest  may remain   after the  wearing, solely     singular.

ROMEO.

O    single-soled  jest, solely     singular  for   the  singleness!

MERCUTIO.

Come     between us,   good      Benvolio; my  wits faint.

ROMEO.

Swits      and spurs,     swits       and spurs;     or    I’ll    cry   a     match.

MERCUTIO.

Nay, if     thy  wits run  the  wild-goose    chase,    I      am  done.     For       thou hast more      of    the wild-goose     in   one       of  thy wits,       than     I     am sure,     I     have     in   my whole   five.      Was I with    you there      for   the  goose?

ROMEO.

Thou      wast never      with me  for   anything, when      thou wast not  there       for   the  goose.

MERCUTIO.

I      will  bite thee by   the  ear  for   that jest.

ROMEO.

Nay, good      goose,    bite not.

MERCUTIO.

Thy  wit   is     a     very bitter      sweeting,       it     is     a     most       sharp      sauce.

ROMEO.

And is     it     not  then well served    in    to    a     sweet     goose?

MERCUTIO.

O    here’s     a     wit   of    cheveril, that stretches from       an   inch       narrow   to    an   ell    broad.

ROMEO.

I      stretch    it     out  for   that word      broad,    which     added    to       the  goose,    proves    thee far   and wide a     broad     goose.

MERCUTIO.

Why,      is     not  this  better     now than groaning for   love?      Now       art   thou sociable, now art   thou Romeo;  not  art   thou what       thou       art,  by   art   as    well as    by   nature.   For  this drivelling love is       like  a     great      natural,  that runs lolling     up   and down      to       hide his bauble     in    a     hole.

BENVOLIO.

Stop there,     stop there.

MERCUTIO.

Thou      desirest  me  to    stop in    my  tale against   the  hair.

BENVOLIO.

Thou      wouldst  else have       made     thy  tale large.

MERCUTIO.

O,    thou     art deceived;     I     would   have     made    it   short,     for I     was       come    to  the whole depth of    my  tale,       and meant    indeed    to    occupy   the  argument      no   longer.

Enter      NURSE and PETER .

ROMEO.

Here’s    goodly    gear!

A     sail, a     sail!

MERCUTIO.

Two,       two; a     shirt and a     smock.

NURSE.

Peter!

PETER.

Anon.

NURSE.

My  fan, Peter.

MERCUTIO.

Good      Peter,     to    hide her  face; for   her  fan’s the  fairer      face.

NURSE.

God ye    good      morrow, gentlemen.

MERCUTIO.

God ye    good-den,     fair  gentlewoman.

NURSE.

Is     it     good-den?

MERCUTIO.

’Tis  no less,      I     tell ye; for the bawdy  hand     of  the dial       is   now      upon    the prick     of noon.

NURSE.

Out upon      you! What      a     man are  you?

ROMEO.

One,       gentlewoman,      that God hath made     for   himself   to    mar.

NURSE.

By   my  troth,      it     is     well said; for   himself   to    mar, quoth     a?       Gentlemen,   can  any  of you    tell  me  where     I      may find the       young    Romeo?

ROMEO.

I      can  tell  you: but  young    Romeo   will  be   older      when      you       have       found     him than he was    when      you sought   him. I       am  the  youngest of    that name,     for   fault of    a     worse.

NURSE.

You say  well.

MERCUTIO.

Yea, is     the  worst      well?       Very well took,      i’faith;     wisely,       wisely.

NURSE.

If     you be   he,  sir,   I      desire     some      confidence    with you.

BENVOLIO.

She will  endite    him to    some      supper.

MERCUTIO.

A     bawd,     a     bawd,     a     bawd!     So   ho!

ROMEO.

What      hast thou found?

MERCUTIO.

No   hare,      sir;   unless    a     hare,      sir,   in    a     lenten    pie,  that       is     something     stale and hoar ere it     be   spent.

[ Sings. ]

An   old  hare hoar,

And an   old  hare hoar,

Is     very good      meat      in    Lent;

But  a     hare that is     hoar

Is     too  much     for   a     score

When     it     hoars      ere  it     be   spent.

Romeo,  will  you come      to    your father’s? We’ll       to    dinner       thither.

ROMEO.

I      will  follow     you.

MERCUTIO.

Farewell, ancient   lady; farewell, lady, lady, lady.

[ Exeunt  MERCUTIO and BENVOLIO . ]

NURSE.

I      pray you, sir,   what       saucy     merchant      was this  that was so       full  of    his   ropery?

ROMEO.

A     gentleman,  Nurse,   that      loves     to  hear      himself talk,       and       will speak    more    in   a minute      than he   will       stand      to    in    a     month.

NURSE.

And a     speak     anything against   me, I’ll    take him down,     and a       were       lustier     than he is,      and       twenty  such     Jacks.    And if    I     cannot, I’ll  find       those    that      shall.     Scurvy knave!    I     am none     of  his flirt-gills;      I     am none     of  his   skains-mates.—And   thou must    stand      by   too  and suffer       every      knave     to    use  me  at    his   pleasure!

PETER.

I      saw no   man use  you at    his   pleasure; if     I      had, my  weapon       should    quickly   have

been      out. I      warrant  you, I      dare draw       as    soon       as       another  man,      if     I      see  occasion in a  good      quarrel,  and       the  law  on   my  side.

NURSE.

Now,      afore      God,       I      am  so    vexed     that every      part       about     me  quivers.  Scurvy    knave.

Pray you, sir,   a     word:      and as    I      told you, my  young    lady bid       me  enquire  you out; what       she  bade      me  say, I      will  keep       to    myself.   But  first let   me  tell  ye,   if     ye    should lead    her       in    a     fool’s      paradise, as    they say, it     were       a     very       gross      kind of    behaviour, as they      say;       for the gentlewoman is   young.  And      therefore,     if    you       should  deal double   with her, truly it     were       an   ill     thing      to    be       offered   to    any  gentlewoman,      and very weak      dealing.

ROMEO.

Nurse,    commend      me  to    thy  lady and mistress. I      protest   unto       thee,—

NURSE.

Good      heart,     and i’faith      I      will  tell  her  as    much.     Lord,       Lord,      she  will  be   a     joyful woman.

ROMEO.

What      wilt  thou tell  her, Nurse?    Thou      dost not  mark      me.

NURSE.

I      will  tell  her, sir,   that you do   protest,  which,    as    I      take it,       is     a     gentlemanlike      offer.

ROMEO.

Bid  her  devise

Some     means    to    come      to    shrift      this  afternoon, And     there       she  shall at    Friar Lawrence’      cell Be    shriv’d    and married. Here       is     for   thy  pains.

NURSE.

No   truly,      sir;   not  a     penny.

ROMEO.

Go   to;   I      say  you shall.

NURSE.

This afternoon,     sir?  Well,       she  shall be   there.

ROMEO.

And stay, good      Nurse,    behind   the  abbey     wall.

Within    this  hour       my  man shall be   with thee, And       bring      thee       cords      made     like  a     tackled   stair,

Which    to    the  high topgallant     of    my  joy Must be   my  convoy       in    the  secret     night.

Farewell, be   trusty,     and I’ll    quit thy  pains; Farewell;     commend       me  to    thy  mistress.

NURSE.

Now       God in    heaven   bless      thee.      Hark       you, sir.

ROMEO.

What      say’st      thou,      my  dear Nurse?

NURSE.

Is     your man secret?   Did  you ne’er      hear say, Two may keep       counsel, putting   one away?

ROMEO.

I      warrant  thee my  man’s     as    true as    steel.

NURSE.

Well,       sir, my mistress is   the sweetest      lady.     Lord,     Lord!      When   ’twas     a    little prating thing,—O,    there    is   a     nobleman    in   town,    one       Paris,    that      would   fain       lay knife       aboard;  but  she, good      soul, had as    lief   see  a       toad,      a     very toad,      as    see  him. I anger   her  sometimes,       and tell  her  that Paris       is     the  properer man,      but  I’ll       warrant you,  when      I      say  so,   she  looks      as    pale as    any       clout      in    the  versal     world.     Doth       not rosemary and       Romeo   begin     both       with a     letter?

ROMEO.

Ay,  Nurse;    what       of    that?      Both       with an   R.

NURSE.

Ah,  mocker!  That’s     the  dog’s      name.     R     is     for   the—no, I       know      it     begins    with some other    letter,     and she  hath the       prettiest sententious   of    it,    of    you and rosemary,      that it       would     do   you good      to    hear it.

ROMEO.

Commend     me  to    thy  lady.

NURSE.

Ay,  a     thousand       times.     Peter!

[ Exit       ROMEO . ]

PETER.

Anon.

NURSE.

Before    and apace.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    V.    Capulet’s Garden.

Enter      JULIET .

JULIET.

The clock      struck     nine when      I      did  send       the  Nurse, In half       an   hour       she  promised       to    return.

Perchance     she  cannot   meet      him. That’s     not  so.

O,    she  is     lame.      Love’s     heralds   should    be   thoughts, Which       ten  times      faster      glides     than the  sun’s      beams, Driving       back       shadows over lowering hills:

Therefore      do   nimble-pinion’d   doves     draw       love, And       therefore hath the  wind-swift     Cupid     wings.

Now       is     the  sun  upon      the  highmost       hill

Of   this  day’s      journey,  and from       nine till   twelve Is three      long       hours,     yet  she  is     not  come.

Had she  affections      and warm      youthful blood, She’d  be   as    swift       in    motion   as    a     ball;

My  words     would     bandy     her  to    my  sweet     love,

And his   to    me.

But  old  folks,      many      feign      as    they were       dead; Unwieldy,       slow,      heavy     and pale as    lead.

Enter      NURSE and PETER .

O    God,       she  comes.   O    honey     Nurse,    what       news?

Hast thou met with him?       Send      thy  man away.

NURSE.

Peter,     stay at    the  gate.

[ Exit       PETER . ]

JULIET.

Now,      good      sweet     Nurse,—O     Lord,      why look’st    thou sad?

Though  news      be   sad, yet  tell  them      merrily;

If     good,     thou sham’st  the  music     of    sweet     news By  playing       it     to    me  with so    sour a     face.

NURSE.

I      am  aweary,  give me  leave      awhile;

Fie,  how my  bones     ache!      What      a     jaunt      have       I      had!

JULIET.

I      would     thou hadst      my  bones,    and I      thy  news: Nay       come,     I      pray thee speak;    good,     good      Nurse,    speak.

NURSE.

Jesu,       what     haste?   Can      you       not stay      a    while?   Do   you       not see that      I     am out of breath?

JULIET.

How art   thou out  of    breath,   when      thou hast breath To      say  to       me  that thou art   out  of    breath?

The excuse    that thou dost make      in    this  delay Is   longer    than the       tale thou dost excuse.

Is     thy  news      good      or    bad?       Answer   to    that;

Say  either,    and I’ll    stay the  circumstance.

Let  me  be   satisfied, is’t   good      or    bad?

NURSE.

Well,       you       have     made    a    simple  choice;  you       know      not how      to  choose a    man.

Romeo?  No,  not  he.  Though  his   face be   better     than any  man’s,       yet  his   leg  excels all men’s,    and for   a     hand      and a     foot,       and a     body,      though   they be   not  to    be   talked on,      yet       they are  past compare.       He   is     not  the  flower     of    courtesy,       but  I’ll    warrant him   as    gentle    as    a     lamb.      Go   thy ways,       wench,   serve      God.       What,     have       you dined at  home?

JULIET.

No,  no.  But  all    this  did  I      know      before.

What      says he   of    our  marriage?      What      of    that?

NURSE.

Lord,      how my  head      aches!    What      a     head      have       I!

It     beats      as    it     would     fall   in    twenty    pieces.

My  back       o’    t’other    side,—O my  back,      my  back!

Beshrew your heart      for   sending  me  about

To   catch      my  death     with jauncing up   and down.

JULIET.

I’faith,     I      am  sorry       that thou art   not  well.

Sweet,    sweet,    sweet     Nurse,    tell  me, what       says my  love?

NURSE.

Your       love says like  an   honest    gentleman,

And a     courteous,     and a     kind,       and a     handsome, And    I       warrant  a     virtuous,—Where is     your mother?

JULIET.

Where    is     my  mother? Why,      she  is     within.

Where    should    she  be?  How oddly      thou repliest.

‘Your      love says, like  an   honest    gentleman,

‘Where   is     your mother?’

NURSE.

O    God’s     lady dear,

Are  you so    hot? Marry,    come      up,  I      trow.

Is     this  the  poultice  for   my  aching    bones?

Henceforward       do   your messages      yourself.

JULIET.

Here’s    such a     coil. Come,    what       says Romeo?

NURSE.

Have      you got  leave      to    go   to    shrift      today?

JULIET.

I      have.

NURSE.

Then      hie  you hence     to    Friar Lawrence’      cell; There      stays       a     husband to    make      you a     wife.

Now       comes    the  wanton   blood     up   in    your cheeks, They’ll       be   in    scarlet    straight  at    any  news.

Hie  you to    church.   I      must      another  way,

To   fetch      a     ladder    by   the  which     your love

Must      climb      a     bird’s      nest soon       when      it     is     dark.

I      am  the  drudge,  and toil  in    your delight;

But  you shall bear the  burden   soon       at    night.

Go.  I’ll    to    dinner;   hie  you to    the  cell.

JULIET.

Hie  to    high fortune!  Honest   Nurse,    farewell.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    VI.   Friar Lawrence’s    Cell.

Enter      FRIAR    LAWRENCE   and ROMEO .

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

So   smile      the  heavens upon      this  holy act

That after-hours    with sorrow    chide      us    not.

ROMEO.

Amen,    amen,     but  come      what       sorrow    can,

It     cannot   countervail    the  exchange      of    joy

That one short      minute   gives      me  in    her  sight.

Do   thou but  close      our  hands     with holy words, Then   love-devouring      death     do   what       he   dare,

It     is     enough  I      may but  call  her  mine.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

These     violent    delights  have       violent    ends,

And in    their triumph  die;  like  fire  and powder, Which     as    they kiss       consume.      The sweetest honey Is loathsome     in    his   own       deliciousness,

And in    the  taste       confounds     the  appetite.

Therefore      love moderately:   long love doth       so; Too   swift arrives       as    tardy      as    too  slow.

Enter      JULIET .

Here       comes    the  lady. O,    so    light a     foot

Will ne’er      wear       out  the  everlasting    flint.

A     lover       may bestride  the  gossamers

That idles in    the  wanton   summer  air

And yet  not  fall;  so    light is     vanity.

JULIET.

Good      even       to    my  ghostly   confessor.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Romeo   shall thank     thee,      daughter,      for   us    both.

JULIET.

As   much     to    him, else is     his   thanks    too  much.

ROMEO.

Ah,  Juliet,     if     the  measure of    thy  joy Be     heap’d    like  mine,       and that thy  skill be   more To blazon    it,    then sweeten with thy       breath

This neighbour     air,  and let   rich music’s   tongue Unfold      the       imagin’d happiness      that both

Receive  in    either     by   this  dear encounter.

JULIET.

Conceit  more      rich in    matter    than in    words,

Brags      of    his   substance,     not  of    ornament.

They       are  but  beggars  that can  count     their worth; But      my  true       love is     grown    to    such excess,

I      cannot   sum up   sum of    half my  wealth.

FRIAR     LAWRENCE.

Come,    come      with me, and we   will  make      short      work, For,       by   your leaves,    you shall not  stay alone Till holy church       incorporate   two in    one.

[ Exeunt. ]

ACT III

SCENE    I.     A     public     Place.

Enter      MERCUTIO,  BENVOLIO,    PAGE     and SERVANTS .

BENVOLIO.

I      pray thee,      good      Mercutio,       let’s retire:

The day  is     hot, the  Capulets abroad,

And if     we   meet,     we   shall not  scape     a     brawl, For      now       these      hot  days,      is     the  mad blood     stirring.

MERCUTIO.

Thou      art   like  one of    these      fellows    that, when      he   enters       the  confines of    a     tavern, claps  me  his   sword     upon      the       table,      and says ‘God       send       me  no   need      of    thee!’       and by    the  operation      of    the  second   cup draws     him on       the  drawer,   when      indeed    there is   no   need.

BENVOLIO.

Am  I      like  such a     fellow?

MERCUTIO.

Come,    come,   thou     art as  hot a    Jack      in   thy mood   as    any       in   Italy;     and       as  soon moved to    be   moody,       and as    soon       moody   to    be   moved.

BENVOLIO.

And what       to?

MERCUTIO.

Nay, an   there      were       two such,      we   should    have       none       shortly,   for   one would     kill   the other.      Thou?     Why,      thou       wilt  quarrel   with a     man that hath a     hair more      or    a     hair less in    his   beard     than thou hast. Thou      wilt  quarrel   with a     man       for   cracking nuts, having   no   other      reason    but  because thou       hast hazel      eyes.      What      eye  but  such an eye    would     spy       out  such a     quarrel?  Thy  head      is     as    full  of    quarrels  as       an   egg is     full of      meat,    and       yet thy head     hath     been      beaten  as  addle    as  an  egg       for quarrelling.

Thou      hast      quarrelled    with      a    man      for coughing     in    the street,   because       he  hath wakened     thy  dog that hath       lain  asleep    in    the  sun. Didst      thou not  fall   out  with a tailor       for   wearing  his   new doublet  before    Easter?   with another  for       tying      his   new

shoes     with an   old  riband?   And yet  thou wilt  tutor       me  from       quarrelling!

BENVOLIO.

And I      were       so    apt  to    quarrel   as    thou art,  any  man should       buy the  fee  simple    of my     life   for   an   hour       and a       quarter.

MERCUTIO.

The fee  simple!   O    simple!

Enter      TYBALT       and others.

BENVOLIO.

By   my  head,      here comes    the  Capulets.

MERCUTIO.

By   my  heel,       I      care not.

TYBALT.

Follow    me  close,     for   I      will  speak     to    them.

Gentlemen,   good-den:     a     word      with one of    you.

MERCUTIO.

And but  one word      with one of    us?  Couple   it     with something;       make      it     a     word      and a      blow.

TYBALT.

You shall find me  apt  enough  to    that, sir,   and you will  give me       occasion.

MERCUTIO.

Could     you not  take some      occasion without  giving?

TYBALT.

Mercutio,       thou consortest     with Romeo.

MERCUTIO.

Consort? What,   dost      thou     make    us  minstrels?    And      thou make    minstrels      of  us, look to    hear nothing  but  discords.       Here’s    my  fiddlestick,     here’s     that shall make you      dance.       Zounds,  consort!

BENVOLIO.

We  talk  here in    the  public     haunt     of    men.

Either     withdraw unto some      private    place,

And reason    coldly     of    your grievances,

Or   else depart;   here all    eyes gaze       on   us.

MERCUTIO.

Men’s     eyes were       made     to    look,       and let   them      gaze.

I      will  not  budge    for   no   man’s     pleasure, I.

Enter      ROMEO .

TYBALT.

Well,       peace     be   with you, sir,   here comes    my  man.

MERCUTIO.

But  I’ll    be   hanged,  sir,   if     he   wear       your livery.

Marry,    go   before    to    field,       he’ll be   your follower; Your worship       in    that sense     may call  him man.

TYBALT.

Romeo,  the  love I      bear thee can  afford

No   better     term       than this: Thou      art   a     villain.

ROMEO.

Tybalt,    the  reason    that I      have       to    love thee Doth      much       excuse    the  appertaining  rage

To   such a     greeting. Villain     am  I      none;

Therefore      farewell; I      see  thou know’st  me  not.

TYBALT.

Boy, this  shall not  excuse    the  injuries

That thou hast done      me, therefore turn and draw.

ROMEO.

I      do   protest   I      never      injur’d    thee,

But  love thee better     than thou canst      devise Till      thou shalt       know      the  reason    of    my  love.

And so    good      Capulet, which     name     I      tender

As   dearly     as    mine      own,       be   satisfied.

MERCUTIO.

O    calm,      dishonourable,     vile  submission!

[ Draws. ] Alla stoccata carries    it     away.

Tybalt,    you rat-catcher,   will  you walk?

TYBALT.

What      wouldst  thou have       with me?

MERCUTIO.

Good      King of    Cats,       nothing  but  one of    your nine lives;       that I       mean     to    make      bold

withal,    and, as    you shall use  me  hereafter,      dry-beat the  rest of       the  eight.     Will you pluck      your sword     out  of    his   pilcher       by   the  ears?      Make      haste,     lest  mine      be   about your       ears ere  it     be   out.

TYBALT.

[ Drawing. ]    I      am  for   you.

ROMEO.

Gentle    Mercutio,       put  thy  rapier     up.

MERCUTIO.

Come,    sir,   your passado.

[ They     fight. ]

ROMEO.

Draw,     Benvolio; beat down      their weapons.

Gentlemen,   for   shame,   forbear   this  outrage, Tybalt,    Mercutio,       the  Prince     expressly hath Forbid    this  bandying       in    Verona       streets.

Hold,      Tybalt!    Good      Mercutio!

[ Exeunt  TYBALT       with his   Partizans. ]

MERCUTIO.

I      am  hurt.

A     plague    o’    both       your houses.  I      am  sped.

Is     he   gone,     and hath nothing?

BENVOLIO.

What,     art   thou hurt?

MERCUTIO.

Ay,  ay,   a     scratch,  a     scratch.  Marry,    ’tis   enough.

Where    is     my  page?     Go   villain,    fetch      a     surgeon.

[ Exit       PAGE . ]

ROMEO.

Courage, man;      the  hurt cannot   be   much.

MERCUTIO.

No,  ’tis not so  deep     as  a    well,      nor so  wide     as  a    church    door,    but ’tis enough,

’twill serve.    Ask       for me tomorrow,    and       you       shall     find me a    grave    man.     I     am peppered,     I      warrant,  for       this  world.     A     plague    o’    both       your houses.  Zounds,  a       dog,

a     rat,  a     mouse,   a     cat,  to    scratch   a     man to    death.    A       braggart, a     rogue,    a     villain,    that fights      by  the book     of    arithmetic!—Why       the devil     came    you       between      us?  I     was hurt      under     your arm.

ROMEO.

I      thought  all    for   the  best.

MERCUTIO.

Help       me  into some      house,    Benvolio,

Or   I      shall faint.      A     plague    o’    both       your houses.

They       have       made     worms’   meat      of    me.

I      have       it,    and soundly  too. Your       houses!

[ Exeunt  MERCUTIO and BENVOLIO . ]

ROMEO.

This gentleman,    the  Prince’s  near ally,

My  very friend,    hath got  his   mortal    hurt

In    my  behalf;    my  reputation     stain’d

With       Tybalt’s  slander,—Tybalt,   that an   hour Hath      been      my       cousin.   O    sweet     Juliet,

Thy  beauty    hath made     me  effeminate

And in    my  temper   soften’d  valour’s  steel.

Re-enter BENVOLIO .

BENVOLIO.

O    Romeo,  Romeo,  brave      Mercutio’s     dead,

That gallant    spirit       hath aspir’d    the  clouds, Which too  untimely here       did  scorn      the  earth.

ROMEO.

This day’s      black      fate on   mo  days doth       depend; This  but       begins    the  woe others    must      end.

Re-enter TYBALT .

BENVOLIO.

Here       comes    the  furious    Tybalt     back       again.

ROMEO.

Again     in    triumph, and Mercutio slain?

Away      to    heaven   respective      lenity,

And fire-ey’d fury be   my  conduct  now!

Now,      Tybalt,    take the  ‘villain’    back       again That     late thou       gav’st     me, for   Mercutio’s     soul Is     but  a     little way above       our  heads,

Staying   for   thine      to    keep       him company.

Either     thou or    I,     or    both,      must      go   with him.

TYBALT.

Thou      wretched boy, that didst       consort   him here, Shalt     with him       hence.

ROMEO.

This shall determine     that.

[ They     fight; TYBALT       falls. ]

BENVOLIO.

Romeo,  away,     be   gone!

The citizens   are  up,  and Tybalt     slain.

Stand     not  amaz’d.  The Prince     will  doom     thee death If   thou art       taken.     Hence,   be   gone,     away!

ROMEO.

O,    I      am  fortune’s fool!

BENVOLIO.

Why dost thou stay?

[ Exit       ROMEO . ]

Enter      CITIZENS .

FIRST      CITIZEN.

Which    way ran  he   that kill’d Mercutio?

Tybalt,    that murderer,      which     way ran  he?

BENVOLIO.

There     lies  that Tybalt.

FIRST      CITIZEN.

Up,  sir,   go   with me.

I      charge    thee in    the  Prince’s  name     obey.

Enter      PRINCE,       attended; MONTAGUE, CAPULET,      their WIVES        and others.

PRINCE.

Where    are  the  vile  beginners      of    this  fray?

BENVOLIO.

O    noble     Prince,    I      can  discover all

The unlucky  manage  of    this  fatal brawl.

There     lies  the  man,      slain by   young    Romeo,

That slew thy  kinsman, brave      Mercutio.

LADY      CAPULET.

Tybalt,    my  cousin!   O    my  brother’s child!

O    Prince!    O    husband!       O,    the  blood     is     spill’d Of my  dear       kinsman! Prince,    as    thou art   true, For blood     of    ours shed       blood     of    Montague.

O    cousin,   cousin.

PRINCE.

Benvolio, who began    this  bloody    fray?

BENVOLIO.

Tybalt,    here slain,      whom     Romeo’s hand      did  slay; Romeo,  that       spoke     him fair, bid  him bethink How  nice the  quarrel   was, and       urg’d      withal

Your       high displeasure.   All   this  uttered

With       gentle    breath,   calm       look,       knees     humbly   bow’d Could     not  take truce      with the  unruly    spleen Of       Tybalt,    deaf       to    peace,    but  that he   tilts With piercing  steel at    bold       Mercutio’s     breast, Who,  all    as    hot, turns      deadly    point       to    point, And,     with a     martial   scorn,     with one hand       beats Cold     death     aside,     and with the  other      sends

It     back       to    Tybalt,    whose    dexterity

Retorts   it.    Romeo   he   cries aloud,

‘Hold,     friends!   Friends,  part!’      and swifter    than his   tongue, His       agile       arm beats      down      their fatal points, And    ’twixt      them       rushes;   underneath   whose    arm An   envious  thrust     from       Tybalt     hit   the  life

Of   stout      Mercutio,       and then Tybalt     fled.

But  by   and by   comes    back       to    Romeo,

Who       had but  newly     entertain’d    revenge,

And to’t  they go   like  lightning;       for,  ere  I Could   draw       to    part       them      was stout      Tybalt     slain; And      as    he   fell   did       Romeo   turn and fly.

This is     the  truth,      or    let   Benvolio die.

LADY      CAPULET.

He   is     a     kinsman to    the  Montague.

Affection makes    him false,      he   speaks    not  true.

Some     twenty    of    them      fought    in    this  black      strife, And       all    those      twenty    could      but  kill   one life.

I      beg for   justice,   which     thou,      Prince,    must      give; Romeo       slew Tybalt,    Romeo   must      not  live.

PRINCE.

Romeo   slew him, he   slew Mercutio.

Who       now the  price       of    his   dear blood     doth       owe?

MONTAGUE.

Not Romeo,  Prince,    he   was Mercutio’s     friend; His      fault       concludes      but  what       the  law  should    end, The life   of       Tybalt.

PRINCE.

And for   that offence

Immediately  we   do   exile him hence.

I      have       an   interest   in    your hate’s     proceeding, My     blood       for   your rude brawls    doth       lie    a-bleeding.

But  I’ll    amerce   you with so    strong    a     fine

That you shall all    repent    the  loss of    mine.

I      will  be   deaf to    pleading and excuses;

Nor tears       nor  prayers   shall purchase out  abuses.

Therefore      use  none.     Let  Romeo   hence     in    haste, Else,       when      he   is     found,    that hour       is     his   last.

Bear hence     this  body,      and attend    our  will.

Mercy     but  murders, pardoning     those      that kill.

[ Exeunt. ]

SCENE    II.     A     Room     in    Capulet’s House.

Enter      JULIET .

JULIET.

Gallop    apace,    you fiery-footed   steeds,

Towards Phoebus’ lodging.  Such       a     waggoner

As   Phaeton would     whip       you to    the  west And bring      in       cloudy    night      immediately.

Spread   thy  close      curtain,   love-performing   night, That     runaway’s       eyes may wink,      and Romeo

Leap       to    these      arms,      untalk’d  of    and unseen.

Lovers    can  see  to    do   their amorous rites

By   their own beauties: or,   if     love be   blind, It   best agrees    with night.       Come,    civil night, Thou    sober-suited matron,  all    in    black,

And learn      me  how to    lose a     winning  match,

Play’d     for   a     pair of    stainless maidenhoods.

Hood      my  unmann’d     blood,    bating    in    my  cheeks, With  thy       black      mantle,   till   strange   love, grow      bold, Think    true love       acted      simple    modesty.

Come,    night,     come      Romeo;  come,     thou day  in    night; For       thou wilt  lie    upon      the  wings     of    night

Whiter    than new snow      upon      a     raven’s   back.

Come     gentle    night,     come      loving     black-brow’d night, Give       me  my  Romeo,  and when      I      shall die,

Take       him and cut  him out  in    little stars,

And he   will  make      the  face of    heaven   so    fine That all    the       world      will  be   in    love with night, And     pay  no   worship  to       the  garish     sun.

O,    I      have       bought   the  mansion of    a     love,

But  not  possess’d      it;    and though   I      am  sold, Not yet  enjoy’d.       So   tedious   is     this  day

As   is     the  night      before    some      festival

To   an   impatient      child       that hath new robes

And may not  wear       them.     O,    here comes    my  Nurse, And    she       brings     news,     and every      tongue   that speaks But     Romeo’s       name     speaks    heavenly eloquence.

Enter      NURSE,       with cords.

Now,      Nurse,    what       news?     What      hast thou there?

The cords      that Romeo   bid  thee fetch?

NURSE.

Ay,  ay,   the  cords.

[ Throws them      down. ]

JULIET.

Ay   me, what       news?     Why dost thou wring      thy  hands?

NURSE.

Ah,  well-a-day,   he’s dead,      he’s dead,      he’s dead!

We  are  undone, lady, we   are  undone.

Alack      the  day, he’s gone,     he’s kill’d,      he’s dead.

JULIET.

Can heaven   be   so    envious?

NURSE.

Romeo   can,

Though  heaven   cannot.   O    Romeo,  Romeo.

Who       ever would     have       thought  it?    Romeo!

JULIET.

What      devil       art   thou,      that dost torment  me  thus?

This torture    should    be   roar’d     in    dismal    hell.

Hath       Romeo   slain himself?  Say  thou but  Ay,

And that bare vowel     I      shall poison    more

Than      the  death-darting      eye  of    cockatrice.

I      am  not  I      if     there      be   such an   I;

Or   those      eyes shut that make      thee answer   Ay.

If     he   be   slain,      say  Ay;  or    if     not, No.

Brief sounds   determine     of    my  weal or    woe.

NURSE.

I      saw the  wound,   I      saw it     with mine      eyes,

God save the  mark!—here  on   his   manly     breast.

A     piteous   corse,     a     bloody    piteous   corse;

Pale,       pale as    ashes,     all    bedaub’d       in    blood, All       in       gore-blood.   I      swounded     at    the  sight.

JULIET.

O,    break,     my  heart.     Poor       bankrout,      break      at    once.

To   prison,    eyes;      ne’er      look on   liberty.

Vile earth      to    earth      resign;    end motion   here, And      thou and       Romeo   press      one heavy     bier.

NURSE.

O    Tybalt,    Tybalt,    the  best friend     I      had.

O    courteous      Tybalt,    honest    gentleman!

That ever I      should    live  to    see  thee dead.

JULIET.

What      storm     is     this  that blows     so    contrary?

Is     Romeo   slaughter’d    and is     Tybalt     dead?

My  dearest   cousin,   and my  dearer    lord?

Then      dreadful trumpet  sound     the  general   doom, For      who is       living,     if     those      two are  gone?

NURSE.

Tybalt     is     gone,     and Romeo   banished,

Romeo   that kill’d him, he   is     banished.

JULIET.

O    God!       Did  Romeo’s hand      shed       Tybalt’s  blood?

NURSE.

It     did, it     did; alas the  day, it     did.

JULIET.

O    serpent   heart,     hid  with a     flowering face!

Did  ever dragon   keep       so    fair  a     cave?

Beautiful tyrant,    fiend      angelical,

Dove-feather’d     raven,     wolvish-ravening  lamb!

Despised substance      of    divinest  show!

Just opposite to    what       thou justly      seem’st,

A     damned saint,      an   honourable   villain!

O    nature,   what       hadst      thou to    do   in    hell

When     thou didst       bower     the  spirit       of    a     fiend In   mortal       paradise of    such sweet     flesh?

Was ever book      containing     such vile  matter

So   fairly       bound?   O,    that deceit     should    dwell In  such a       gorgeous       palace.

NURSE.

There’s   no   trust,

No   faith,      no   honesty  in    men.      All   perjur’d,

All   forsworn, all    naught,  all    dissemblers.

Ah,  where’s  my  man?      Give me  some      aqua      vitae.

These     griefs,     these      woes,     these      sorrows  make      me  old.

Shame    come      to    Romeo.

JULIET.

Blister’d  be   thy  tongue

For  such a     wish!      He   was not  born       to    shame.

Upon      his   brow      shame    is     asham’d to    sit;

For  ’tis   a     throne    where     honour   may be   crown’d Sole  monarch       of    the  universal earth.

O,    what       a     beast      was I      to    chide      at    him!

NURSE.