The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey (Volume 14) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: KANT ON NATIONAL CHARACTER, IN RELATION TO THE SENSE OP THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL1 A TRANSLATION [" Mr purpose," says Kant, " is not to portray the characters of different nations in detail: I sketch only a few features, which may express the feeling in those characters for the Sublime and the Beautiful. In such a portraiture it is evident that only a tolerable accuracy can be demanded; that the prototypes of the features selected are prominent only in the great crowd of those that make pretensions to refined feelings; and that no nation is entirely wanting in minds which unite the best qualities of both feelings. Any blame, therefore, which may touch the character of a nation in the course of these strictures ought not to offend any one, ?the blame being of such a nature that every man may toss off the ball to his neighbour. Whether these national distinctions are contingently de-pendent on the colour of the times and the quality of the government, or are bound to the climate by a certain necessity, I do not here inquire."] Among the nations of our quarter of the globe, the Italians and the French are in my opinion those who are most distinguished for the sense of the Beautiful; the Germans, the 1 Appeared in the London Magazine for April 1824, with the signature "X. Y. Z.": not included in De Quincey's own edition of his Collected Writings; but reprinted in 1871 in the second of Messrs. Black's supplementary volumes to that edition.?M. English, and the Spaniards, for the sense of the Sublime. Holland may be set down as a country in which neither feeling is very observable.?The Beautiful is either fascinating and affecting, or gay and enlivening. The first contains something of the Sublime; and the mind, whilst under the influence of this class of beauty, is ...