On the difference between religious, moral and aesthetic feelings

Religious, moral and aesthetic feelings constitute the category of higher objective feelings. The last two types of objective feelings appear in our consciousness with such clearly defined homogeneous content that the originality of each of them seems undeniable 2 . On the contrary, the content of religious feeling represents such a variety of theoretical, moral and aesthetic elements that the primitive character of religious feeling seemed doubtful to the three great representatives of philosophical thought of modern times, Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and depending on which element in religious feeling seemed to them the strongest and most significant, they made discoveries of religious feeling from the moral, aesthetic or intellectual aspirations of man. The denial of the primary character of religious feeling was given formal validity by the fact that for religious aspirations it was apparently impossible to indicate a special organ in our soul, while the satisfaction of intellectual aspirations is served by our thinking abilities, moral aspirations are realized in the activity of the will, and finally, aesthetic aspirations, by their very name, are manifestations of our feelings par excellence. The newest direction in the field of psychology, without recognizing as valid the doctrine of mind, will and feeling as special basic mental abilities 3, equates religious aspirations on their mental basis with moral, aesthetic and mental aspirations. Other grounds for identifying religious discoveries with other aspirations come down to a one-sided view of the religious feeling and partly on that which seems to be primary in relation to the religious feeling. The philosophical experience of identifying religious manifestations with moral ones belongs to Kant. Recognizing religious and moral precepts to be quite similar in content, Kant distinguishes them only by the form in which they are given - by the grounds on which their obligation is based. Having no independent content, religious duties in the name of God require from a person the same thing that his own moral nature demands from him in the name of his inherent moral law. Thus, religious feeling has only a auxiliary relationship to moral feeling. But real life far from justifies such a view. The primary form of moral feeling, in which it reveals itself to our consciousness, is the pleasant or unpleasant mental moods aroused by individual acts of our self-determination. The specific, qualitative features of these moods are inaccessible to strictly logical definitions, but, nevertheless, we distinguish these moods from others similar in tone. The meaning of these moods becomes directly, without any conscious logical constructions, accessible to our mind: a pleasant mood, or a feeling of inner peace, serves for us as a sure sign of the moral dignity of free actions or intentions, and an unpleasant mood, or internal restlessness, remorse, we take as a sure sign that the actions or intentions that caused this internal remorse are immoral. The fact that the moral sense is thus revealed with the correctness of the physical law, that is, it always evaluates homogeneous manifestations of our freedom in the same way - that moral torment in us increases when we put into action intentions that our moral sense recognized as unkind - that we again experience these moral torments every time the thought of an immoral act we have committed enters our consciousness (conscience) - soon teaches us to see not chance, but law in the revelations of morality. feelings are not only an assessment of the known facts of our self-determination, but also the guiding rule of our activities. We generalize individual indications of moral feeling, compose from these generalizations a code of moral rules, or a moral law, the fulfillment of which we recognize as our duty, which we have no power to violate, without being subjected to internal retribution for such a crime in the form of remorse. Thus, Kant quite rightly calls our moral legislation, insofar as it is accessible to our consciousness, autonomy. We ourselves are the guardians of our moral law: the consciousness of duty that accompanies the discovery of a moral sense, the moral bliss that accompanies our activity in accordance with the requirements of duty, and moral torment - an indispensable consequence of actions that do not agree with the moral law - these are the incentives with which he can direct our activity, and their effect is the stronger, the more receptive we are to our internal states, the more attentive we are to our past, illuminated by the moral consciousness or conscience. All motivations for moral activity exert their influence on us at a time when we still intend to commit some act, and the inner peace or inner torment that we experience after committing a certain act is only a repetition of the mood that we experienced already at the moment when the intention to commit this act arose in us. Thus, the entire binding force of moral feeling lies in the present state of mind, and not in the distant future. Moral feeling relates to all manifestations of our self-determination, and therefore the requirements of duty extend not only to our individual life, but also to all our relationships with other creatures similar to us, with other individuals. The range of these latter relations, according to Kant, is limited to our relations with other people. But such a representation of the scope of moral relations is too narrow: our moral relations with the highest Personal Being, the psychological basis of which is religious feeling, should also be included in the category of moral social relations. Our moral relations towards other finite individuals must necessarily be preceded by conviction in their existence and knowledge of their properties, which determine the nature of our moral relations towards these individuals. The fact of the existence of other people and their properties are accessible to our observation and are known to us empirically. Meanwhile, the truth of the existence of God, with the conviction of which our religious life begins, is not subject to our either internal or external observation. No conscious process of thinking can prove the truth of God’s existence so strictly logically that it appears to our reason as an obvious, precise and necessary consequence from given premises. Subjective conviction in the truth of the existence of God appears as a given outside of experience, as a result of a cognitive process inaccessible to our consciousness, as a “dark perception by religious feeling” 5 of the fact of the existence of God - a perception as direct as the perception in a sensory sense of the fact of the existence of external objects. This “direct perception by feeling” of the existence of God constitutes the primary moment and the most essential side of religious feeling, because it constitutes the grain from which the entire religious life of man develops. All proofs of the existence of God presuppose the existence in man (albeit only possible) of subjective conviction in the truth of the existence of God as a necessary condition for their persuasiveness. All subsequent development of the concept of God is “guided, advanced from stage to stage, corrected from mistakes” by this initial religious feeling; it “exercises constant control over the religious consciousness, over the conscious understanding and further development of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe Divine” (Ulrici. Body and Soul. p. 742). Thus, the essential side of religious feeling is theoretical, cognitive 6 ; its practical side constitutes a necessary consequence of the development of the idea of ​​​​the Divine and is only a modification of the manifestations of moral feeling 7. In fact, in the views of natural peoples, the Divinity is certainly connected with the sign of a force that exceeds the strength of man, and, moreover, a living, intelligent force that feels a person’s relationship to it, undoubtedly influencing his existence. The necessary consequence of such a theistic view is a cult in which a person expresses a moral feeling of gratitude for the benefits of the Deity, hopes to gain his favor and ward off the hostile actions of the formidable Deity. Those feelings in which a person’s relationship to the Divine is expressed do not constitute the primary element in religious feeling. There is no term meaning the most sublime feelings of a theist - a term that could not be applied to any moral relationship between people: feelings of gratitude, fear, love, even reverence, in their lowest degree, take place in relations between people. External manifestations of religious feeling are distinguished by the same, so to speak, anthropological character. Sacrifice, a very common type of cult, had, according to pagan ideas, significance not as an external expression of the moral feat of renunciation of certain earthly attachments; the sacrifices offered to the Divine pleased him in a grossly sensual way. The ancient Greek, making a sacrifice, burned it because, in his opinion, the gods liked the smell of burning meat (κνίσσα). – No matter how gross such a distortion of religious feeling may be, it is based on the idea that religious aspirations have a goal in themselves, without their relation to other types of moral aspirations, that in religion a person seeks a direct relationship with the Divine, and not a means only for moral self-improvement. The same idea is proven indirectly by the undoubted fact that the requirements of religion did not always coincide with the requirements of morality and sometimes even stood in contradiction with them. - So “murder - especially committed against a foreigner - is not at all considered an offense by many tribes of blacks; but failure to observe any holiday or religious food prohibition is a crime worthy of death.” “Whoever kills a person from a lower caste must,” according to Brahmin law, “read several prayers”; but whoever deliberately kills a cow, this sacred animal, must die (Wundt. 2 vol. pp. 314–315). In the latter case, it is obvious that the moral consciousness of the Indians has developed to the concept of the crime of murder, but the religious feeling is not so much outraged by this crime as by the killing of a sacred animal. The cult of Melitta in Babylon and the service of the goddess Kali in India are far from the only examples of the contradiction between the prescriptions of religion and moral requirements. Jesus Christ recognized the possibility of such a contradiction between religious and moral feelings even in people professing open religion (John 16:2,3). Such an unnatural relationship between different types of moral feelings, between love for neighbors and love for God, is explained, however, from a correct view of the relationship of religious duties to moral ones (in the narrow sense). Since the subject of our religious relations is God, the highest Being, then the suggestions of religious feeling are naturally recognized by us as a higher principle than those requirements of moral duty that determine our individual life and our relationships with other people. And when religious consciousness is still so undeveloped that the Divine is not conceived as the highest moral Being, Who cannot prescribe to a person what his moral sense condemns, then a collision of moral (in the narrow sense) and religious duties is very possible. In these cases, the religious principle displaces and displaces the moral one all the more easily because the first principle is based on such motives as hope for the mercy of the Divine in case of fulfillment - and fear of the formidable punishment of the gods in case of violation of the requirements of religion - motives that act on a poorly developed person incomparably stronger than a sense of moral duty, inner peace or remorse. That is why, in cases where religious demands coincide with moral ones, when the latter receive sanction from religion, religious principles turn out to be a more powerful motive for preserving moral relations between people and strengthening individual morality than purely moral motives, and the common sense of rulers and private individuals encourages them to seek guarantees of public order and private rights not in moral, but in religious feeling: in the most important cases they require an oath from a person, and not an honest word. Even when the moral sense is very highly developed, religious impulses retain their full significance in the matter of moral improvement. Relying on such high factors as a sense of duty and truly moral love for God, a person becomes much more morally strong than when he is guided only by a sense of duty. Thus, religious feeling, although it relates to the moral as a species to a genus, remains completely unique in relation to other types of moral manifestations, since the subject of religious relations is not identical with the subjects of other moral relations. This feature of religious feeling determines all the other features of its difference from moral feeling (in a narrow sense) - the predominant importance of the cognitive element in religious feeling, and the different ratio of the requirements of religious feeling to moral demands at different moments of religious development, and the highest degree of obligation recognized by all for religious precepts. Moral and aesthetic feelings belong to two different orders of mental phenomena and therefore represent a complete difference in their initial principle, in the objects that excite them, in the content they introduce into consciousness, in their significance in human life, and therefore in their mutual relationship. It is impossible not to admit that moral feeling arises from the depths of the human spirit itself and in its manifestation depends relatively little on the external world. Therefore, the significance of the higher organs of external senses for a person’s moral life is limited to the fact that, serving as a means of communication with other people, they - indirectly - can contribute to the disclosure of moral feelings already existing in a person. But, in any case, even someone who was born blind or deaf-mute, or even deaf-blind, can live in his own moral world and achieve a certain degree of moral development, become morally even superior to some people who have a healthy, normal physical body. 9 Even less can a person’s moral life be affected by a lack of sight or hearing alone. As a purely spiritual feeling, the moral feeling is not attached to any external form, to any phenomenon of the external world. Only the inner mood of a freely rational agent, revealed in an external fact, gives it moral meaning, makes it an object of moral feeling. An external fact in itself can be neither moral nor immoral. Even such a stunning fact as the murder of an innocent child receives a moral character only when we, through synthetic judgments, discover the rationally free performer of this fact; otherwise, this fact constitutes only misfortune and not a crime. In a word, the moral element is not immanently inherent in a given phenomenon, but comes from outside, from the cause of the phenomenon, inherent in it transcendentally. The aesthetic feeling by its nature stands, as it were, on the border of the spiritual and physical nature of man. True, the human soul is inherent in an aesthetic norm, the idea of ​​beauty; but the aesthetic feeling, as a mental process, “is immediately adjacent to the sensually given,” and is in such close dependence on external higher feelings that the loss of one of them closes the whole area of ​​\u200b\u200besthetic impressions for a person. Even relatively minor damage to the organ of hearing or vision makes it impossible to enjoy the highest and complete enjoyment of music or a beautiful work of sculpture, painting or architecture. Even in the field of poetry, the most free from communication with the outside world, a lack of development of vision or hearing becomes noticeable: they notice that the works of a myopic, and even more so a blind poet, despite his high poetic talent, do not have the same merits that are noticed in the works of poets with normal vision. The object that excites the aesthetic sense is the beautiful, the graceful - in nature and art. The essence of beauty is usually believed to be the harmonious relationship between idea and form. But, notes Wundt, “this position is valid only in relation to the highest manifestations of the graceful; but there is also no doubt that an elegant form can appear where there is no question of the embodiment of ideas; and then we have the right to doubt whether we are not taking for the highest feeling of grace that which is in fact a feeling mixed from religious, moral and intellectual elements. Known combinations of colors and combinations of sounds are elegant or ungraceful, regardless of whether they belong to one whole, expressing some idea” (The Soul of Man and Animal. 2 vols. Page 72). Whichever of these two views is more correct, in any case, form constitutes a necessary, essential element of grace. Ideas, admittedly, are neither beautiful nor ugly, and if the beautiful consists in the embodiment of ideas, then they receive aesthetic significance only from the moment of their embodiment in external forms. Thus, the object of aesthetic feeling is the external side of the phenomenon of the visible world. And the external fact immanently contains everything that makes it graceful before the judgment of our feelings. No additional information regarding a given phenomenon will make it elegant if our aesthetic sense does not recognize it as such, and vice versa. Aesthetic criticism of a well-known poetic work can change the degree of development of our aesthetic taste or strengthen our attention, draw it to aspects of the poem that we had not previously noticed, through a series of analytical judgments give it a different light and thus change the verdict of the aesthetic feeling. But it is not difficult to notice that this change occurred due to the fact that we received an idea of ​​an external fact that is not identical with the original idea about which we made our previous aesthetic judgment. But in the case when additional information represents a synthetic judgment and does not change the identity of our idea of ​​​​a given phenomenon, our aesthetic verdict about it remains unchanged. An exact determination of the place and time of the birth and death of Homer, the place and year of writing of the Iliad would not have any influence on the judgment of the aesthetic sense about it. Therefore, the aesthetic feeling is completely indifferent to the question of the cause that produced a certain elegant phenomenon, or - better said - never asks this question. Whether this beautiful phenomenon is the product of the elemental forces of nature or the creative imagination of a self-conscious genius, this has no value for the aesthetic feeling, and anyone who would tell a person listening with aesthetic pleasure to the sounds of a musical piece the name of its composer would only produce an unpleasant break in the aesthetic feeling, because in the soul of the listener this information would not find a question about the composer of the play. An equally complete difference is noticeable in the content with which moral and aesthetic feelings appear in our consciousness. The feeling of inner peace, appearing in our soul as a sign of the dignity of a certain manifestation of our freedom, imposes on it the stamp of obligation, duty - it has a commanding character. We recognize ourselves as obligated to carry out the intention to which our moral feeling has given sanction, and we experience positive moral suffering when we arbitrarily fail to carry out this intention, yielding to opposite impulses that do not have the sanction of moral feeling. Thus, the moral feeling is to our consciousness the supreme authority in our spirit, the dictates of which must triumph over all obstacles, give direction to our will in all clashes with other instincts. This is not the case in the area of ​​aesthetic feeling. We are not aware of the unconditional obligatory nature of our aesthetic aspirations. True, the highest manifestations of beauty attract us very strongly and focus our attention on themselves for a long time; but, nevertheless, we ourselves do not recognize ourselves as obliged to make the contemplation of the aesthetically beautiful the highest goal of our existence. On the contrary, every normally developed person, no matter how great the receptivity of his aesthetic sense, is aware that aesthetic aspirations are not of primary importance in our life, that satisfaction with them constitutes our natural right, which we can use in order to make our existence full and happy, but we can use it only in those cases where our right does not conflict with our duty. Therefore, our aesthetic aspirations bow before the power of moral duty, and in the event of a collision between our aesthetic inclinations and moral duties, we realize that in order to maintain a normal state of mind, we must follow the instructions of moral feeling. One of the reasons for the superiority of moral aspirations over aesthetic ones is perhaps the absence of achievement, struggle, which constitutes a specific sign of manifestations of aesthetic feeling. In fact, in the present state of affairs, in real life, work ennobles and elevates a person. Meanwhile, the aesthetic feeling is perhaps the most inactive of mental processes. A certain degree of aesthetic development, a certain degree of active attention, which, however, thanks to the attractive power of the beautiful, soon turns into passive - these are the necessary conditions on the part of a person under which the contemplation of the beautiful becomes possible. And the nature of grace is such that it deepens a person’s peace. A drawing is recognized as elegant only when our eye easily follows the curves of the contour in the drawing and the thought without strain comprehends the harmonious relationship between the parts and the whole. Therefore, although there is a surprisingly harmonious relationship between the parts of a right triangle, since it is recognized only after an intense cognitive process, the right triangle is not considered an elegant figure; Meanwhile, other geometric figures, for example, a circle and a square, the symmetry of which is immediately obvious, are recognized as the primary, simplest forms of plastic beauty. The psychological significance of rhythm in music and poetry lies in the fact that it divides the entire aesthetic work into small similar systems, as a result of which the first systems make it easier for us to perceive all subsequent ones. Finally, the highest manifestations of beauty come closest to their ideal perfection when, without intense mental labor on the part of the person contemplating them, the idea embodied in them is introduced into his consciousness. As a result of all this, the mood that we take away from the contemplation of beauty has a pleasant tone; but since this more or less pure and high pleasure is achieved by us almost without any labor, then, as undeserved by us, it is not imputed to us in the sense of a fact characterizing our personality - it is not imputed to us in the same way as the bright mood with which we perform mental or physical work, overcome obstacles in the performance of our duties, etc. is imputed to us. And this circumstance gives rise to the conclusion that in human life the aesthetic feeling is much less important than the moral one. The same conclusion is led by the fact that not a single person is born personally criminal or immoral, while many by nature are deprived of the opportunity not only to achieve the highest aesthetic development, but even to feel beauty in all its forms. In general, a person who renounces the possibility of aesthetic development and aesthetic pleasures in the name of a moral idea, for example, a missionary who has devoted his life to educational work among a people whose external environment does not represent anything aesthetically beautiful, in a country poor in beautiful natural phenomena, represents a grandiose manifestation of self-sacrifice and arouses deep respect for himself; on the contrary, someone who, in pursuit of aesthetic ideals, would begin to exploit his neighbors to achieve them, despite even his high artistic development, as a person would deserve contempt, although he would arouse admiration for himself as an artist. If, in this way, aesthetic aspirations in themselves cannot become the principle of truly human life, then what determines their significance for man as a moral being, which gives them a place among the species differences of man? Ulrici points to the highest effects of beauty, refreshment, elevation, inspiration, as the basis of the claims of beauty and art to ethical significance (Body and Soul. p. 671). These actions of the beautiful take place not only when the highest manifestation of the graceful introduces some lofty idea into our consciousness, but also when we are under the impression of a beautiful picture of nature or music - those types of beauty whose basic idea is the least definite. These actions of the graceful, and therefore its meaning for man, are determined by the general laws of human existence. Human nature is such that he cannot be constantly active. His work, both physical, mental and moral, must necessarily be replaced by peace and pleasure. We can say that the significance of enjoying the beautiful in our mental [life] is as great as the significance of sleep in organic life. Aesthetic contemplation of beauty moderately excites our mental powers, weakened by prolonged stress, distracts our attention from our inner world and the oppressive ideas of difficult practical activity and turns our thoughts to the outside world. A beautiful phenomenon concentrates our consciousness on itself for a long time, displaces all other ideas beyond its limits, brings into our soul several pure pleasures that do not exhaust our strength, and establishes deep peace in it. Our spiritual powers, restored by peace, do not yet have time to unite with known ideas, and the entire wealth of our spiritual energy is revealed to our consciousness in its pure, abstract form, without connection with a specific content. An inner sense of our own strength and freedom elevates us above the level at which we recognized ourselves; the best instincts of our nature are awakened and encourage us to strive for the highest. Our consciousness is then free from the mass of ideas changing in it. They slowly penetrate into consciousness, and we seem to begin to live a conscious life again. Such a result of contemplating the beautiful in itself does not yet have moral dignity; the whole significance of this result for moral life is that we get the opportunity, with renewed strength, to begin activities according to the direction of moral feeling. But not all aesthetic impressions have this meaning. The action of pictures of nature, as well as the best works of music, the idea of ​​which is not distinguished by definiteness, most achieves this goal, because, while renewing and elevating our forces, it does not give them a specific goal, it leaves us free to give them a specific goal. But those manifestations of the elegant, which introduce a more or less definite idea into our consciousness, thereby already impress us, encourage us to concentrate all our forces on the implementation of this idea (if the idea is practical) and in any case limit the freedom of our self-determination. The moral significance of such works can be very high if their ideas are moral and high; but since in reality this does not always happen, these manifestations of beauty can also have a harmful effect on a person’s moral development. Consequently, beauty has only a conditional meaning for moral feeling. There is a view that the religious feeling produces from the aesthetic. As the basis for such an identification, Schelling points to the identity of the religious contemplation of nature with the aesthetic. Ulrici defines the relationship of religious feeling to the aesthetic with the rather general term “internal direct affinity” and how, at the moment of this affinity, it indicates a religious desire for an unconditionally perfect Being, the ideal of the good, the truly beautiful. “On this last moment of religious feeling is based the internal direct affinity between religion and art; it explains the historical fact that art everywhere initially arose from religion and was combined with religious feelings and ideas. This also explains why the concept of God, in its content, everywhere coincides with the contemporary ideal of goodness, beauty and perfection to which the ethical education of man and the culture of a given tribe and people have risen” (Body and Soul. p. 745). But no matter how closely the religious feeling converges with the aesthetic at these points, behind this apparent similarity there are hidden features of deep difference. Let us pay attention, first of all, to the direction along which religious feeling goes in its gradual enlightenment in historical manifestations. The specific and more essential element of religious feeling is the cognitive element, there is that primary perception of the Infinite, which makes possible the conscious, logical, rational disclosure of the idea of ​​God, which in turn determines the most internal, moral attitude towards the Divine, or the subjective side of religious feeling. But the more the idea of ​​God is enlightened in religious consciousness, the more it approaches the adequate concept of God, the more vividly and clearly man realizes that the Divine, the purest, absolute Spirit, cannot be represented in visible material forms, the more he rises to the thought of serving Him in spirit and truth, and therefore the more he distinguishes between the internal and external in religion. And the artistic element in religion constitutes its external side. And since form constitutes a necessary element of the graceful and there is no possibility of hoping that the aesthetically beautiful will ever free itself from connection with matter, become spiritualized and in the purest and most perfect way embody an adequate representation of the Divine: that religious feeling, as it purifies and exalts, more and more leaves the aesthetic feeling behind itself and reveals a tendency - at the highest moment of its development to interrupt its union with the aesthetic feeling 10, which, by its conditions, cannot to rise in one’s ideals to the point of their complete identification with an infinitely sublime religious ideal, nor – much less – to serve a religious goal in the most perfect way 11 . In any case, it is very significant that it was precisely in the era of its highest development, in the first centuries of Christianity, that the religious feeling had very little connection with the aesthetic. It is impossible to deny the fact of the existence of individuals with a deep religious feeling, who, however, had a negative attitude towards the ideals of aesthetic feeling (just as the opposite fact is beyond doubt that people with a highly developed aesthetic feeling were not always highly religious people). Finally, it cannot be argued that in the whole Reformed religious society there are not and have not been people with a developed religious feeling; and meanwhile, this religious society makes a principle of the denial of the artistic element in religious rituals. The Orthodox Church does not know this principle. It allows an artistic element in its rituals, but it allows, on the one hand, because not all members have reached that moral height at which a person has no need for his moral and religious actions in the indisputably beneficial assistance of aesthetic feeling, and on the other hand, in the name of connection with his historical past, and therefore recognizes the norm of the artistic element in his worship not to indicate the aesthetic taste of individuals or a certain modern era, but a type of churchliness consecrated by tradition, in which the graceful is a symbol of one or another religious truth. In general, at the highest moments of religious inspiration, a person is inherent in the consciousness of the self-sufficiency of religious feeling - the consciousness that the object of religious aspirations is so sublime that the mere thought of it is enough to excite the liveliest desire for it: even the darkness of the cave did not hinder the ancient ascetics in their lofty religious exploits. Thus, the difference between the religious and aesthetic feelings at the highest moment of development of the first exists undoubtedly and turns out to be so strong that the origin of the religious feeling from the aesthetic becomes a very doubtful matter. Indeed, the assumption that religious aspirations at the beginning of their discovery were identical with aesthetic ones contradicts information about the state of religion among ancient and modern natural peoples; Even the idea of ​​“an internal and immediate affinity between religion and art” does not seem completely solid, because the historical facts explained by this hypothesis and giving it much significance are not confirmed by information about the religious state of natural peoples. Thus, the position that “the idea of ​​God, in its content, everywhere coincides with the contemporary ideal of beauty to which the culture of a given tribe has risen” can be considered completely fair only in relation to the Greeks and partly the Romans. On the contrary, the plastic representations of savage and even some civilized peoples prove that the ideal of their religious feeling did not correspond to the aesthetic ideal. The idea of ​​God as the Great Spirit, not alien to many peoples, is undoubtedly very close to the aesthetic idea of ​​the sublime; therefore, if a person’s religious aspirations were homogeneous with aesthetic ones, one would expect that it would be the sublime thought of the One Great Spirit that would become the basis of religious myths and plastic images of the Divine. But - generally speaking - the exact opposite happened: “having contemplated the One Eternal for some time,” says Broglie, “people in powerlessness and horror turned away from Him in order to make gods for themselves according to their own understanding and according to their own standards.” And in fact, “among the Negroes, as well as in the New World, the cult of the Supreme Deity is for the most part in great oblivion” (Wundt. T. 2. p. 305); and “the ugly features of idols, taken from the unclean imagination of the masses” (Broglie, Christian Reading. 1875. September - October. Pp. 331), - the idols of Indian and Egyptian deities are often so aesthetically ugly that they hardly leave room for doubt that, when worshiping them and creating them, the pagans were not at all guided by an aesthetic feeling and aesthetic standards. Incomprehensible given the supposed coincidence of the aesthetic and religious ideal, the possibility of such a representation of the Divine becomes completely clear when we imagine that the essential feature most illuminated by consciousness in the concept of the Divine - as this concept was formed under the influence of the primary perception of religious feeling - is the idea of ​​power, which pushes into the background the idea of ​​beauty, which constitutes one of the essential features in the concept of the peoples of the highest culture about God. Therefore, a Negro is sometimes content to depict the Deity with the first stone he comes across, if only he (the Negro) managed to experimentally verify the presence of divine power in this object (Wundt. T. 2. p. 339). Of course, the Egyptians did not depict their gods with blue or green faces or with animal heads because they saw the ideal of beauty in such an unnatural combination of human and animal members, but because such images were considered the most expressive symbols of various divine powers. Such images of deities are of decisive importance in the question of the identity of the religious ideal with the ideal of beauty and the internal direct affinity between religion and art, and therefore of religious and aesthetic feelings; because the fact that in the churches of the gods we often have the first examples of architecture proves only that man forced his aesthetic sense to serve the religious: an elegantly built church is not an end, but a means for religious feeling - not an image of the Divine, but a sacrifice to Him, material proof of the great reverence for Him of a person who devotes to Him the best work of his hands and thoughts. Thus, the religious feeling, not only at the highest moment of its development, but also in its lowest, most imperfect manifestations, is different in its object from the aesthetic and is recognized as a spiritual discovery higher in comparison with it, for which the aesthetic feeling can sometimes serve as a means, but is never the goal. As a result, the “direct sensation of divine harmony in nature,” or the aesthetic contemplation of nature, shaded by feeling, cannot be recognized as a mental process identical with religious feeling. Since the religious feeling also reveals a person’s need to become directly related to the Divine Himself, the aesthetic contemplation of nature can be identical with the religious feeling only under the necessary condition if a person begins to think of the Divine as diffused in nature, completely identical with it and having no existence outside of it. But a natural religious feeling, not influenced by perverted, extreme trends of thought, resists any non-theistic idea of ​​​​the Deity and turns the impersonal Deity of artificial religious systems into a personal Being. On the other hand, the aesthetic contemplation of nature is related as a species to a genus to an aesthetic feeling, and therefore the quietism of the direct sensation of divine harmony in nature lies in the very essence of this mental process. Meanwhile, religious feeling, as a type of morality, has an active character, disposes a person to feat in the name of the Personal God and in itself represents a feat that requires both active attention and willpower, and is recognized as a duty. This last feature seems especially strange and unnatural when applied to aesthetic feelings: duty when applied to pleasures is a contradictio in adjecto [contradiction in definition]; the clearly recognized obligation to enjoy aesthetic impressions almost completely destroys pleasure itself. It is also impossible not to admit that the direct feeling of harmony and divine harmony in nature is not as universal a fact as a religious feeling: the aesthetic feeling in an undeveloped state is applied more to individual manifestations of beauty in nature than to the harmony of the whole. How little an undeveloped person is capable of feeling the harmonious action of natural laws in the whole of nature, this is shown by the general inclination of uncivilized peoples to explain each more or less limited circle of natural phenomena by the action of animate, special for each circle of phenomena, figures. In general, aesthetic contemplation of nature as a whole is possible for people with a highly developed aesthetic sense, and not for savage peoples, who are sometimes not alien to very high glimpses of religious feeling. In fact, aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful in nature is not only not identical with a religious feeling, but in itself, in its pure, unalloyed form, is not even a reason, a fact that excites religious feelings. The aesthetic feeling consists of an inseparable, holistic perception of the harmonious relationship between the parts and the whole, and, moreover, without increased strain on the cognitive powers of the human spirit; for the aesthetic sense, everything lies in the contemplated phenomenon, and therefore the one who enjoys the beautiful does not at the same time ascend to the idea of ​​​​the figure who produced this beauty; even in the case when the thought of this appears in the consciousness of the contemplator as a ready-made given from the outside, it cannot, due to the narrowness of the horizon of human consciousness, remain in it without displacing the idea of ​​the contemplated object. Therefore, the one who contemplates the beautiful in nature, by virtue of this law of aesthetic feeling, does not ascend in thought to the Creator of nature, does not ask the question about the cause of the beautiful phenomenon and does not solve it (the question): the transition from an external fact (beautiful) completed in itself to its beginning and cause would be too strong a movement, not in harmony with the tranquility of aesthetic contemplation. Therefore, if a person felt divine harmony in nature as an artist - with his aesthetic sense, then he made a teleological conclusion from the fact of the existence of divine harmony to the existence of the Divine, its rational cause, as a thinker. That elevation and renewal, which appears as a result of the action of beauty on a person, as a feeling of fullness of spiritual energy, is not yet a religious feeling, just as the feeling of an excess of vital forces in the body is not yet a purposeful movement - and represents only a person’s pointless desire for infinity, and not a rationally free desire for the Infinite. – The religious teleological contemplation of nature, which represents a periodic change in the consciousness of purely aesthetic feeling and reflection, is not identical with the purely aesthetic contemplation of nature. Based on the position that there is God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, the religious contemplator reduces each individual manifestation of the beautiful in nature to its original axiom, with it he sanctifies and explains all perceptions of the aesthetic sense and, having felt the harmony of the world in its parts and as a whole, completes his contemplation with his original thought. Psalms 8 and 103 present beautiful, completely finished examples of this complex process in which the aesthetic feeling is raised to the height of a religious act 12. Printed from a handwritten autograph stored in the National Library of Russia. OR. F. 88. Op. 1. Unit hr. 169. Autograph in black ink on double bound sheets of paper, 22 x 17.7 cm; autograph signature in the bottom margin of the first page. Notes in pencil in the text and in the margins of the manuscript (probably by the hand of St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences professor N.P. Rozhdestvensky). In the autograph on the first page in the lower field there is a signature: “Vasily Bolotov”; in the upper right corner there is a mark (?): “5”. The following text is written in the margins: “The homogeneity of the content of these feelings can hardly authorize the recognition of their originality.” “I will limit myself only to illuminating a little the facts on the basis of which Müller again warms up the old theory of the faculties of the soul.” Wundt. The soul of man and animal. T. 2. Approx. to 54 lectures. Page 18. The first part of the phrase is crossed out, and the following text is written in the right field: “All this confirms and in no way refutes Kant’s view of religion.” This fragment of text in quotation marks is underlined, and in the left margin of the page the text is written: “Isn’t this perception a kind of empirical perception? Doesn’t this perception presuppose conviction, even if immediate, in the fact of God’s existence?” Part of the sentence is underlined, and in the right margin of the page the following text is written: “But no conscious process of thinking can prove the existence of God, the whole matter here comes down to (a) dark perceptions and unconscious (b) processes. Why can the cognitive side be recognized as a natural side in religious feeling? The part of the sentence starting with the word “is” is underlined, and after it the following text is written and placed in parentheses: “(This is Kant’s thought).” Buddhism, like deism, is already the fruit of the influence of civilization on man. As a non-theistic idea of ​​the Divine is unusual for the natural sense of man, this is evident from the fact that Buddhism in its pure form could “retain in the heads of a few thinkers.” “But popular religion could not stand at such an abstract height. She made her founder a god." Wundt. The soul of man and animal. T. 2. Page 291. The sentence is underlined, and the following text is written in the right margin of the page: “This can hardly be said about someone who is deaf-blind from birth.” The part of the sentence beginning with the words “religious feeling” is underlined, and in the right margin of the page the following text is written: “This is the Puritan point of view.” The relationship of the religious feeling to the aesthetic in their mutual, normal development, as far as it was expressed in the most important historical epochs, seems very similar to one type of relationship between geometric and arithmetic progression, in which the first will be an indicator of the religious element, and the latter - of the aesthetic. – It is not without reason to believe that at the first moment of historical development, the religious feeling was in complete balance with the aesthetic; Such a balance, although perhaps distorted at one of the previous moments in the life of mankind, is also noticed among natural peoples (although, however, the peoples known under this name cannot be considered natural in the strict sense): they have equally weak both religious and aesthetic development. (In the left margin of the page the following text is written: “Historical circumstances were also important here. Aesthetics could not develop in the catacombs.” - Note) Let us denote this moment of the relationship between religious and aesthetic feelings by 1.75: 1.75. At the next moment of development this equilibrium must cease; the aesthetic feeling prevails over the religious; the ratio of the latter to the former is 3.0625 (3 1/16):3.5 (3 8/16). (In the left margin of the page the following text is written: “Fantasmagorische Betrachtungen” [Phantasmagoric reflections]. – Note) This moment corresponds to the cultural state of the classical world, a state most expressed in the Greek world. At the third moment of natural, strictly gradual development, the religious element already prevails over the aesthetic and is related to it as 5.359375:5.25. This is the ratio of the religious and aesthetic elements in the Christian world (approximately like 5.359375:5.25 - in the apostolic age, like 5.3593...:5.25 - in the Orthodox Church and like 5.3...:5.2... - in the Roman Catholic Church). Although at this moment the religious feeling prevails over the aesthetic, it is still so close in relation to it that it becomes possible for the appearance of such a view as Schelling’s view. But at the next moment of the ideal development of humanity, for the masses, peoples and all of humanity in real life, perhaps unattainable, also in a completely normal way, without any leap, the religious feeling appears at such a height to which the aesthetic feeling cannot even approach; the close connection between them ceases, and all their further development should make the line separating them only more sharp and noticeable. Ratio between religious and aesthetic element = 9.37890625:7. The last sentence is crossed out, and the following text is written in the left margin of the page: “This means that between religious and aesthetic feelings there is no incompatibility that the author above finds between them.” (Note)