It is only by being frank or disclaiming all reality, and by being independent or doing without reality, that the appearance is aesthetical.  Directly it apes reality or needs reality for effect it is nothing more than a vile instrument for material ends, and can prove nothing for the freedom of the mind.  Moreover, the object in which we find beauty need not be unreal if pur judgment disregards this reality; nor if it regards this the judgment is no longer aesthetical.  A beautiful woman if living would no doubt please us as much and rather more than an equally beautiful woman seen in painting; but what makes the former please men is not her being an independent appearance; she no longer pleases the pure aesthetic feeling.  In the painting, life must only attract as an appearance, and reality as an idea.  But it is certain that to feel in a living object only the pure appearance, requires a greatly higher aesthetic culture than to do without life in the appearance.

When the frank and independent appearance is found in man separately, or in a whole people, it may be inferred they have mind, taste, and all prerogatives connected with them.  In this case, the ideal will be seen to govern real life, honour triumphing over fortune, thought over enjoyment, the dream of immortality over a transitory existence.

In this case public opinion will no longer be feared and an olive crown will be more valued than a purple mantle.  Impotence and perversity alone have recourse to false and paltry semblance, and individuals as well as nations who lend to reality the support of appearance, or to the aesthetical appearance the support of reality, show their moral unworthiness and their aesthetical impotence.  Therefore, a short and conclusive answer can be given to this question—­How far will appearance be permitted in the moral world?  It will run thus in proportion as this appearance will be sesthetical, that is, an appearance that does not try to make up for reality, nor requires to be made up for by it.  The aesthetical appearance can never endanger the truth of morals:  wherever it seems to do so the appearance is not aesthetical.  Only a stranger to the fashionable world can take the polite assurances, which are only a form, for proofs of affection, and say he has been deceived; but only a clumsy fellow in good society calls in the aid of duplicity and flatters to become amiable.  The former lacks the pure sense for independent appearance; therefore he can only give a value to appearance by truth.  The second lacks reality, and wishes to replace it by appearance.  Nothing is more common than to hear depreciators of the times utter these paltry complaints—­that all solidity has disappeared from the world, and that essence is neglected for semblance.  Though I feel by no means called upon to defend this age against these reproaches, I must say that the wide application of these criticisms shows that they attach blame to the age, not only