�On the national scene considered as a moral institution�

�On the national scene considered as a moral institution� approaches the national scene (taken in its broader meaning; that is any media coverage of national scope which has a determined plan) as an educational tool.

On the use of theatre as a moral institution
(1784)
                                                                                                        

I.        An encompassing, irresistible inclination for anything new and extraordinary, a longing to feel oneself in a passionate condition, has given its origin to theatre according to Sulzer.

Exhausted by the higher striving of the spirit, tired of the uniform, often discouraging occupations of his profession and saturated with sensuality, the human being must have felt emptiness in his existence, which was contrary to the eternal tendency for activity.

Our nature, equally incapable to endure further longer the animal condition as to pursue further the finer works of understanding, demanded an intermediary condition, which could unite both contradicting extremes, alleviate the difficult extension toward this sweet harmony and ease the alternate transition from one condition to the other.

In general, it is the aesthetic sense or the feeling for the Beautiful which performs these exercises. As, however, a wise legislator�s first duty must be, to interpret the highest of two actions, hence, he will not enjoy only to have disarmed the tendencies of his people; he will also, if it is at all possible, use them as tools for a higher plan and be striving to transform them into sources of felicity, and in that respect, he chose above all theatre, which opens an infinite circle to the spirit longing for activity, nurtures every spiritual force, without straining a single one, and unites the formation of understanding and that of the heart with the most noble entertainment.

II.        The person, who first made the remark, that religion is the surest foundation of a state � that without it, laws would lose even their force, has maybe, without wanting it or knowing it, defended theatre from its most noble side.
Even this weakness, this wavering particularity of the political laws, which makes religion indispensable to the state, determines also the moral influence of theatre.
Laws, would he be saying, evolve around only forbidden duties � religion extends its movements into real acts.
Laws prevent only actions, which dissolve the cohesion of society to happen � religion commands such actions which make this cohesion smoother.
The first ones prevail only over the visible manifestations of the willpower; only acts are submissive to them � the last one pursues further its jurisdiction up to the most hidden angle of the heart and follows thought into its most internal source.
Laws are smooth and supple, and are as unpredictable as mood and passion � religion binds strictly and eternally.
If we, now, however, would be supposing, what is never more � if we grant to religion this great power over each human heart, will or can it carry education to its completion? � Religion (I separate here its political from its divine side), religion works, generally, more on the sensible part of the people � it works maybe in the domain of the sensible alone so infallibly.
Its force is there, if we take this force from the sensible domain � then, where does theatre perform its effect? Religion is for the major part of humans nothing more than depictions of fantasy, riddles without solutions, remote images of horror and temptations, if we consume its images, its problems, if we destroy its depictions of heaven and hell.
What a reinforcement it would be for religion and laws, if they enter in union with theatre, where there is appearance and lively presence, where vice and virtue, happiness and sorrow, silliness and wisdom in thousand depictions pass comprehensibly and truly on to humans, where providence resolves its riddles, develops its ties before the eyes, where the human heart confesses its quietest emotions about the tortures of passion, where all the masks fall, all the make up disappears and Truth, unerringly, holds its trial the same way as Rhadamanthus did.

The jurisdiction of theatre begins where the territory of the worldly laws ends.


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