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THE PHILOSOPHY OF

FINE ART

BY

G. W. F. HEGEL

TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY

F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A.

AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY
ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS

VOL II




CONTENTS OF VOL. II

SECOND PART

INTRODUCTION

[Evolution of the Ideal in the Particular Types of Fine Art,
namely, the Symbolic, the Classical, and the Romantic.
Symbolic Art seeks after that unity of ideal significance
and external form, which Classical art in its representation
of substantive individuality succeeds in securing to
sensuous perception, and which Romantic art passes
beyond, owing to its excessive insistence on the claims
of Spirit]


SUBSECTION I

THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

OF THE SYMBOL GENERALLY

[1. Symbol as a sign simply in language, colours, etc. 8

2.  Not a mere sign to represent something else, but a
significant fact which presents the idea or quality it
symbolizes 9

3.  Thing symbolized must have other qualities than that
accepted as symbol. Term symbol necessarily open
to ambiguity 10

(_a_) Ambiguity in particular case whether the concrete
fact _is_ set before us as a symbol. Difference between
a symbol and a simile. Illustrations 10

(_b_) Ambiguity extends to-entire worlds of Art, _e.g_,
Oriental art. Two theories with regard to mythos
discussed and contrasted 14

(_c_) The problems of mythology in the present treatise
limited to the question, "How far symbolism is
entitled to rank as a form of Art?" Will only
consider symbol in so far as it belongs to Art in its
own right and itself proceeds from the notion of
the Ideal, the unfolding of which it commences] 19

DIVISION OF SUBJECT

[1. The artistic consciousness originates in wonder. The
effects that result from such a state. Art the first interpreter
of the religious consciousness. Conceptions
envisaged in plastic forms of natural objects 23

2. The final aim of symbolic art is classical art. Here it
is dissolved. The Sublime lies between the two extremes 26

3. The stages of symbolical art classified according to
their subdivisions in the chapters of this. Second Part
of the entire treatise] 29

CHAPTER I

UNCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM

A.  Unity of Significance and Form in its immediacy 36

1.  The religion of Zoroaster 37

2.  No true symbolical significance in the above 42

3.  Equally destitute of an artistic character 44

B.  Fantastic Symbolism 47

1.  The Hindoo conception of Brahmâ 50

2.  Sensuousness, measurelessness, and personifying
activity of Hindoo imagination 51

3.  Conception of purification and penance 64

C.  Genuine Symbolism 65

1.  Nature no longer accepted in its immediate sensuous
existence as adequate to the significance. Art
and general outlook of ancient Egypt 75

[(_a_) The inward import held independent of immediate
existence in the embalmed corpse 76

(_b_) Doctrine of immortality of the soul as held by
Egyptians 76

(_c_) Superterranean and subterranean modes of
Egyptian art. The Pyramids] 77

2.  Worship of animals, as the vision of a secreted soul.
Symbolical and non-symbolical aspects of this cult 78

3.  Works of Egyptian art are objective riddles. The
Sphinx symbolic of the genius of Egypt. Memnons,
Isis, and Osiris 79

CHAPTER II

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SUBLIME

A.  Pantheism of Art 89

1.  Hindoo poetry 90

2.  Persian and Mohammedan poetry. Modern reflections
of such poetry as in Goethe 92

3.  Christian Mysticism 97

B.  The Art of the Sublime 97

1.  God as Creator and Lord of a subject World. He
is Creator, not Generator. His Dwelling not in
Nature 100

2.  Nature and the human form cut off from the Divine
(_entgöttert_) 101

3. Nullity of objective fact a source of the enhanced
self-respect of man. Man's finiteness and immeasurable
transcendency of God. No place for
immortality. The Law 103

CHAPTER III

THE CONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM OF THE COMPARATIVE TYPE OF ART

A.  Modes of Comparison originating from the side of externality 110

1.  The Fable. Aesop 113

2.  The Parable, Proverb, and Apologue 122

3.  The Metamorphosis 125

B.  Comparisons, which in their imaginative presentation
originate in the Significance 128

1.  The Riddle 130

2.  The Allegory 132

3.  The Metaphor, Image, and Simile 137

C.  The Disappearance of the Symbolic Type of Art 161

1.  The Didactic Poem 163

2.  Descriptive Poetry 165

3.  Relation of both aspects of internal feeling and external
object in the ancient Epigram 165


SUBSECTION II

THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

THE CLASSICAL TYPE IN GENERAL

1.  Self-subsistency of the Classical type viewed as the
interfusion of the spiritual and its natural form 175

[(_a_) No return of the ideal principle upon itself. No
separation of opposed aspects of inward and external 175

(_b_)  Symbolism absent from this type except incidentally 176

(_c_) Reproach of anthropomorphism] 179

2.  Greek art as the realized existence of the classical type 181

3.  Position of the creative artist under such a type 183

[(_a_) His freedom no result of a restless process of fermentation.
Receives his material as something
assured in history or belief 183

(_b_) His plastic purpose is clearly defined 184

(_c_) High level  of technical ability 185

Classification of subject-matter] 186

CHAPTER I

THE FORMATIVE PROCESS OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

Introduction and Division of subject 189

1. The Degradation of Animalism as such 191

(_a_) The sacrifice of animals. How regarded by the
Greeks 192

(_b_)  The Chase, or examples of such in heroic times 194

(_c_)  Tales of metamorphosis. Illustrations both from
Greek and Egyptian traditions 194

2. The Contest between the older and later Dynasties of
Gods 201

(_a_)  The oracles whereby the gods attest their presence
through natural existences 205

(_b_)  The ancient gods in contradistinction from the
new 208

[(_α_) The Titan natural potences included among the
older régime 208

(_β_) They are the powers of Earth and the stars 208
without spiritual or ethical content. Prometheus.
The Erinnyes 209

(_γ_) The order of these gods  is a succession] 215

(_c_) The conquest of the older régime of gods 217

3. The Positive Conservation of the conditions set up by
Negation 220

(_a_) The Mysteries 220

(_b_) Preservation of old régime still more obvious in artistic
creations.  Illustrations from  Greek poetry 221

(_c_) The Nature-basis of the later gods. Nature not in
itself divine to the Greek. Illustrations of both
points of view 223

CHAPTER II

THE IDEAL OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

Introduction and Division of subject-matter 229

1.  The Ideal of Classical Art generally 230

(_a_)  The Classical Ideal is a creation of free artistic
activity, though it reposes on earlier historical
elements 230

[(_α_) The Greek gods are neither the appearance of
mere external Nature, nor the abstraction from
one Godhead 232

(_β_) The Greek artist is a poet. But his productive
power is concretely spiritual, not merely capricious 233

(_γ_) The relation of the Greek gods to human life.
Illustrations from Homer, etc.] 233

(_b_)  What is the type of the new gods of Greek art? 235

[(_α_) Their concentrated individuality, or substantive
characterization 236

(_β_) Their beauty not merely spiritual, but also plastic 237

(_γ_) Removal of them from all that is purely finite
into a sphere of lofty blessedness exalted above
mere sensuous shape] 238

(_c_) The nature of the external representation. Sculpture,
in its secure self-possession, most suited as
the medium 241

2.  The Sphere or Cycle of the Individual Gods 242

(_a_)  What is called the "divine Universum" is here
broken up into particular deities 242

(_b_)  Absence of an articulate system 243

(_c_) The general character of their distinguishing attributes 244

3. The particular Individuality of the Gods 246

(_a_)  The appropriate material for such individualization

[(_α_) The natural religions of symbolism a primary
source. Illustrations 247

(_β_) That of local conditions 250

(_γ_) That of the world of concrete fact. Illustrations
from Homer, etc.] 254

(_b_) Retention of a fundamental ethical basis 258

(_c_) Advance in the direction of grace and charm 259

CHAPTER III

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE

1.  Fate or Destiny 261

2.  Dissolution through the nature of the anthropomorphism
of the gods 263

[(_a_) Absence or defect of the principle of subjectivity as
here asserted 263

(_b_)  The transition to Christian conceptions only found
in more modern art. The prosaic art of the Aufklärung.
Illustrations 266

(_c_)  The dissolution of classical art in its own province] 270

3.  Satire 273

(_a_) Distinction between the dissolution of classical and
symbolic art 274

(_b_) The Satire 276

(_c_) The Roman world as the basis of the satire with
illustrations ancient and modern 277


SUBSECTION III

THE ROMANTIC TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC IN GENERAL

1.  The Principle of inward Subjectivity 282

2.  The steps in the Evolution of the content and form of
the Romantic Principle 283

[(_a_) Point of departure deduced from the Absolute viewed
as the determinate existence of a self-knowing
subject of thought and volition. Man viewed as
self-possessed Divine. History of Christ 286

(_b_)  This process of self-recognition and reconcilement
viewed as a process in which strain and conflict
arise. Death as viewed by Christian and Greek
art contrasted 287

(_c_)  The finite aspect of subjective life in the secular
interests, the passions, collisions, and suffering,
or enjoyment of the earthly life] 290

3. The romantic mode of exposition in relation to its content 291

(_a_) The content of romantic viewed relatively to the
Divine extremely restricted. Nature divested of its
association, symbolic or otherwise, with Divinity 291

(_b_)  Religion the premiss of romantic art in a far more
enhanced degree than in symbolic art. Influence
of the romantic principle on the medium adopted 293

(_c_)  Two worlds covered by the romantic principle, viz.,
the soul-kingdom of Spirit reconciled therein,
and the realm of external Nature from which even
the aspect of ugliness is not excluded. Latter
world only portrayed in so far as soul finds a home
therein] 293

Division of subject-matter 295

CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS DOMAIN OF ROMANTIC ART

1.  The Redemption history of Christ 302

(_a_)  The principle of Love as paramount in this religious
sphere. How far Art in such a sphere is a superfluity 303

(_b_)  From a certain aspect the appearance of Art is
necessary 303

(_c_) The aspect of contingency in the particularity of an
individual Person as such Divine 304

[(_α_) The presentment by artists of the exterior personality
of Christ 304

(_β_) The conflict inherent in the religious growth,
viewed as a process, though determining that
process universally, is concentrated in the history
of _one_ person in the first instance 306

(_γ_) The feature of death only regarded here as a
point of transition to self-reconcilement] 308

2.  Religious Love 309

(_a_) Conception of the Absolute as Love 309

(_b_)  Form of Love as self-concentrated emotion. Affiliation
of such with sensuous presentment 310

(_c_) Love as the Ideal of romantic art 310

[(_α_) Christ as Divine Love 311

(_β_) Form most compatible with Art the love of
mother. Mary, mother of Jesus 311

(_γ_) Love of Christ's disciples and the Christian community] 313

3.  The Spirit of the Community 313

(_a_) The Martyrs 315

(_b_) Penance and conversion within the soul 320

(_c_) Miracles and Legends 323

CHAPTER II

CHIVALRY

Introduction 325

1. Honour 332

(_a_) Notion of same. Contrast between Greek and
modern art in this respect 332

(_b_) Vulnerability of same 335

(_c_) Reparation demanded. Honour a mode of self-subsistency
which is self-reflective 336

2.  Love 337

(_a_) Fundamental conception of. Illustrations from
poetry 337

(_b_) Collisions of the same 341

[(_α_) That between honour and love 341

(_β_) That between the supreme spiritual forces of
state, family, etc., and love 342

(_γ_) Opposition between love and external conditions
in the prose of life and the prejudice of
others] 342

(_c_) Limitation of contingency inherent in the conception
itself 343

3.  Fidelity 345

(_a_) Loyalty of service 346

(_b_) The nature of its co-ordination with a social order
either in the world of Chivalry or the modern 347

(_c_) Nature of its collisions. Illustrations. The "Cid,"
etc. 348

CHAPTER III

THE FORMAL SELF-STABILITY OF PARTICULAR
INDIVIDUALITIES

Introduction 350

1. The Self-subsistence of individual Character 354

(_a_) The formal stability of character 355

(_b_)  Character viewed as an inward but undisclosed
totality. Illustrations from Shakespeare 359

(_c_)  The substantial interest in the display of such formal
character. Shakespeare's vulgar characters, and
the geniality of their presentment 365

2. The Spirit of Adventure 367

(_a_)  The contingent nature of ends and collisions 368

[(_α_) Christian Chivalry in its conflict with Moors,
Arabs, and Mohammedans. Crusades. Holy Grail 369

(_β_) The universal spirit of adventure in the personal
experience of individuals. Dante and the "Divine
Comedy" 371

(_γ_) The contingency within the soul due to love,
honour, and fidelity] 371

(_b_)  The comic treatment of such contingency. Ariosto
and Cervantes, contrast between 372

(_c_) The spirit of the novel or romance 375

3.  The Dissolution of the Romantic type 377

(_a_)  The artistic imitation of what is directly presented by Nature 379

[(_α_) Naturalism in poetry. Diderot, Goethe, and
Schiller 381

(_β_) Dutch _genre_ painting 382

(_γ_) Interest in objects delineated related to artistic
personality] 385

(_b_)  Individual Humour 386

(_c_)  The end of the romantic type of Art 388

[(_α_) Conditions under which it is possible for the
artist to bring the Absolute before the aesthetic
sense 389

(_β_) The position of Art at the present day. Analogous
position of modern artist and dramatist 391

(_γ_) General review of previously evolved process
of Art's typical structure. What is possible for
modern art and the conditions necessary. Illustration
of the terminus of romantic art with the
nature of the Epigram. Supreme function of Art] 394




SECOND PART


EVOLUTION OF THE IDEAL IN THE PARTICULAR TYPES OF FINE ART




THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART


INTRODUCTION


All that has hitherto been the object of our examination in the
first part of this inquiry referred to the reality of the Idea of
the beautiful as Ideal of art. In whatever direction, however, we
developed the notion of the ideal art-product, we throughout applied
to it a meaning of purely general signification. But the idea of the
beautiful implies a totality likewise of essential differences, which
as such must in veritable form assert themselves. These differences we
may broadly describe as the _particular modes_ of art, as the evolved
content of that which is implied in the notion of the Ideal, and which
secures actual form through art. When, however, we speak of these
forms of art as of distinct species or grades[1] of the Ideal, we do
not accept the term in the ordinary usage of it as though we found
here in external guise particular classes of objects related to and
modifying the Ideal respectively as their common genus. Species in the
sense used here simply expresses the various and continuously expanding
determination of the idea of the beautiful and the Ideal of art itself.
The universality of the ideal representation is in the case posited not
determined on the side of external existence, but is assumed to be the
closer determination of itself in the explication of its own notion;
or, in other words, it is the notion itself which unfolds itself in a
totality of particular types of art.

More closely regarded, then, the specific types of art have their
origin, as the unfolded realization of the Idea of the beautiful, in
the very nature of the Idea itself, which by means of them presses
forward to real and concrete appearance. Moreover, just in so far as it
ceases to expand[2] in the abstract determination or concrete fulness
of any one of them, it manifests itself in some other form of realized
expression. For the Idea is only Idea in its essential truth in so far
as it proceeds in this self-evolution by means of its own activity.
And inasmuch as it is, as Ideal, immediate appearance, and moreover
with each mode thereof is still identical as the idea of the beautiful,
we find that in every particular phase which reveals the Ideal in its
process of self-explication we have another actual manifestation which
is immediately related to the essential characterization of those
diverse types of yet further expansion. It really is a matter of no
consequence whether we regard this process as a process of the Idea
within its own substance, or that of the form under which it attains
determinate existence, inasmuch as both aspects are immediately bound
up with each other, and the perfecting of the Idea as content, and the
perfecting of its form are but two ways of expressing the same process.
Or, to put the matter in the reverse way, the defects of a given form
of art of this kind betray themselves as a defect of the Idea, in so
far as such defects give a limited significance to the essential nature
of the Idea in external form, and as such invest it with reality.
When we consequently compare such still inadequate forms of art with
what most obviously presents itself for comparison, that is, the true
Ideal, we must be careful not to use expressions commonly applicable to
works of art that are failures, which either express nothing at all,
or have discovered an incompetence to express what ought to have been
expressed. Rather for every form of the Idea there is a definite mode
of appearance, which clothes it precisely in one of those particular
forms of art to which we have adverted, adequate in every respect
thereto, and the defective or perfected character of which consists
entirely in the relative truth or untruth of the determinate form,
under which and through which the Idea is actually realized. For the
content must first be clothed with reality and concreteness before it
can attain to the form wholly adequate to its essential truth. As we
have already indicated in the previous division of our subject-matter,
we have three fundamental forms or types of art to examine.

_First_, we have the _symbolical._ In this the Idea is still seeking
for its true artistic expression, because it is here still essentially
abstract and undetermined, and consequently has not mastered for itself
the external appearance adequate to its own substance, but rather finds
itself in unresolved opposition to the external objects in physical
Nature and the world of mankind. And inasmuch as in this crude relation
to objective existence it immediately surmises its own isolation, or
is carried into some form of concrete existence by means, of universal
characteristics which are void of all true definition, it vitiates and
falsifies the actual forms of reality which it has found, and which
it seizes in a wholly capricious way[3]. And, consequently, instead
of being able to identify itself completely with the object, it can
only assert a kind of accord, or rather a still abstract reflection of
significance and figure, a mode of representation which, being neither
complete in its artistic fusion, nor capable of being completed,
suffers the object to emerge as reciprocally external, strange, and
inadequate to itself as it was before.

_Secondly_, we have the form in which the Idea, here in accordance
with its true notional activity, is carried beyond the abstraction and
indeterminacy of general characterization[4], is conscious of itself
as free and infinite subjectivity, and grasps that self-conscious life
in its real existence as Spirit (Mind). Spirit, as the free subject of
consciousness, is self-determined through its own resources, and even
in this its conscious grasp of self-determination possesses a form of
externality adequate to express it, and one in which the essential
import of that consciousness can be united with an explicit reality
entirely appropriate. This second type of art, the _classical_, is
based upon such absolutely homogeneous unity of content and form. In
order, however, to make this unity complete the human spirit, in so
far as it makes itself the object of art, must not be taken as Spirit
in the absolute significance we refer to it, where it discovers its
adequate subsistence wholly in the _spiritual_ resources of its own
essential domain, but rather as a still _individualized_ spirit, and as
such charged with a certain aspect of isolation. In other words, the
free individual which classical art unites to its forms appears, it is
true, as essentially universal, and consequently freed from all the
mere contingence and particularity both of the subjective world of mind
and the external world of Nature. But it is at the same time permeated
by a universality which is itself essentially individualized. For the
external form is necessarily both defined and singular by virtue of
its externality, which it is only capable of completely fusing with an
artistic content by representing that content as itself defined, and
consequently of a limited character; and, moreover, it is only Spirit
that is thus particularized which can pass into an objective shape and
unite itself with the same in an inseparable unity.

In this form Art has reached the fulness of its own notion to this
extent, namely, that the Idea, which is here spiritual individuality,
brought into immediate accord with itself in the form of its bodily
presence, receives from it a presentation so complete, that external
existence is no longer able to preserve its consistency as against the
ideal significance which it serves to express; or, to put it in the
reverse way, the spiritual content is exclusively manifested in the
elaborated form within which Art clothes it for sensuous perception,
and thereby affirmatively asserts itself in the same.

_Thirdly_, we have the form in which the Idea of beauty grasps its
own being as _absolute_ Spirit, Spirit, that is to say, in the full
consciousness of its untrammelled freedom. But for this very reason
it is unable any more to obtain complete realization in forms which
are external; its true determinate existence is now that which it
possesses in itself as Spirit. That unity of the life of Spirit and
its external appearance which we find in classical art is unbound,
and it flees from the same once more into itself. It is this recoil
which presents to us the fundamental type of the _romantic_ type of
art. Here we find, by reason of the free spirituality which pervades
the content, such content makes a more ideal demand upon expression
than the mere representation through an external or physical medium
is able to supply; the form on its external side sinks therefore to
a relation of _indifference_; and in the romantic form of art we
consequently meet with a separation between content and form as we
previously found it in the symbolic form, with this difference that
it is now due to the subordination of matter to spiritual expression
rather than the predominance of externality over ideal significance.
It is in this way that symbolic art _seeks_ after that perfected unity
of ideal significance and external form, which classical art in its
representation of substantive individuality succeeds in _communicating_
to sensuous perception, and which romantic art _passes over and beyond_
through its overwhelming insistence on the claims of Spirit.

[Footnote 1: _Art._ Hegel takes the ordinary scientific sense to
describe the meaning. The word "type" would more truly express it.]

[Footnote 2: _Für sich selber ist._ That is, having arrived at one form
of determination, returns upon itself and throws off another form, just
as the plant germ after arriving at the leaf expands into the bud, and
so on.]

[Footnote 3: That is, with no reference to intelligent principle.]

[Footnote 4: _Allgemeiner Gedanken._ Hegel means the bare
generalizations or abstract conceptions of thought.]




SUBSECTION I

THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

OF THE SYMBOL GENERALLY

Symbol, in the signification we here attach to the word, is not
merely the beginning of art from the point of view of its notional
development, but marks also its first appearance in history. We
may consequently regard it as only the forecourt of art, which is
principally the possession of the East, and through which, after a
variety of transitional steps and mediating passages, we are at last
introduced to the genuine realization of the Ideal in the classical
type of art. We must therefore from the very first take care to
distinguish symbol where its unique characteristics provide it with an
independent sphere of its own, in which it determines the radical and
effective type of a certain form of art's exposition and presentment
from that kind of symbolic expression which amounts to no more than
a purely external aspect of form entirely without such independent
significance. In the latter sense we, in fact, come across it in
the classical and romantic forms of art just as certain aspects of
symbolical art are not wholly without the characteristic features
of the classical Ideal, or present to us the origins of romantic
art. Such reciprocal interplay between the fundamental forms of art
attaches, however, merely to subsidiary images or isolated traits; it
has no power whatever to modify, still less to expunge, the animating
principle which essentially determines the character of the entire work
of art.

In such cases where we find symbol elaborated in its entirely unique
and independent form it is as a general rule characterized by the
quality of the _sublime_, because its main impression is to show us the
Idea still united to measureless dimension rather than rounded in a
free and self-defined content; it would fain clothe itself with form,
and yet is unable to secure in the substantial appearances of the world
a definite form which is entirely adequate to express the abstractness
and universality of its longing. On account of this inability to attain
its purpose the Idea passes over and beyond the external existence
which surrounds it instead of penetrating to the core or completely
making its home therein. And this flight beyond the limits of the
finite and visible world is precisely that which constitutes the
general character of the sublime.

But before we proceed further it will be convenient, by way of
elucidating the formal aspect of our subject, to explain at once, if in
quite general terms, what we understand by the expression symbol.

Generally speaking, symbol is some form of external existence
immediately presented to the senses, which, however, is not accepted
for its own worth, as it lies thus before us in its immediacy, but
for the wider and more general significance which it offers to our
reflection. We may consequently distinguish between two points of
view equally applicable to the term; first, the _significance_, and,
secondly, the mode in which such significance is _expressed_. The
_first_ is a conception of the mind, or an object which stands wholly
indifferent to any particular content, the _latter_ is a form of
sensuous existence or a representation of some kind or other.

1. Symbol, then, is in the first place a _sign._ When we speak of the
significant and nothing more there is no necessary connection between
the thing signified and its _modus_ of expression whatever. This
manner of its expression, this sensuous thing or image, so far from
being immediately called up by that for which it is the sign, rather
presents itself to the imagination as a wholly foreign content to it,
by no means necessarily associated with it in a unique way. So, for
example, in language tones are signs of specific conditions of idea
or emotion. By far the greater number of the tones of any language
are, however, associated with the ideas, which are thereby expressed
entirely by chance, so far as the content of those ideas is concerned,
even though the history of the development of language may show us that
the original connection between the two was of a different nature, and
that an essential element in the difference between one language and
another consists in this, that the same idea is expressed through a
different sound. Another example of such bare signs are colours[5],
which we used in cockades or flags in order to express the nationality
of an individual or vessel. Such colours by themselves alone carry
no particular quality which can be immediately related to the thing
they signify, that is, the nation which they represent. In a sense
such as this, where the bond between the signification and the sign is
one of _indifference_, symbol must not be understood when we connect
the expression with art. For art consists precisely in the reciprocal
relation, affinity, and substantive fusion of significance and form.

2. We must consequently interpret sign in a different sense when we
speak of it as equivalent to symbol. The lion is, for example, a symbol
of magnanimity, the fox symbolizes cunning, the circle eternity,
the triangle the Triune God. Here we find that the lion and the fox
themselves possess the qualities whose import they serve to express. In
the same way the circle points beyond the mere indefinite extension, or
the capriciously fixed limit of a straight line, or any other line that
does not return upon itself, and which at the same time is suitable as
the expression of a definite period of time; and the triangle regarded
as a _totality_ possesses the same number of sides and angles as is
involved in the idea of God, when the determinations under which
the religious consciousness defines the Supreme Being are expressed
numerically.

In the latter forms of symbol therefore the objects presented to the
senses have already in their own existence that significance, to
represent and express which they are used; symbol as employed in this
expanded sense is consequently no purely indifferent mark for something
other than itself, but a significant fact which in its own external
form already presents the content of the idea which it symbolizes.
At the same time it is not the concrete thing it is itself, which it
should bring before the imagination, but simply that general quality of
significance which attaches to it.

3. We would, thirdly, draw attention to the fact that although symbol
may not, as is the case with the purely external and formal sign, be
wholly inadequate to the significance derived from it, yet, in order
that it may retain its character as symbol, it must on the other hand
present an aspect which is strange to it. In other words, though the
content which is significant, and the form which is used to typify
it in respect to a _single_ quality, unite in agreement, none the
less the symbolical form must possess at the same time still _other_
qualities entirely independent of that _one_ which is shared by it,
and is once for all marked as significant, just as the content[6]
need not necessarily be a bare abstract quality such as strength or
cunning, but rather a concrete substance, which on its side, too,
possesses a variety of characteristics which distinguish it from the
primary quality in which its symbolic character consists, and in the
same way, but to a still greater degree, from everything else that
characterizes the symbolical form. The lion, for example, possesses
other qualities than mere strength, the fox than mere cunning, and
the apprehension of God is not necessarily bound up with conceptions
which imply number. The content, therefore, as thus viewed, is also
placed in a relation of _indifference_ to the symbolical form, which
represents it, and the abstract quality which it typifies may quite
possibly be present in countless other existing objects. In the same
way a content which is thus varied in its composition may possess
many qualities, to symbolize any of which other forms will equally
serve where a similar correspondence with such is apparent. The same
reasoning is also applicable to the external object in which any
particular content[7] is symbolically expressed. Such an object, in
its concrete natural existence, possesses a number of characteristics
for all of which it may stand as the symbol. The most obvious symbol
for strength is unquestionably the lion, but the ox and the horn of
the ox may equally serve as such, and from other points of view the ox
possesses many other qualities as significant. But few objects, if any,
have been brought home to the imagination with such a prodigal wealth
of symbolic form and imagery as that of the Supreme Being. We may
conclude, then, from the above remarks that the use of the term symbol
is necessarily[8] and essentially open to _ambiguity._

(_a_) For, in the first place, no sooner do we look for some symbol
than the doubt almost invariably arises whether a _particular form is
to be accepted as a symbol or no_; and this is so, though we set on one
side the further ambiguity with reference to the _particular_ nature of
the content, which a given form under all the _variety_ of its aspects
may be held to symbolize, many of which may be employed symbolically
through associating links that do not appear on the surface[9].

Now what a symbol primarily offers us is generally speaking a form, an
image, which of itself is the presentment of an immediate fact. Such
immediate existence, or its image, a lion for example, an eagle, or a
particular colour, stands there before us as it is, a valid existing
fact. The question consequently arises whether a lion, whose image is
set before us, merely is set there to express the natural fact, or
whether in addition to this it carries a further significance, that is
the more abstract connotation of mere strength, or the more concrete
one of a hero or a period of the year, husbandry and anything else we
choose to infer from it; whether in fact, as we say, the image is to be
taken literally, or with a further ideal significance, or possibly only
with the latter. The last case finds its illustration in symbolical
expressions of speech and particular words such as comprehension,
conclusion[10] and others of the same kind. When such signify mental
activities we have simply set before us the immediate import of a
mental activity and no more without any recall to our memory of the
material acts, which originally were implied in the meaning of these
words. When on the contrary the picture of a lion is presented us we
have not merely the significance to consider which it may bear as
symbol, but also the bodily shape and presence of the king of beasts
before our eyes. An ambiguity of this nature can only fully disappear
when the sense attached to both aspects, namely, symbolical import, and
its external form, is expressly stated, and we learn by this means the
exact relation which exists between them. In that case, however, the
concrete fact which is set before us ceases to be a symbol in the real
meaning of the term, and becomes simply an image, the relation of which
to significance is expressed by the well-known form of comparison,
namely, _simile._ In the simile, that is to say, both factors are
immediately presented to us, the general conception and its concrete
image. When on the contrary reflection has not proceeded so far as to
hold general conceptions in assured independence, and consequently to
set them forth by themselves, in that case we find that the sensuous
image to which they are cognate, and in which a significance of more
general[11] import is able to find its expression is not yet conceived
as separate from such a significance, but both are still immediately
held together in unity. And this it is which, as we shall see more
closely as we proceed, constitutes the distinction between symbol
and comparison. An illustration of the latter kind may be found in
that exclamation of Karl Moor, as he gazes on the setting sun: "Thus
dies a hero!" Here we see that the ideal significance is expressly
separated from the sensuous impression while at the same time it is
associated with the picture. In other cases, it is true even of similes
this act of separation in relation is not so clearly marked, and the
association appears to be more immediate; in such cases it must already
appear manifest from the general content of the narrative, from the
position assigned to the picture, or other circumstances, that viewed
as merely a statement of fact, such an image is not justified, but that
some special significance or other, which cannot fail to arrest our
attention, is intended by it. When, for example, Luther says:

/$
               A steadfast stronghold is our God.
$/

or we read:

/$
     In den Ocean schifft mit tausend Masten der Jungling,
       Still auf geretteten Boot treibt in den Hafen der Greis[12].
$/

we can have no doubt whatever upon the implied significance, whether
it be of a protection suggested by "stronghold," the world of hopes
and life-plans symbolized in the picture of the ocean and the thousand
masts; or the narrowed aims and possessions with the assured plot of
ground at the end, which is reflected from the boat and the haven. In
the same way when we read in the Old Testament: "May God break their
teeth in their mouth, may the Lord shatter the hindermost teeth of the
young lions," it is obvious that neither the words "mouth," "teeth,"
nor "hindermost teeth of the young lions" are used in the literal
sense, but are utilized as images and sensuous ideas, which carry a
significance only present to the mind, and that such _significance_ is
all that matters.

This ambiguity, then, is all the more conspicuous in the case of
symbolical representation for the reason that an image, which carries
a particular significance, only receives the descriptive name of
_symbol_ when such significance ceases to be expressly marked by
itself, or is otherwise clearly emphasized as it is in the case of the
simile. No doubt the ambiguity of the genuine symbol is to this extent
removed in that by virtue of this very uncertainty the fusion of the
sensuous image and its significance becomes a matter more or less of
convention and custom, a feature which is indispensably necessary in
the case where mere signs are used, while on the other hand the simile
asserts itself as something individual, discovered on the spur of the
moment to assist the meaning, and is independently clear, because it
emphasizes the significance alongside of that independence. At the same
time, though no doubt the symbol may be clear enough to those who are
habituated to its use, and whose imaginative life is at home in such
a conventional atmosphere, it is a very different matter with all who
are outside this native circle, or for whom it is now a thing of the
Past; for such it is only the immediate sensuous representation which
is in the first instance seized, and it remains for these in every way
a question of doubt, whether they are to rest satisfied with that which
lies openly before their eyes, or are to accept these as indicators to
yet further imagery or ideas. When, for example, we gaze in Christian
churches upon the _triangle_ in some conspicuous position on the walls,
we at once recognize that the intention is not to place before the
view this geometrical figure simply as such, but rather to draw our
attention to its spiritual significance. If, however, we were to find
it elsewhere we should probably feel equally certain that such a figure
had no reference whatever, either as sign or symbol, to the Trinity.
On the other hand a folk strange to the ideas which have grown up in
Christian countries might easily feel doubts in both cases, and it is
by no means easy for ourselves to determine with equal certainty in all
cases, whether a figure of this kind is to be understood as presenting
us with its literal or symbolical interpretation.

(_b_) Moreover this ambiguity does not merely apply to isolated
cases, but extends to vast areas of the entire domain of art, to the
content of an almost unlimited material open to our inspection, to the
content in full of all that Oriental art has ever produced. For this
reason, as we enter for the first time the world of ancient Persian,
Indian, or Egyptian figures and imaginative conceptions we experience
a certain feeling of uncanniness, we wander at any rate in a world
of _problems._ These fantastic images do not at once respond to our
own world; we are neither pleased nor satisfied with the immediate
impression they produce on us; rather we are instinctively carried
forward by it to probe yet further into their significance, and to
inquire what wider and profounder truths may lie concealed behind such
representations. In other productions of the same kind it is apparent
at the first glance that they are, just like so many fairy tales of
children, merely an interplay of pictorial fancy, a strange texture of
curiosities woven together at haphazard. For children delight in just
such an even surface of pictures, a play of the fancy which makes no
demand on effort or intelligence, but is simply a collection tumbled
together. Nations on the contrary, even in their childhood, require as
the food of their imaginative life a more essential content; and this
is just what in fact we find in the figures of Indian and Egyptian art,
although the interpretation of such problematical pictures is only
dimly suggested, and we experience great difficulty in deciphering it.

Even in the province of classical art we meet now and again with a like
uncertainty, though it is the essence of classical art to be throughout
clear and intelligible on its own surface without the use of symbolism
of any kind. And this clarity of classical art consists in this that
it comprehends the true content of Art, in other words substantive[13]
subjectivity, and thereby discovers at the same time the true form,
which essentially expresses nothing less than this genuine content,
so that what it appears to mind, the significance that is of it is
just that, which is veritably expressed in the external form, both the
ideal aspect and the plastic shape being entirely adequate to each
other; in symbolical art, the simile, and other forms of that kind,
the image always brings before perception something in addition to
that significance, for which it merely serves as the picture. At the
same time classical art, too, presents us with an aspect of ambiguity.
In considering the mythological phantasies of antique art it is
frequently a matter most difficult to decide, whether we do rightly
in taking such plastic figures simply for what they are, contenting
ourselves with mere wonder over the wealth and charm, which this happy
play of imaginative vigour offers us, for the reason of course that
mythology is generally accepted as nothing but an idle collection
of fairy tales, or whether on the contrary we have still to seek for
a significance of wider range and greater depth. We shall feel the
insistence of such a doubt in exceptional force where the content of
these fables refers directly to the life and activity of the Divine,
in cases, that is, where the stories handed down to us can only be
regarded as utterly unworthy of the Supreme Being, indicative of an
invention as entirely inadequate as it is in the worst possible taste.
When we read, for example, the twelve labours of Hercules, or, to take
a stronger case, are informed that Zeus hurled Hephaestus from Olympus
on to the island of Lemnos, with the result that Vulcan remained lame
ever after, we are no doubt ready to believe that the entire story is
nothing but a fairy tale of the imagination. It is just as possible to
believe that all the love affairs of Zeus are mere freaks of a prodigal
fancy. But, on the other hand, for the very reason that such stories
are told about the Supreme Divinity, it is quite equally credible that
meaning of more universal import is hidden under that which such myths
immediately transmit to us.

With regard to such facts as those above stated, there are two
theories current of exceptional importance and contradictory to each
other. The one accepts mythology as a collection of stories of purely
external significance, which as such could not fail to be unworthy
presentations of the Divine nature, though able, when regarded
apart from such associations, to reveal to us much that is finely
conceived, delightful, interesting, nay, even of great beauty. They
offer us, however, no ground whatever for attempting to enlarge their
significance. In this view mythology is in the form in which it is
presented purely _historical_: under one aspect, that is, treating it
as art, in its shapes, pictures, gods, together with all the practical
activities and events it describes, it is amply self-sufficient,
or rather by the way it brings before us that which is significant
supplies its own elucidation; from another point of view, that is to
say, its origin in history, we have to regard it as built up from
local claims, no less than the chance caprice of priest, artist, and
poet, the facts of history, foreign legends and traditions. The theory
which is _opposed_ to the above is unable to rest satisfied with the
purely external husk of mythological form and narration, and insists
on discovering beneath it a meaning of more universal and profounder
import, to master which, as it breaks upon the surface, it conceives to
be the main object of mythological inquiry regarded as the scientific
examination of the mythos. In this view mythology must necessarily be
apprehended as bound up with _symbolism._ And by symbolism all that is
meant here is just this, that however bizarre, ridiculous, grotesque
such myths appear to be, however much the adventitious caprice of a
plastic imagination may contribute to their form, they are essentially
a birth of Spirit; and in spite of it all contain in them significant
ideas, that is, thoughts of universal significance upon the nature of
God; they are, in short, _Philosophemes._[14] In this latter sense
the recent work of Creuzer on symbolism is particularly noteworthy;
this writer has once more taken up the review of the mythological
conceptions of the ancient world, not, as is so frequently the fashion,
from the external and prosaic standpoint, or simply with the object of
determining this artistic merit, but rather expressly to elucidate the
intrinsic rationality of their substance. Such an inquiry proceeds from
the presupposition that myths and fabulous tales have their origin in
the human spirit, which is capable, no doubt, of playing freely with
its notions of gods, but in its religious interest marks the point
where it enters a more exalted sphere, in which reason itself is the
discoverer of form, albeit it is charged with the defect of being
unable at this early stage to exhibit the core from which it grows with
commensurate power. And this assumption is essentially just. Religion
discovers its fountain-head in Spirit, which seeks after its truth,
dimly discovers it, bringing the same to consciousness by means of
any form, which displays an affinity with this form of truth, be it a
form of narrower or wider borders. But once grant that it is reason
which seeks after such forms, and the necessity is obvious to recognize
the work of reason. Such a recognition is alone truly worthy of human
inquiry. Whoever shelves this problem makes himself master of nothing
but a motley show of unrelated learning. If we, on the other hand,
probe into, the truth of mythological conceptions as it presents itself
to mind, without at the same time excluding from our grasp that other
aspect of them, that is, the haphazard caprice therein exercised by
the imagination, and all the external influences, local or otherwise,
which have contributed to this creation, we shall then be in a position
to justify the various systems of mythology. To justify the work of
man in the imagery and forms that are the product of his spirit is
a noble enterprise, of rarer worth than the mere heaping together
of the external facts of history. The objection has no doubt been
pressed against Creuzer that here, treading in the steps of the new
Platonists[15], the wider significance he elucidates from the myths is
a creation he attaches to them himself; that, in short, he discovers
conceptions in them which are not merely without any historical basis
to uphold them, but which it can be positively shown he must have
first introduced before he could have found them; in other words it
is asserted that neither the people of such times nor the poets or
priests--although from another point of view emphasis is frequently
laid on the occult wisdom of the priesthood--could have possessed any
knowledge of such ideas, which would have been wholly incompatible
with the prevailing culture. Such objections, of course, are entitled
to their full weight. These peoples, poets, and priests have not, in
fact, been conscious of universal conceptions in the particular form of
universality which the human mind now discovers at the root of their
mythological ideas, in the sense that they could have deliberately
clothed such conceptions in the forms of symbolism. And as a matter
of fact this is never maintained even by Creuzer. But however true it
may be that the reflections of the ancient world over its mythology
were entirely different from those of the modern, we are by no means
therefore entitled to conclude that the conceptions of its mythology
are not essentially symbolical, and as such must be fully accepted;
rather our inference should be that in the times when these peoples
created the poetry of their myths, from the midst of a life itself
steeped in poetry, they would instinctively bring home to consciousness
all that was most spiritual and profound in that life in the forms of
the imagination rather than that of reflection, and fail to separate
conceptions which were more universal or abstract from the concrete
creations of their phantasy. That this really was the case is a fact
which we have in this inquiry to accept as fundamentally established;
we may, nevertheless, be equally prepared to admit that, in such a form
of interpretation as the symbolical, theories are apt to slip in which
are merely the product of artifice and ingenuity, much as is the case
with etymological science.

(_c_) At the same time, however much we may find ourselves in general
agreement with the view that mythology, with its tales of the gods
and its circumstantial pictures of a persistently poetic imagination,
includes within its borders a content, that is to say rational and
profound religious conceptions, it is still open to us to ask in our
examination of the symbolical form of art whether for the same reason
all mythology and art is to be interpreted in a _symbolical sense_, in
accordance with that typical assertion of Friedrich von Schlegel, to
the effect that we are bound to look for an allegory in every artistic
representation. The symbolical or allegorical is then understood in the
sense that a general conception[16] is assumed to underlie every work
of art as its motive principle and every mythological form, by bringing
the universal character of which into prominence it should then be
possible to expound the real significance of such a work or imaginative
creation. This mode of treatment is, moreover, very commonly adopted
in our own days. We find, for instance, in the more recent editions
of Dante a marked tendency to interpret every canto in an exclusively
allegorical sense, and no doubt the poetry of Dante contains many
examples of such allegories. In the same way Heyne's editions of the
classical poets evince the same disposition in their commentaries to
elucidate the general significance of every metaphorical expression by
means of the abstract conceptions of the understanding. Nor is this to
be wondered at; for it is just this faculty which is most ready to
seize upon symbol and allegory, while at the same time it separates
the sensuous image from its significance, and by so doing destroys the
unity of the artistic form, an aspect over which it is, in its zeal
for a symbolical interpretation, which aims exclusively at setting the
universal characteristic as such in relief, wholly indifferent.

Such an extension of symbolism over every province of mythology and art
is by no means that which we have in view in our present consideration
of the symbolical form of art. It is not any part of our labours to
ascertain to what extent a symbolical or allegorical significance, in
this enlarged use of the term, is applicable to the forms of art. On
the contrary we shall restrict ourselves entirely to the question how
far symbolism itself is entitled to rank as a form of art; and the
question is raised in order that we may finally determine the precise
relation which subsists between artistic significance and artistic
form in so far as such a relation is symbolical and stands in contrast
to other modes of artistic presentation, in particular those of the
classical and romantic art-forms. We must consequently endeavour before
everything else expressly to limit the field of our review to that
portion where we find the symbolical is independently portrayed in its
essential character and is open to our consideration as such, rather
than attempt to make a symbolical interpretation co-extensive with
the entire domain of art. And it is consistently with such a purpose
that we have already subdivided the Ideal of art under its respective
symbolical, classical, and romantic forms.

In the signification we give to the expression the symbolical
disappears at the point where we find that a free subjectivity rather
than purely abstract conceptions determines the content of the artistic
product. In this case the conscious subject is his own self-assured
significance, his own self-manifestation. All that he feels, conceives,
does, and perfects, his qualities, his actions, and his character,
all this he actually is himself; the entire gamut of his spiritual
and sensuous manifestation has no further significance than that of
declaring his subjective unity, which, in this process of expansion
and development of its own wealth, brings before the eyes of all the
man himself as master over the entire field of objective reality
thus presented to him, the world in which he discovers his existence.
Significance and sensuous presentment, inward and outward reality,
fact and picture, are here no longer separate from each other, assert
themselves here no longer as merely cognate, the characteristic
distinction of the symbolic relation, but rather as a totality, in
which the manifestation possesses no other reality, the reality no
other manifestation either outside of or alongside with itself. That
which declares itself and that which is declared is here posited[17] in
its concrete unity. In this sense the gods of Greece, in so far, that
is to say, as the art of Greece was able to represent them as free,
self-subsistent, and unique types of personality, are to be accepted
from no symbolical point of view, but as self-sufficient in their own
persons. The actions of Zeus, for example, of Apollo or Athene are
actions appropriated by Art to themselves and only themselves, and must
not be allowed to stand for anything but the might and passion of such
personages. If we once attempt to abstract from free individualities
of this kind some general conception as the essential core of their
significance, setting it alongside their concrete particularity as
an interpretation of their entire and individual manifestation, we
let fall or annihilate all that we have failed to observe, and it is
precisely all in these figures which art seeks most to secure. For
this reason artists have been unable to take kindly to such symbolical
interpretations of all works of art and the mythological figures we
find in them. For all that is left us in the sphere of art we have just
been considering which is really compatible with an interpretation
based on symbolism or allegory only affects subsidiary aspects,
and is for that reason expressly limited to the attribute and the
representative signs; the eagle, for example, stands by Zeus, an ox is
the companion of the evangelist Luke; the Egyptians, on the contrary,
beheld in the form of Apis the Divine itself.

The point so difficult to decide in connection with this manifestation
of self-conscious freedom, otherwise so appropriate to artistic
presentment, is just this, whether that which is placed before us as
such a subject really possesses a subjective individuality of the
above quality, or only carries the mere semblance of it in the form of
a _personified_ shadow[18]. In this latter case personality is nothing
but a superficial form, which fails to express its vital substance in
particular acts no less than bodily form, which would otherwise enable
it to penetrate through all that is external in its appearance as its
own possession, and instead of this still retains another inwardness
for the external reality as its significance, which is not either true
personality or subjective freedom. It is precisely at this point that
we find the boundary which includes or excludes symbolic art.

Our interest, then, in the consideration of the symbol consists in
this, that we recognize thereby that process within itself where we
find the beginnings of art, in so far as the same proceeds from the
notion of that Ideal which unfolds itself gradually as art in its
truth, and while doing so recognizes each stage of symbolical art as
successive steps which conduct us to the same consummation. However
intimate the connection between religion and art may be we are not here
concerned to pass in review either symbols or religion under the range
which is co-extensive with the wider signification of the word symbol
or emblematical conceptions; we have exclusively to consider that
aspect of them, according to which they belong to art in its own right,
handing over their religious aspect to the historian of mythology and
symbolism.




DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT


In proceeding now to a closer determination of the several divisions
of symbolic art it will be necessary, in the first place, to fix the
boundary lines within which the development of the successive grades
of this type moves forward. Speaking generally, as we have already
observed, the entire sphere we have now to define is in principle a
_forecourt_ of art. We have here, in the first instance, significant
conceptions which are purely abstract, which are still in themselves
destitute of essential individuality, the immediate artistic
presentment of which may be as truly described either as adequate or
inadequate[19]. Our first definition of boundary consists, therefore,
in determining generally the earliest modes under which artistic
perception and representation work themselves out[20] into actuality;
on the further side of the line at the other extreme we have real art,
in the direction of which symbolic art uplifts itself as to its truth.

1. In discussing the origins of this appearance of symbolic art from
the _subjective_ point of view, we may draw attention to an observation
made previously, that the artistic consciousness, no less than the
religious, or rather we should say both in their essential unity, and
we may even include the impulse of scientific inquiry, have originated
in _wonder._ The man who is still unable to wonder at anything lives
in a condition of crassness and obtuseness which is devoid of all
interest, in which for him everything is as naught for the reason that
he fails as yet to separate or unravel himself from objects around him
and their own immediate and independent existence. The man, however,
at the opposite extreme, whose wonder is _no longer_ excited, is the
man who contemplates the entire external world as somewhat which he
has made himself clear about. It may be under the abstract conceptions
of the commonsense understanding resulting in some general survey of
knowledge attainable by the average mind, or it may be in the noble
or profounder consciousness of his own absolute spiritual freedom and
universality. In either case he has converted the bare fact of such
objects and their existence into some spiritual insight of their truth
brought home to himself. We may conclude, then, that wonder originates
in the condition where we find that man, as conscious Spirit, torn away
from his first most immediate association with Nature, and from his
earliest and entirely active[21] relation to desire, steps back from
Nature and his own individual existence, and seeks after and finds in
the objects which surround him a universal, an essential and permanent
principle. Then for the first time the facts of Nature astonish him,
they become for him an other-than-himself he would fain appropriate,
and within which he strives to rediscover his own substance, that is
the universal, thoughts, reason. For the dim foretaste here of a higher
and the consciousness of the external are still unsevered, and this
though a contradiction between the objects of Nature and the Spirit
which perceives them is already present, a contradiction in which these
objects appear to repel him quite as much as they attract, and the
feeling of which, in the force wherewith they thrust him away, is, in
fact, the birth-pang of his very wonder.

The earliest result of this condition of wonder in man's vision of
Nature is that on the one hand he sets himself in opposition to
Nature and her objective world as a principle[22], and adores her
as Power; on the other he is equally possessed with a desire, which
craves satisfaction, to render objective to himself his intuition of
a higher, essential, and universal somewhat, and to look upon its
rehabilitated presence. In this two-fold aspect of his conscious life
he is confronted by reality in the following way. The particular
objects of Nature, and above all those elementary facts, sea,
rivers, mountains, and constellations, are not received by him in the
singularity of their immediate presentment to sense, but, carried up
into the sphere of imaginative conception, assume for that faculty the
form of universal and essentially self-subsistent existence. And we may
trace the beginning of art in this, that it reflects these ideas of the
imagination thus universalized and essentially independent, in visible
representation for immediate perception, and sets them forth for mind
in the individual form of the same as objects. The mere adoration of
external facts, with its Nature-cult and fetish-cult, is not as yet on
this account an art of any kind.

Under the aspect in which it is related to the _objective_ world,
the beginnings of art are more intimately associated with religion.
The earliest works of art are of the mythological order. In religion
it is nothing less than the Absolute, which breaks to consciousness
through its own impulse[23], though the determinating factors of
that consciousness be the most abstract and jejune conceivable.
And the earliest _phase in this evolution_ of the Absolute is the
phenomenal presence of Nature, in whose existence man dimly forebodes
the Absolute, and envisages the same for himself in the semblance of
natural objects. In this striving Art discovers its source. We shall
find, however, in this very effort art first made visible, not so
much where the Absolute is descried by human eyes in the external
world which immediately confronts them, a mode of Divine reality in
which they rest content, but rather where man's consciousness evolves
from its own substance a mode of apprehending what it conceives as
the Absolute in the form of a self-subsistent externality, no less
than that objective presentation which he unites with it in more or
less adequate fashion. For we must remember that Art possesses a
substantial content which is grasped by mind (spirit), and which, it
is true, appears in external guise, but for all that in a form of
externality, which is not merely immediately visible to sense, but is
primarily the _product_ of _mind_ regarded as the existing fact which
intrinsically comprehends that content as a whole and then expresses
it. Art is consequently and by virtue of its power to create forms
cognate with its own substance the _first_ interpreter of the religious
consciousness; it, in fact, is the first to make the prosaic view of
the objective world a thing valid to itself[24], when our humanity has
fought itself essentially free as the self-consciousness of Spirit
from the immediacy of sense, and sets itself over against the same in
the strength of the same freedom with which it accepts and understands
that objectivity as simply external fact and no more. This complete
separation of the subject and object of sense-perception is, however,
indicative of a considerably later phase of man's spiritual history.
The first knowledge of truth, on the contrary, declares itself as an
intermediate state between the purely unintelligent absorption of the
individual in Nature and that spiritual condition which is entirely
released from it. This intermediate state, however, in which Spirit
merely envisages for itself its conceptions in the plastic forms of
Nature's objects because it still fails to master any form of higher
significance, although it strives through such association to bring the
two aspects of its experience into one homogeneous whole, is, to put
it in its general terms, the attitude of art and poetry as contrasted
with that of the prosaic understanding. And for this reason we find
that the prosaic consciousness declares itself first in its full bloom,
where, as is the case in the Roman and in later times throughout our
own Christian world, the principle of the subjective freedom of Spirit
is realized in its abstract and actually concrete form.

2. And, _secondly_, the final _aim_ toward which the effort of symbolic
art is directed, and with the attainment of which the symbolic type
is dissolved, is _classical art._ But although we find in this latter
form the true manifestation of art's essence first elaborated, it is
not the first type of art. Rather it presupposes within its content
all the various mediating and transitional stages of the symbolic form
itself. It is quite true that the essential aim of that content is to
reveal the notion as a rounded and self-defined totality, that is in
its concreteness and actuality as the individuality of Spirit; but
the notion is only then able to declare itself in such concrete form
to conscious life after it has passed through a variety of mediatory
stages forced upon it by the abstract conceptions which the nature of
its own initial impulse presupposes. It is classical art, however,
which brings to a close all the mere preliminary experiments of art in
the direction of symbolism and the sublime[25]. And it is able to do
this inasmuch as the subjective spirit finds in it, as its essential
possession, a form truly adequate to its substance, and in the same
way that the self-determining notion creates from its own potency
the individual existence that fully expresses it. When once Art has
discovered its true content, and by doing so found its true form, its
search and striving after both, wherein the defect of symbolical art
consists, is therewith at an end.

If we seek further for a closer principle of division of symbolic
art within the limits of the boundaries on either extreme hitherto
discussed, we shall find the same generally under the modes in
accordance with which it contends with the genuine significances of
art and their truly appropriate forms, the battle that is apparent
in a content which is still striving in opposition to the truth of
art, no less than in a form that is equally inadequate to express it.
For both aspects, although externally united in the identity of one
creation, are neither brought completely together themselves, nor
permeated throughout with the notion of art in its truth; and for this
reason they appear quite as much as contestants struggling to be free
from the defects of their union. We may, in short, describe symbolic
art throughout as a continuous war carried on between the comparative
adequacy and inadequacy of its import and form[26]; and the varied
gradations of symbolic art are not so much kinds of specific difference
as they are stages and phases of one and the same incongruity between
the spiritual idea and its sensuous medium.

At first, however, this contention is only potentially present, that
is to say the incompatibility of these two sides, whose union is thus
affirmed and enforced, is not yet openly present to consciousness. And
this is so for the reason that it neither recognizes for itself in its
universal nature the import which it seizes, nor is able to comprehend
the realized form in its self-subsistent and self-exclusive existence;
consequently, instead of representing to the senses both aspects
in their _difference_, it is content to proceed upon the immediate
appearance of _identity_ which it enforces. In this original _point
of departure_ we have before us the as yet inseparable unity of the
art-form and the symbolical expression it seeks after, fermenting,
as it were, beneath the association of contradictory elements in
mysterious guise--the unity, that is, of the real and primordial
symbolism, whose plastic shapes are as yet not _posited_ as symbols at
all.

The _termination_ of this process[27], on the other hand, is the
disappearance and dissolution of the symbolic type altogether. The
strife which has hitherto been merely implied in it is now brought
home to the artistic consciousness. The act of symbolization in
consequence becomes the _conscious severation_ of the transparent
significance, which is now recognized for what it is from the sensuous
image cognate with it. In this severation, however, there still remains
an express relation of reciprocity, which, however, declares itself
as such no longer in the mode of immediate identity, but rather as
a mere _comparison_ between the two, in which that differentiation
and separation which in the previous type was not brought clearly
to consciousness still remains as conspicuous a factor. And this is
the sphere of that symbolism where the symbol is recognized as such.
Here we find the artistic import _recognized_ and presented in its
independent universality, whose concrete embodiment is expressly placed
in subordination as an image of that presentment, and no more, and
as such a comparative medium is utilized for the purpose of artistic
representation.

Halfway between that starting-point above described and this
termination of the symbolic type we find the art of the _sublime._
In this the essential import, posited as the universality of Spirit
in its absolute self-exclusion, disengages itself in the first place
from concrete existence, permitting the same to appear as a mere
negative, external and subservient factor beside it, which it is unable
to leave, in order that it may express itself in it, standing in its
native self-subsistency. Rather it finds it necessary to declare it
as that which is essentially defective and self-dissolving, and this,
moreover, although it has naught beside as means for its expression
than just this to which it opposes itself as external and nugatory. The
splendour of this import of the sublime may be accepted in the order
of the notional process as previous to that of the mode of genuine
comparison for this reason, that the concrete particularity of natural
and any other phenomena must necessarily be treated in the first place
negatively, merely appropriated, that is to say, as the adornment
and embellishment of the unreachable might of Spirit's absolute
significance, before that express severation and discriminating
comparison of external shapes cognate with, and yet at the same time
distinct from, the import, whose image they reproduce, can assert
itself.

3. The three principal stages[28] above indicated break up naturally on
closer inspection into the following subdivisions we now summarize in
the chapters which include them.



FIRST CHAPTER


A. The _first_ stage which presents itself in this portion of
our subject-matter is as yet neither to be described strictly as
symbolical, nor as belonging strictly to art; it rather clears the road
to both. It is the sphere of the immediately cognized and substantive
unity of the Absolute regarded as spiritual significance with its
unsevered sensuous existence in a form presented by Nature.

B. In the _second_ stage we pass to the symbol in its real sense; the
dissolution of the first unity above described here commences, and
while, on the one hand, the significances assert themselves in their
independent universality above the particular phenomena of Nature,
on the other they are necessarily forced with a like insistency to
present themselves to consciousness together with this preconceived
universality in the concrete form of natural objects. In this primary
and twofold struggle to spiritualize Nature, and to present that which
is born of Spirit to sense, at this stage of the conflict between
them, we meet with all the ferment and wild, tossed hither and thither
medley, the entire fantastic and confused world that is to say of
symbolic art, which half surmises, it is true, the incongruity of its
manner of shaping, yet is unable to remedy the same save through the
distortion of its figures, while straining after a purely quantitative
sublimity that would fain devour all limits. In this phase consequently
we find ourselves in a world steeped with poetic phantasies,
incredibilities and miracle, yet fail to encounter one work of genuine
beauty.

C. Owing to this strife between the spiritual significance and its
sensuous presentation, we are conducted _thirdly_ to the stage we
may describe as that of the true symbol, on which the symbolic _work
of art_ for the first time appears in its complete character. The
forms and shapes are here no longer those present to sense, which,
as we saw on the first mentioned stage, were immediately coincident
with the Absolute as their positive existence, without any further
modification at the hands of art; neither, as in the second phase,
are they intent on asserting their unreconciled material against the
universality of the significance merely through extensions of the
quantitative limits of Nature's objects, the ebullitions of a rioting
fancy. Rather the symbolic form, which is here throughout apparent, is
Art's own creation, a work not merely capable of expressing its own
individuality, but from another point of view possessed with the power
of presenting at the same time both the particular object that it is
and the further universal significance with which it is associated, and
which it thereby discloses to the mind, so that these very shapes stand
before us as problems which we are imperatively called upon to unriddle
and probe to the inward charge which they carry.

We may at once further venture the general remark with reference to
these more clearly defined types of a symbolism still to be ranked as
elementary that they spring from the religious attitude to existence
of entire nations; for which reason it will form part of our plan to
recall their position in history. Not that complete identification of
specific types with a given period is wholly feasible. Rather it would
be truer to say that particular modes of conception and presentation,
when we refer them generally to some kind of artistic type, are mingled
up together, so that we find the specific type, which we have reason to
regard as the fundamental one in any particular nation's general view
of existence, exemplified both in earlier and later peoples[29], though
its repetition may only be discovered in subordinate and isolated
cases. In general, however, we may say that we possess the more
concrete manifestations and visible proofs of the first stage in the
ancient _Persian_ religion of the second in the _Indian_, of the third
in that of _Egypt_.

SECOND CHAPTER

In the second chapter that significance, which has hitherto been
more or less obscured by its particular sensuous form, has at last
wrested its way to freedom, and its independent character is brought
clearly to consciousness. With this victory the relation of real
symbolism is dissolved; we have instead, through the way in which the
absolute significance[30] is cognized as the universal _substance_
interpenetrating the entire extension of the visible world, the art of
the absolute essence[31] in the form of a symbolism of the _sublime_;
and this now takes the place of purely symbolical and fantastic
suggestions, deformities, and riddles.

We have here mainly two points of view to distinguish which are based
upon differences in the relation of the substantive essence, that is
the Absolute and Divine, to the finitude of the apparent. Or rather we
may say that this relation is capable of being twofold, both _positive_
and _negative,_ although in both forms, inasmuch as it is in either
case universal substance, which has to appear, it is not the particular
form and import of the objective facts, but their general principle of
animation and their position relatively to this substance which is made
visible to sense.

A. In the first phase or type this relation is so conceived, that
substance, here the All and the One delivered from every form of
particularity, is immanent in the determinate phenomena as the
animating principle which brings them into being and is their life;
and moreover, it is affirmatively and immediately present to the
vision in this immanence, and is comprehended, and made the object of
representation by the individual who surrenders himself to its presence
through the adoring self-absorption in this indwelling essence of the
entire world of contingent and material things. In this point of view
we have the art of the Pantheism which possesses the Sublime as its
inherent principle, an art such as we find it in its elementary stage
in India, then elaborated in all its splendour in Mohammedanism and
its artistic mysticism, and finally with still profounder significance
reappearing in certain manifestations of Christian mysticism.

B. The _negative_ relation on the other hand of true Sublimity we must
look for in _Hebraic_ poetry. In this poetry of the Glorious, which
is only concerned to celebrate and exalt the unimaginable Lord of
the heavens and the earth that it may employ His entire creation as
the passing instrument of His Power, as the messengers of His Glory,
as the delight and ornament of His Greatness, this service of His
Creation, be it never so magnificent[32], is deliberately posited as
negative, and this for the reason that it is unable to discover any
adequate or positively sufficient expression for the Power and Dominion
of the Highest, and is only able to attain a genuine satisfaction by
means of the subjection of the creature, which in the feeling and
admission of its unworthiness is alone able with adequacy to express
its insignificance[33].

THIRD CHAPTER

Through this independent self-assertion of significance, made
thus transparent to consciousness in its isolated simplicity,
the _severation_ of the same from the imaged appearance, whose
incommensurability over against it has already been accepted, is now
essentially complete; and albeit, along with the fact of this conscious
separation, both form and import may still persist in the relation
of an intimate affinity, a necessity which is implied in the fact
of their being symbolical art, yet this relation no longer attaches
to either import or form, but is placed now in a _third_ mode of
conception, which according to its own point of view, carries relations
of similarity with both these sides[34], and in reliance on these
relations makes visible and declares the independently transparent
significance by means of the cognate and particular image.

Owing to this change the image, instead of remaining as it was
previously the unique expression of the Absolute, becomes now merely an
ornament, and we thereby discover a relation which ceases to correspond
with the notion of beauty. In other words image and significance,
instead of being moulded one within the other, confront each other as
opposites, precisely, in fact, as was the case in genuine symbolism,
though then the process remained incomplete. Consequently works of
art which are based on this form are of subordinate rank, and their
content is unable to comprise the Absolute itself, and is necessarily
restricted to circumstances and occurrences of narrower range. For this
reason the forms which are now under discussion are for the most part
merely used occasionally and by way of diversion.

More closely considered we have in this chapter to distinguish between
three principal stages of our process.

A. To the _first_ we appropriate those types of presentation commonly
known as _Fable_, _Parable_, and _Apologue._ In these the severation
of form and significance, which constitutes the characteristic trait
of the entire sphere to which this chapter refers, is not as yet
_expressly_ recognized; that is to say, the _subjective_ aspect of
the comparison is not yet fully _emphasized_; consequently also the
representation of the particular and concrete phenomenon, through which
the universal significance is finally to declare itself, still remains
the _predominant_ factor.

B. In the _second_ stage, on the contrary, the universal _import_
asserts its independent mastery over the elucidating form, which
now appears merely as _attribute_, or, under the guise of an image,
capriciously selected by the mind which makes the contrast. To this
type belong the _Allegory_, _Metaphor_, and _Simile_.

C. In the _third_ stage we meet with the visible and complete
_collapse_ of those related aspects in the symbol which previously had
either been immediately joined in union, despite the fact of their
relative incongruity, or in their independent severation had still
persisted under a relation of affinity[35]. Out of this arises that
form of content which is cognized as independent in its prosaic[36]
universality, to which the art-form has become wholly an external
relation; on the one hand we find it represented by the _didactic_
poem, on the other that very aspect of its external form is accepted
for what it is, and exemplified in so-called _descriptive_ poetry. Here
we find that every association and relation of symbolism has vanished;
we have to look round us for some more comprehensive union of form and
content, and one more truly adequate to the notion of art.

[Footnote 5: So the French expression _des couleurs_, and our English
"the colours."]

[Footnote 6: Hegel uses the 'technical term _Inhalt_ in this passage to
signify either (_a_) the quality of significance, or (_b_) the object
which is symbolized by virtue of some selected quality. The use of it
in both senses makes the passage somewhat difficult to follow.]

[Footnote 7: _Inhalt_ here evidently is the abstract quality.]

[Footnote 8: Necessarily because such ambiguity is implied in the idea
(_seinem Begriff nach_).]

[Footnote 9: This, I think, is the sense. The language literally is,
"Which a form under several possible significations, as symbol of any
of which (_deren_) it can be employed often through connecting links
(_Zusammenhänge_) more remote, may be taken to symbolize."]

[Footnote 10: The German words are _Begreifen_ and _Schliessen_, which
in their original sense are "to grasp with the hand" (_prehendo_) and
"to shut" or "lock up." The English words in a still fainter form carry
the same significance through the Latin language. The symbolism of
language at this stage is obviously only apparent to the student of
language.]

[Footnote 11: That is, more abstract.]

[Footnote 12: Or in English: /# Forth on the ocean is shipped Youth
with his thousand sails: Silent in bark barely saved steals into
harbour old age. #/]

[Footnote 13: _Substantielle_, that is, an artistic consciousness which
is aware of its own essential nature--Spirit, and the object of pure
intelligence--the Ideal.]

[Footnote 14: Perhaps we should rather say a Theosophy.]

[Footnote 15: The Alexandrine School, of which Plotinus and Philo are
leading names.]

[Footnote 16: _Ein allgemeiner Gedanke._ The reference throughout
this paragraph to the universality of the ideas of reflection as
contrasted with the sensuous image is rather a reference to the
abstract conceptions of the analytical mind, that is, which are usually
understood as universals in the sense of generic conceptions, than
any fuller grasp of concrete reality such as possesses a truly ideal
significance. So in its application to the metaphor I imagine what is
meant is that we have here the process of dry analysis which merely
destroys its significance as metaphor, that is, its synthetic unity for
our aesthetic sense.]

[Footnote 17: _Ist aufgehoben_, here not in the sense of being
cancelled, but raised to the expression of concrete unity.]

[Footnote 18: _Als blosse Personification_, that is, an
individualization which impersonates the subjective identity without
possessing its concrete substance, a personified shadow like the
sphinx. Such appears to be the sense.]

[Footnote 19: Because the content for which such shapes (_Gestaltung_)
are given is itself incoherent, and therefore incompatible with
adequate expression.]

[Footnote 20: _Sichhervorarbeiten._ Our word "elaborate" is here
insufficient. Hegel means the mode in which the Idea of art works
itself free from entirely potential obscurity into a living force,
a real _energeia._ We cannot say "emerges into daylight," however,
because the highest grasp of symbolic art is still only a twilight. It
is like the growth of the plant-germ, still underground, or partially
so.]

[Footnote 21: _Pracktischen._ Not matter-of-fact relation, but rather a
relation that asserts itself exclusively in action.]

[Footnote 22: _Als Grund_, that is, as a fundamental unity of the real.]

[Footnote 23: _Die erste näher gestaltende Dollmetcherin_, lit., the
first interpreter which supplies forms more nearly cognate with itself.]

[Footnote 24: It is valid (_geltend_) because it introduces there its
own spiritual nature.]

[Footnote 25: The previous statement of Hegel must not be overlooked,
however, and it may be considerably amplified, that there is much in
romantic art which is related to symbolism and the sublime. Take the
case of the celebrated sculpture of Michael Angelo typifying Night,
Day, Dawn, and Twilight, or such modern pictures as those of Watts's
"The Minotaur" and "The Spirit of Christianity."]

[Footnote 26: Or rather "between those aspects of its import and form
which are reciprocally homogeneous and those which are not."]

[Footnote 27: This process of symbolic art.]

[Footnote 28: _Hauptstufen._ The word signifies either the phase or
grade of a process of development, or to take the metaphor used by
Hegel above (_Stadien_) may perhaps be better translated by "stage," as
though indicating the successive stages of a journey.]

[Footnote 29: I think _Völkern_ rather than _Zeiten_ must be here
understood, and the sense appears to be that the confusion indicated
refers to a mingling of forms appropriate to a nation in one historical
period with those that are more cognate with a people at any earlier
or it may be later period. But unquestionably this attempt to identify
a type as between different nations with historical periods that will
harmonize with Hegel's own classification is a difficult matter as we
may see by the fact that Egypt, the oldest example of all, represents
the third stage. On the other hand, if the confusion referred to is
applied to the particular development of any one people, the examples
given by Hegel do not bear on the difficulty they illustrate.]

[Footnote 30: Or rather "the import of the Absolute."]

[Footnote 31: _Substantiality_, called below _die Substanz_; the word
signifies the real essence of the Absolute.]

[Footnote 32: The principal clause of this sentence has no end as
printed. The auxiliary must be omitted either before _in diesem
Dienste_ or _eine positive._ I prefer the first alternative.]

[Footnote 33: The relative here agrees, I think, with _die
Dienstbarkeit_ rather than _die Kreatur_ or _die Poesie._ Hegel says
"compatible with itself and its significance," we should rather say
"its sense of its own insignificance."]

[Footnote 34: Hegel's words are _sondern in einem subjectiven Dritten_,
_welches in beiden Seiten nach seiner subjectiven Anschauung_, etc.
This "subjective third" is, as explained below, the way in which the
relation between the image and the absolute significance ceases to be
regarded as identical.]

[Footnote 35: This sentence as it stands is ungrammatical; there is a
change in the construction as it proceeds.]

[Footnote 36: The prosaic universality is the prose of its form
separated from content. It is prosaic because it is unrelated to the
vitality of the notion.]




CHAPTER I


UNCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM


Now that we pass to the consideration of the several distinctions
of symbolical art in more detail, we have to make a beginning with
the identical beginning of art as it proceeds out of the notion of
art itself. This commencement, as we have seen, is the symbolical
form of art in its still immediate form wherein the appearance,
as purely image or likeness, is neither brought to consciousness
nor presupposed--_unconscious symbolism_, that is to say. Before,
however, we shall be in a position to consider this form in its
genuine symbolical character, it will be necessary to review several
presuppositions which the notion of symbolism itself determines in
order that we may utilize them for the basis upon which the symbol may
unfold itself for scientific apprehension.

The point from which we make a start may be defined more closely as
follows:

The fundamental root of the symbol is, regarding it from one aspect,
the immediate union of the universal and thereby spiritual significance
with the form which may at the same time be described as adequate and
inadequate, an inadequacy, however, which is as yet unperceived. This
association, however, must, on the other hand, receive a form from the
_imagination_ and _art_, and must not _merely_ be conceived as a Divine
reality exclusively immediate to sense. By this means the symbolical
originates in the first instance with the _severation_ of a universal
import from the immediate _presence of Nature_, in whose existence the
Absolute is contemplated as actually present. These two aspects supply
us with the preliminary stages for the genuine forms of symbolic art.

The _first_ presupposition consequently--we may call it the coming
into being of the symbolical--is not that union which is the product
of art, but rather just that immediate unity of the Absolute and True
and its existence, which is discovered in the visible world apart from
art's mediation.

A. IMMEDIATE UNITY OF SIGNIFICANCE AND FORM

In this identity of the Divine immediately envisualized, a Divine,
which is brought home to consciousness as the union of its determinate
existence in Nature and humanity, Nature is neither taken simply for
that which it is in isolation by itself, nor is the Absolute severed
from it and posited in an independent self-subsistence. Consequently it
is wholly beside the point to speak of a distinction here between the
Inward and the External, the significance and the form, and this for
the reason that the Inward is not as yet released in its independence
as significance from its immediate reality in the object of sense. When
we apply here the expression import[37], such merely emphasizes our
_own_ reflection upon it, which is due to the necessity for ourselves
personally to regard the form, which contains that which is spiritual
and inward under the mode of sense-perception, generally as something
external to us, through which we are desirous of penetrating into
the Inward, that is, its animating life and significance, in order
that we may understand it. For this reason we are under the necessity
from the very first, when dealing with such general impressions of
sense-perception, of making an essential demarcation between those
cases in which the peoples, who in the first instance experienced
them, themselves were clearly conscious of this Inward itself as such,
that is, as a spiritual significance, and those in which the use of
such expressions is only applicable to ourselves, who now and only
now recognize an import of this kind in the content of that external
expression of sense-envisagement.

In this primary unity such as the latter cases involve, there is
no such distinction between soul and body, notion and reality, as
is implied in the former. That which we describe as corporeal and
sensuous, natural and human, is not merely an expression for a
significance which proceeds at the same time to a point of distinction
from it[38]; but the phenomenon is itself conceived as the immediate
reality and presence of the Absolute, which does not in addition
possess some other mode of self-subsistent existence, but is confined
exclusively to the immediate presence of an object of sense, which
is God or the Divine. In the service of the Lama, for example, this
particular, actual human being is immediately known and adored as
God, just as in other natural religions the sun, mountains, rivers,
the moon, particular animals, such as the bull, ape, and so on, are
looked upon as immediately Divine existences and worshipped as sacred.
We may observe a similar directness, if under a mode of profounder
application, even now in many aspects of the Christian consciousness.
According to Catholic doctrine, for example, the consecrated bread
is the real body, and the wine the real blood of God, and Christ is
immediately present therein; nay, even according to the Lutheran faith,
both bread and wine are converted into such real body and blood by
virtue of the faith of the recipient. In this mystical union it is not
merely a symbolism which is expressed, a point of view which comes into
prominence as the result of it for the first time in later doctrines
of the reformed Church, where we find as a result the spiritual
significance is expressly severed from the sensuous object, and the
external medium is then accepted as merely pointing to an import which
is distinct from itself. In the same way the power of this Divine is
held to operate in the miracle-working images of the Virgin as a Divine
force that is immediately present within them, and not merely under
symbolical guise through the significant import of such pictures.

We find, however, the most thorough and universal exemplification of
this absolute and immediate unity of sense-perception in the life and
religion of the ancient Zend-people, whose conceptions and institutions
are preserved for us in the Zend-Avesta.

1. In other words the religion of Zoroaster beholds Light in the form
of its natural existence, the sun, stars, and fire in the luminous
activity and flames which proceed from them, actually as the Absolute,
without separating this Divine independently from that Light either as
its expression and image or the sensuous medium thereof. The Divine,
the significance, is not thus severed from its determinate existence
in the form of lights, however displayed. For even when light is
accepted here in the sense of Goodness and Justice, and through such
significance is extended to all that is rich in blessing, support,
and life, it is still not taken as the mere image of such things, but
Light is itself the Good. And the same view applies to the opposite of
light, namely, obscurity and darkness when identified with that which
is unclean, hurtful, evil, destructive, and deadly.

This point of view may be more closely defined and considered as
follows:

(_a_) In the first instance the Divine, as the essential purity
of Light[39], and the Darkness and Unclean are, it is true,
_personified_ under the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman respectively.
This personification is, however, throughout entirely superficial.
Ormuzd is no essentially free individuality devoid of all relation to
external objects[40] as was the God of the Jews, or truly spiritual and
personal as is the God of Christianity when conceived as truly personal
and self-conscious Spirit; rather Ormuzd, despite the fact that he is
described also as king, great spirit and judge, remains inseparable
from such external existence as Light and its illuminations. He is
exclusively this universal characteristic of all particular existences,
in which light and thereby the Divine and Pure are realized, without
any additional power to withdraw himself in a spiritual universality
and independence into his own substance from that which is thus
immediately presented. His consistence rests in the particular facts
of existence precisely in an analogous way to that of the genus in the
species. It is true that regarded as this universal he is superior to
all that is wholly particular, and is the first, most supreme, the
kings of kings glorious in his gold, the purest and so forth; but he
retains his existence none the less exclusively in all that is luminous
and pure as Ahriman in all that is obscure, evil, destructive, and
charged with disease.

(_b_) As a result this mode of vision is at the same time extended to
the conception of an _empire_ of light and darkness, and the strife
between these forces. In the empire of Ormuzd it is in the first place
the Amschaspands, as the seven principal lights of heaven, which
receive adoration as Divinity, inasmuch as they are the essential
particular existences of Light, and for this reason constitute as a
pure and spacious empeopled heaven, the existence of the Divine itself.
Every Amschaspand, to which Ormuzd belongs, has assigned to it days
of precedence, blessing, and beneficence. The Izeds and Ferners carry
the conception still further into specification, which it is probable
enough are personifications of Ormuzd himself, albeit they add to him
no further shape that we may envisage as human, so that neither the
spiritual nor the bodily mode of subjectivity, but simply the existence
as light, appearance, illumination, splendour, remains the essential
characteristic of the object envisaged.

In the same way also the particular objects of Nature, which themselves
do not exist in external form as lights and luminous bodies, such
as animals, plants, and so forth, no less than the forms which
characterize the human world, whether we view it under its spiritual
or bodily presentment, in other words the particular activities and
conditions of it, the entire life of the state, the king with the seven
great men who support him, the division of classes, cities, the various
provinces with their governors, all that is warranted by experience
as typical of the best and purest for the protection of the rest--the
entire reality, in fact, of this life is regarded as an existence of
Ormuzd. For everything that carries within itself and promulgates
what has solidity, life, and substance is an existence of Light and
Purity, and consequently an existence of Ormuzd; every particular
truth, excellence, love, justness, every individual example of life,
beneficence, protection, spiritual power and enjoyment or benignity
is, according to Zoroaster, regarded as essentially Light and Divine.
The empire of Ormuzd is the Pure and Illuminating of visible reality;
and conformably to this there is no distinction between the phenomena
of Nature or Spirit, just as Light and Goodness, the spiritual and the
sensuous quality, are inseparably blended in the conception of Ormuzd
himself. The _splendour_ of a creature is consequently for Zoroaster
the very substance of spirit, force, and life-exhalations of every
kind, in so far, that is, as they tend to actual conservation and to
the removal of everything positively evil and hurtful, for that which
is the Real and the Good, whether in beast, man, or vegetable life, is
Light, and it is according to the measure and mode of display of this
luminousness that the relative power or weakness of the splendour of
all objects is determined.

An articulation and graduated division of similar character is found
in the empire of Ahriman, merely with the difference that what is
spiritually or naturally evil, and generally the destructive and
actively negative principle asserts itself in actual masterdom. But the
might of Ahriman must not be suffered to spread; the aim of the entire
world is consequently assumed to be that of annihilating the Empire of
Ahriman, in order that the life, presence, and dominion of Ormuzd may
prevail throughout creation.

(_c_) To this exclusive object the entire life of humanity is
consecrate. The life-task of every man consists exclusively in a
purification of soul and body, and in the extension of this blessing
and this conflict with Ahriman throughout all the conditions and
activities of the life of man or Nature. The highest and most sacred
duty is consequently to glorify Ormuzd in his creation, and to love,
honour, and conform oneself to all that proceeds from his Light and is
essentially pure. Ormuzd is the beginning and end of all adoration.
Above all else the Parsee is moved to summon the life of Ormuzd in
thought and speech; he is the main object of his prayers. And in the
exaltation of him, from whom the entire world of the Pure has streamed
in its splendour, the devotee is in duty bound to accommodate his
adoration of particular objects according to the measure in which they
proclaim his majesty, worth, and perfection. So far as they are good
and ring sound, to that extent, the Parsee reasons with himself, is
Ormuzd alive within them; he loves them as the children of his purity,
yea, rejoices over them as in the beginning of his substance, forasmuch
as through him was everything brought forth in newness and purity.
And for the same reason is all prayer directed first and foremost to
the Amschaspands as the most intimate reflections of Ormuzd, as the
primates of supreme splendour who surround his throne and advance his
dominion. Such prayer to these heavenly spirits is immediately directed
to their qualities and activities, and in the case of stars at the
time of their uprising. The sun is invoked by day, and always with the
changes appropriate to his own motion through sunrise, noonday, or
sunset. From morning till noonday the devotion of the Parsee centres in
this that Ormuzd may exalt his splendour; at evening he prays that the
sun may through Ormuzd and the protecting care of every Tzed perfect
the course of his life. But principally we find honour paid to Mithras,
who, as the fruit-bringer to the Earth and the wilderness, pours forth
the fermenting sap over all Nature, and as mighty champion against all
the Devas of contention, war, confusion, and destruction, is the author
of peace.

In addition to this the Parsee, in his generally single-toned songs
of praise, exalts his ideals, that is, the purest and most veritable
examples of human life, the Ferver conceived as pure human spirits, on
whatever portion of the Earth's surface they live or have lived. In
the chief place prayer is offered to the pure spirit of Zoroaster, and
after him to the leading lights of all classes, cities, and provinces;
and already in this religion, we find that the spirits of all mankind
are contemplated as united together with a sufficient bond in that they
are members in the living association of Light, which hereafter in
Gorotman shall receive a yet more perfect union.

Finally, not even the animals, mountains, and vegetable world are
forgotten, but are appealed to as embodiments of Ormuzd; all that is
good and serviceable in them to mankind is extolled, and especially the
first and most excellent of its kind is adored as the present existence
of Deity. And over and above this worship of Ormuzd and of every form
of selected excellence among the pure and beneficent objects of his
creation the Zend-Avesta is insistent upon the _practice_ of goodness
and the purity of thought, word, and deed. The Parsee is to be in the
entire display of his external and inward man as Light, as Ormuzd, the
Amschaspands, and the Izeds, as Zoroaster and all good men live and do.
Such live and have lived in the Light, and all their deeds are Light;
therefore shall every man make them an example to his eyes and follow
after the same. The more purity of light and goodness man expresses
in his life and accomplishment, the nearer he stands to those spirits
of heaven. As the Izeds throw the blessing of their beneficence over
everything, are a source of life and fruitfulness and friendship, so,
too, he must seek to purify Nature, to ennoble her, and to reach abroad
the light of life and the joy of plenteousness. In accordance therewith
he shall feed the hungry, tend the sick, offer the drink of consolation
to the thirsty, give roof and shelter to the wanderer, provide pure
seed for the Earth, delve clean channels of water, plant the waste with
trees, nourish to the best of his power their growth, care for the
sustenance and fructification of things alive, keep pure the lambency
of fire, remove from sight the dead and unclean beast, establish
marriages, and in the doing thereof the holy Sapandomad, the Ized of
the Earth, herself rejoices, averting the harm which the Devas and the
Darvands are busy to prepare.

2. If we ask ourselves once more, after this delineation in outline
of the fundamental conceptions of this system, what is the symbolical
character of the same there can be but one reply, namely, that there is
no trace here of anything we have previously described as symbolical.
On the one side, no doubt, we have light in its obvious natural form,
and on the other it possesses the further significance of all that
is rich in goodness, blessing, and permanence. It is, therefore,
possible to contend that the actual existence of light is merely an
image cognate with this universal significance, which interpenetrates
every part of the world of Nature and mankind. If we apply such an
interpretation to the conception of Parsees themselves we shall find
such a separation of existence and its import to be false; for these
the Light as Light is actually the Good, and is so apprehended that
it is in the form of light present and active in everything that is
good, vital, and positive. The universal and Divine is carried no
doubt through the distinctions of the world of particular objects,
but in this its differentiated and particularized existence, the
substantial and inseparable unity of import and form remains constant,
and the distinctions that are involved in this unity do not affect the
difference of significance _quâ_ significance, and its manifestation,
but only the distinguishing features of particular objects, such as
stars, organic life, human opinions and actions, in which the Divine as
Light or Darkness is immediately open to sense.

In the further embrace of such conceptions there are no doubt points
of connection with incipient symbolism, but we get out of them no real
type of that mode of viewing things in its completeness; they will only
pass muster as isolated traits in its direction. To such effect Ormuzd
is on one occasion made to say of his beloved one Dschemschid: "The
holy Ferver of Dschemschid, the son of Vivengham, was great before me.
His hand received from me a dagger, whose sharpness was gold, and whose
shaft was gold. Therewith Dschemschid marked out three hundred portions
of the Earth. He split up the Earth-realm with his gold-plate, yea,
with his dagger and spake: 'Let Sapandomad rejoice.' He spake the holy
word with prayer to the tame cattle and the wild and unto men. So his
passing through was happiness and blessing for these lands and animals
of the home and the field, and men ran together into great dwellings."
Here we find in the dagger, and the cleaving of the Earth-soil an image
which may be interpreted as significant of agriculture. Agriculture
is still no essentially spiritual activity, and just as little is it
a purely natural one; it is rather a universal occupation of mankind,
which results from reflective thought and experience, and which has
point of association with all the relations of life. It is no doubt
never expressly stated in this conception of the passing of Dschemschid
that this splitting of the Earth with the dagger indicates agriculture;
nor is there a single word added of any increase of the fruits of the
field by virtue of this division; for the reason, however, that in
this particular act more appears to be included than the mere turning
over and loosening of the soil, we are led to look for a further
significance beneath it. The same observations apply to more recent
conceptions, such as we find exemplified in the later elaboration of
the worship of Mithras, where Mithras is represented as a youth who
in the dusk of a grotto raises on high the bull's head and plunges
a dagger in his neck, whereon a serpent licks up the blood, and a
scorpion gnaws his genitals. This symbolical account has received
an astronomical and other interpretations. We may, however, find in
it a still more universal and profounder meaning, and take the bull
generally to personify the principle of Nature, over which man, as
essentially spirit, secures the victory, and this though astronomical
associations may also be implied in it. That, however, such a
revolution as the victory of Spirit over Nature is contained in it is
also suggested by the name of Mithras, or mediator, more especially
if we refer it to a later period when such uplifting over Nature was
already a necessity present to the national consciousness. Symbols such
as the above, however, as already observed, only incidentally come to
the fore in the conceptions of the ancient Parsees, and do not in any
way constitute a principle for their fundamental type of thought.

Still less can we describe the cultus, which the Zend-Avesta
inculcates, as one of symbolical tendency. We find no trace here,
for example, of symbolical dances in celebration or imitation of the
interlaced revolutions of the stars; as little any other forms of
activity which may pass as the suggestive counterfeit of universal
conceptions; rather all actions which are prescribed to the Parsee as
imperative in a religious sense are matters directly concerned with the
actual enlargement of his purity, either of soul or body, and appear as
directed with one intent and one object of realization, namely, that of
increasing the actual dominion of Ormuzd over men and the objects of
Nature, an object consequently which is not merely symbolized in such
activity, but entirely carried out.

3. For the reason, then, that a genuine symbolic type fails absolutely
when applied to this religious system, it is equally destitute of a
true _artistic_ character. No doubt we may generally describe its mode
of conception as _poetical_ for the particular facts of Nature are
just as little as the particular sentiments, circumstances, acts, and
affairs of men treated in their immediate and consequently haphazard
and prosaic relation which is void of all significance, and are rather
contemplated essentially in the Absolute as very Light; or to put it
the other way, the universal essence of the concrete reality of Nature
and mankind is not conceived in the universality which is without
existence or form, but this universal and that particular is envisaged
and expressed in immediate union. Such a mode of viewing existence
may possibly claim a certain beauty, breadth, and largeness of its
own, and in contrast to gross and senseless idols Light is no doubt
as the essentially pure and universal element, an adequate image of
Goodness and Truth. But for all that we find that poetry here fails
to pass beyond a general conception; it never reaches either art or
the works of art. For the Good and the Divine are neither essentially
defined, nor is the consistency and form of this content a creation of
mind (Spirit); but rather, as we have already found, the thing which
is immediately present to sense, namely, the actual sun, stars, fire,
organic nature, throughout its vegetation, animal and human life, is
conceived as the appropriate form of the Absolute in this its existent
and _immediate_ shape. The sensuous representation is not, as Art
requires, the plastic product of mind, shaped and discovered by the
same, but immediately identified with and expressed by the external
existent shape as its appropriate counterfeit. It is quite true, in
another aspect, the particular thing is, by means of the imagination,
also fixed in an independent relation to its reality, as, for instance,
in the Izeds and Fervers, that is, in the genii of particular men; the
poetic invention, however, discovered in this incipient severation
is of the weakest kind for the reason that the distinction remains
entirely of a formal character, so that the genius, Ized or Ferver,
neither includes nor is able to include any real characteristic
content of its own, but, instead of this, either repeats one identical
content or possesses nothing more than the purely empty form of the
subjectivity, which the existing individual already possesses. The
product of the imagination here is consequently neither an other and
profounder significance nor the self-subsistent form of an essentially
richer individuality. And when we moreover find particular objects
envisaged on the wider plane of general conceptions and generic types,
to which, as appropriate to such types, the imagination vouchsafes a
real existence, even here also this uplifting of multiplicity into the
sphere of an all-comprehending and essential unity, regarded as the
basic core and substance of the individuals that constitute the same
species and genus, can only in a yet more indefinite sense be accepted
as an activity of the imagination, no real exemplification of either
poetry or art. So we have, for instance, in the holy fire of Behram the
essence of fire; and in the same way there is a water that underlies
all existent water. So, too, Horn is esteemed as the first, purest,
and most stalwart among trees, the primordial tree from which the
life-sap full of immortality flows; and among all mountains Albordsch,
the sacred mountain, is set before us as the primaeval root of the
Earth, erect in the splendour of the Light, from which the good deeds
of all men proceed, who have possessed the knowledge of Light, and
on whom the sun, moon, and stars repose. In general, however, we may
affirm that the universal is visibly known in immediate union with the
actual objects of sense, and it is merely now and again that universal
conceptions are embodied in the particular image.

In yet more prosaic fashion does the cultus of this religion make
as its principal object the dominion of Ormuzd a reality which
interpenetrates all things, merely requiring this one essential
condition to the adequacy of every object, namely, its purity, and
without attempting therewith to construct from such any existent
form of art that is based upon immediate life, as, for example, the
warriors and wrestlers of Greece were so ready to do in their artistic
elaboration of physical perfection.

From whatever side, then, or whatever may be the point of view from
which we regard this first unity of spiritual universality and sensuous
reality, we only get from it the _basis_ of symbolical art; it still
fails to possess a real symbolism of its own, and is unable to produce
works of art. In order that we may attain this object, which is the
next in view, we must pass away from the union we have just considered,
and examine modes of conception where the _difference_ and _conflict_
between significance and form is more really emphasized.



B. FANTASTIC SYMBOLISM


Quitting now the sphere of thought in which the identity of the
Absolute and its externally envisaged existence is immediately
cognized, we have, as an essential determination to start from, the
severation of these two aspects hitherto united, a _cleavage_ which
stimulates the effort to restore once more the visible breach by means
of an elaborate fusing together of the whole thus divided by a rich
use of the images of phantasy. With this attempt the essential need
for art is felt for the first time. No sooner has the imagination
succeeded in holding fast its envisaged content, which is no longer
grasped in immediate union with the objects of sense, in isolated
separation from that existence, than for the first time spirit is
confronted with the task of reclothing with the material of phantasy
for sensuous perception, that is, under the renewed mode of a spiritual
product, these general conceptions and of creating through this
activity the shapes of art. And for the reason that in the stage of
our process where we now find ourselves, this task is capable of only
a symbolic solution, we may easily fall under the impression that
we stand already in the sphere of genuine symbolism. This, however,
is not the case. What immediately faces us here are the forms of a
fermenting phantasy[41], which in the restlessness of its fantastic
dreams merely indicates the path which conducts us to the real centre
of symbolical art. In the first appearance of the distinguishing
relation between significance and the mode of its presentation, both
the severation and the association are still grasped in a confused
manner. This confusion is necessitated by the fact that neither of
the parted aspects of difference have as yet attained a totality,
capable of emphasizing the precise point in the process, which will
serve as the fundamental determination of the opposed side in it,
and by means of which for the first,time a really adequate union and
reconciliation is rendered possible. Spirit (mind), to illustrate our
difficulty further, determines by virtue of its own totality the
side of the external phenomenon out of its own essential substance
quite as really as it does its own spiritual content for the obvious
reason that the essentially complete and independent phenomenon only
receives its adequate form as the external existence of that which is
spiritual. In the case, however, of this primary severation of the
significances apprehended by mind, and the existent world of phenomena
such aspects of significance are not those of concrete spiritual life,
but abstractions, and this expression also is entirely destitute
of spiritual intension, and is consequently, in an abstract sense,
purely external and sensuous. This twofold impulse in the direction of
disunion and union is for the same reason an unsteady gait[42], which
ranges from the objects of sense in undefined and unmeasured waste
immediately to the aspects of universal import, and is only able to
discover for the inward content of consciousness the absolutely opposed
form of sensuous shapes. And it is this very contradiction which is
set forth as a means of really uniting elements which contradict each
other. The result is that instead of so doing it is first driven from
one side of the opposition into the other, and then again is hurled in
its ceaselessly alternating dance into the former extreme, while it
believes that in this rocking to and fro of its strain it has found
the means to lull itself to repose. Instead of getting, therefore, a
true satisfaction we have the _contradiction_ merely affirmed as its
genuine resolution, and in addition the union most incomplete of all
is set forth as that which art really requires. We must not therefore
expect to find in such a field of confusion worse confounded the true
forms of beauty. In this restless leap from one opposed extreme to the
other all that we find from one point of view in the sensuous material
that is absorbed, regarding the same in its singularity no less than as
it constitutes its elementary appearance to sense, is that the breadth
and potency of every import of universality is associated therewith
in what must consequently be a wholly inadequate way. From another
aspect that which is most universal, as soon as the process has passed
from the same, is shamelessly plunged under the reverse treatment
into the very heart of the sensuous present; and if any feeling of
the incompatibility of such an effort is consciously perceived, the
imagination here is only capable of rendering assistance by means of
distortions which carry the particular shapes over and beyond their own
secure boundaries, adding to their extension, making them ever more
indefinite, by an imaginative leap which mounts to the immeasurable,
breaks up every bond of union, and in its very strain after
reconciliation reveals each opposing factor in its most unmitigated
hostility[43].

These earliest and still most uncontrolled attempts of imagination and
art we meet most signally among the ancient races of India, the main
defect of whose productions, when viewed relatively to their particular
position at this stage of our classification, consists in this, that
they are neither able to seize the profounder aspects of significance
in independent clarity, nor grasp the reality of sense-perception in
its characteristic form and meaning. The Hindoo race has consequently
proved itself unable to comprehend either persons or events as parts
of continuous history, because to any historical treatment a certain
soberness is essential of accepting and understanding facts in their
true and independent form, and subject to their mediating links,
grounds, causes, and objects, being empirically ascertained. The
natural impulse to refer all and everything back to the Divine is
hostile to this prosaic reasonableness, no less than its tendency to
prefigure for itself in the most ordinary or most sensuous of objects
a presence and reality of godhead created by its own imagination.
These peoples consequently, through their confused intermingling of
the Finite and the Absolute, in which the logical order and permanence
of the prosaic facts of ordinary consciousness are disregarded
altogether, despite all the profusion and extraordinary boldness of
their conceptions, fall into a levity of fantastic mirage which is
quite as remarkable, a flightiness which dances from the most spiritual
and profoundest matters to the meanest trifle of present experience, in
order that it may interchange and confuse immediately the one extreme
with the other.

If we concentrate our attention more closely upon the more conspicuous
features of this continuous bout of intoxication, this craze and
condition of craze, what we are concerned with is not to trace
religious conceptions as such, but merely to emphasize the points of
prominence which relate such modes of conception with art. These may be
indicated as follows:

1. One extreme of the consciousness of the Hindoo is the consciousness
of the Absolute, here regarded as the essentially and absolutely
Universal, undifferentiated and consequently wholly indefinite. This
supreme of abstractions, inasmuch as it is neither in possession of
a particular content, nor is conceived under the mode of concrete
personality, is, from whatever side you may look at it, no object at
all that the imagination acting through the senses can reclothe for
art. Brahman[44], taken in a general sense as this supreme Godhead, is
absolutely removed from the sensuous and sense-perception, or rather is
not even an object for Thought. For self-consciousness is inseparable
from thought, which posits itself as an object of Thought, in order
that it may thus come to self-knowledge. Every act of intelligence
is an identification of the ego and object, a reconciliation of
that which is severed outside from this relation of recognition;
what I do not understand remains as something strange and foreign
to myself. The mode of union, under the Hindoo conception, of human
personality with Brahman is nothing more nor less than a continually
ascending process of exhaustion[45] in the direction of this supreme
of abstractions, in which not merely the entire concrete content, but
also self-consciousness itself, must be eliminated before the final
consummation is realized. Or, to put the same thing another way, the
Hindoo recognizes no reconciliation and identity with Brahman in
the sense that the spirit of humanity becomes _conscious_ of this
union. The unity rather consists in this, that both consciousness
and self-consciousness, and with them the entire content of the
objective world and personality totally disappears. This emptying
and annihilation to the point of absolute vacuity is treated as the
supreme condition under which man is capable of identity with highest
Divinity, that is Brahman. An abstraction of this sort, one of the
barest it is possible to imagine, whether we consider it from the
point of view of the Absolute, as Brahman, or from the human aspect
of a purely theoretically conceived cultus that consists in man's
self-evaporation[46] and self-annihilation, is in itself no object
either for the imagination or art; all the latter can do is to profit
by such opportunity as various imaginary representations of what
happens by the way to this goal may offer for their exercise.

2. Conversely the Hindoo view of existence launches itself with
just the same immediacy over this very abstraction from all sense
into the wildest flood of it. Inasmuch, however, as the immediate
and consequently unbroken identity of both sides is in this view
cancelled, and instead of this the element of _difference_ within
this identity has become the basic principle of the type itself, this
very contradiction plunges us with no mediating connections from the
Finite into the Divine, and again from this latter into what is most
transitory of all; and we live and move among _simulacra_, which rise
up entirely as the growth of this alternating process, a kind of
witches' world, where the definition of every shape eludes our grasp as
we endeavour to seize it, is converted all at once into its opposite,
or straddles away into mere inflated enormities.

The general modes under which Hindoo art manifests itself may be
summarized under the three following points of view:

(_a_) In the first place we find the full hugeness of the content of
the Absolute is imposed by the imagination upon the _sensuous_ in its
aspect of singularity in such a way that this particular thing is
itself, in its own form and station, taken completely to represent
such a content and to exist as such for the imaginative sense. In the
Râmâyana, for example, the friend of Râma, namely, the prince of apes
Hanuman, is a principal personage, and he accomplishes the bravest
of exploits. And generally we may observe that among the Hindoos the
ape is revered as Divine, and we find, in fact, an entire city of
apes. In the ape, as this point of singularity, the infinite content
of the Absolute is envisaged and adored. It is just the same with
the cow, Sabalâ, which in the Râmâyana during the episodic treatment
of the expiations of Visvamitra, appears clothed with immeasurable
power. If we take a glance on higher planes we find entire families
in India--even though the individual here be merely a vacant and
monotonously vegetating life-unit--in whom the Absolute itself, as
this concrete reality, is adored in its immediate life and presence as
God. This same coincidence is found in Lamaism. Here, too, a single
individual receives the highest worship due to the present God. In
India, however, this honour is not exclusively paid to one man. Every
Brahmin proves at once his claim from the day of his birth in his own
caste to be ranked as Brahman, and possesses that second birth of the
Spirit which identifies his humanity with God, in the way of Nature
through his actual bodily birth, so that the crown of the most Divine
itself is immediately referred back upon the entirely commonplace
fact of physical existence. For although the Brahmin is under the
most sacred obligation to read the Vedâs, and attain by this means an
insight into the secrets of Deity, this duty can be actually carried
out in the most perfunctory way without detracting in the least from
the Brahmin's own divinity. In a similar manner it is one of the modes
most common to the representations of Hindooism to have the primordial
God set forth as the procreator or begetter, as we find Eros is in the
case of Greek mythology. This procreation as Divine activity is further
worked into all kinds of representations in a wholly material way,
and the private parts, both male and female, are treated as sacred in
the highest sense. And in a reverse way, and to no less extent, the
Divine, when it passes over in its independent Divinity to the plane
of existing reality, is suffered in a wholly trivial manner to get
mixed up with everyday details. We may take an example of this from
the commencement of the Râmâyana, where Brahmâ has come on a visit to
Vâlmîkis, the mythical bard of the Râmâyana. Vâlmîkis receives him
entirely in the common Hindoo fashion, pays him a compliment or two,
places a stool before him, and supplies him with water and fruits.
Brahmâ sits down just like anybody else and constrains his host to do
likewise: and there they sit on and sit on until at last Brahmâ orders
Vâlmîkis to compose the poem of the Râmâyana.

Modes of conception such as these are still not symbolic in the
strict sense; for although we find that here, as the symbol requires,
forms are taken from the material of sense and diverted to the use
of conceptions of more universal import, we still find the further
condition of this requirement wanting, namely, that the particular
existences must not actually exist for sense-perception as this
absolute significance, but merely _suggest_ the same. For the Hindoo
imagination the ape, the cow, and the particular Brahmin are not merely
a cognate symbol of the Divine, but are contemplated and represented as
the Godhead itself, as existences adequate to that Godhead.

It is the contradiction inherent in this immediacy which is the
motive force of another feature in the conceptions of Hindoo art. For
while, on the one hand, that which is absolutely severed from sense,
the spiritual significance out and out, is conceived as the actually
Divine, yet, on the other, the particular facts of concrete reality
are immediately envisaged by the imagination, even in their sensuous
existence, as Divine manifestations. They are no doubt partly only
taken to represent particular aspects of the Absolute; but even so
the particular thing in its immediacy is still incompatible with the
universality, which it is, as adequate to the same, introduced to
express; and it appears in all the more glaring contradiction to it
for the reason that the significance is here already conceived in its
universality, yet, despite of this, an express relation of identity
is immediately set up by the imagination between it and the most
particular of material facts.

(_b_) The most obvious way in which Hindoo art endeavours to mitigate
this disunion is, as we have already suggested, by the _measureless_
extension of its images. Particular shapes are drawn out into colossal
and grotesque proportions in order that they may, as forms of sense,
attain to universality. The particular form of sense, which is taken
to express not itself and its own characteristic meaning as a fact of
external existence, but a universal significance which lies outside
it, fails to satisfy the imagination until it has been torn out itself
into vastness which knows neither measure nor limit. This is the cause
of all that extravagant exaggeration of size, not merely in the case
of spatial dimension, but also of measurelessness of time-durations,
or the reduplication of particular determinations, as in figures with
many heads, arms, and so on, by means of which this art strains to
compass the breadth and universality of the significance it assumes.
The egg, for example, contains the bird within it. This particular fact
is enlarged to the measureless conception of a world-egg secreting the
universal life of all creation, and in which Brahmâ, the procreating
God, accomplishes without effort the year of creation, until by virtue
of his thought alone the the two halves of the egg fall asunder. And,
in addition to natural objects, human individuals and events are
exalted that they may express the significance of truly Divine action
in such a way that we can neither hold fast the Divine or the human
in their independence, but both seem to run in a continual confusion
backwards and forwards into one another. As a striking illustration
of such a mode of conception, we have the incarnations of certain
Hindoo gods, principally Vishnu, the conserver of life, whose exploits
figure largely in the great epic poems. Râmas is, for instance, himself
the seventh incarnation of Vishnu (Râmatshandra). From a review of
particular demands, actions, circumstances, modes of appearance, and
traits of demeanour, we are led to infer from these poems that this
content is in great measure borrowed from actual events, that is from
the exploits of ancient kings who exercised a powerful influence in
creating new conditions of law and order; we find ourselves surrounded
by a thoroughly human atmosphere and on the firm ground of reality. But
then again, in a converse direction, the entire scene expands, reaches
out into the nebulous, playing over and beyond it with universal
conceptions, so that we lose the vantage ground we had gained and are
robbed of all our bearings. We are treated in just the same way in the
Sakuntala. At first we have set before us the most gentle and odorous
realm of Love, in which everything goes on its way in an entirely human
fashion; and then we are all at once snatched from the wealth of this
genuine world, and transported into the clouds of the heaven of Indra,
where everything suffers change, and our formerly circumscribed sphere
is inflated to the measure of the universal import of Nature's life in
its relation to the Brahmin and the power of Nature's gods, which is
vouchsafed to man in return for his severe self-mortifications.

Such modes of representation are also not to be termed in a strict
sense symbolical. That is to say the true symbol suffers the
determinate shape, which it applies, to remain under that original
definition, because its purpose is not to envisage therein the
immediate existent of the significance in its universality, but to
point to that import merely _through_ the qualities of the object
which are cognate to it. Hindoo art, however, although it severs
universality from the singular existing fact, still adds the further
requirement that both sides shall be immediately united through the
imagination, and is consequently forced to divest determinate existence
of its specific limitations, and, albeit in a material fashion, to
enlarge in the direction of indefiniteness and generally to change and
reconstitute. In this melting down of all clear definition, and in the
confusion which results from it, so that that form is always set down
as highest for everything, whether phenomena, events, or actions, which
in the mode of their figuration can neither for themselves assert nor
intrinsically possess and express any control over such content, we may
rather seek for features analogous to the type of the _sublime_ than
see any illustration of real symbolism. For in the Sublime, as we shall
see for ourselves further on, the finite phenomenon only expresses the
Absolute, which it would previsage for conscious sense to the extent
that in so doing it escapes from the world of appearance, which fails
to comprehend its content. This is just its treatment of eternity.
Its idea of it is sublime when it has to be expressed in terms of
time-duration, precisely through the emphasis it lays on the fact that
no number, however great, is sufficient. In this strain runs the text:
"A thousand years in Thy sight are even as a day." Hindoo art contains
much of the same or similar nature. It strikes the opening notes of
"the Sublime" symphony. The main difference, however, between it and
the true Sublimity consists in this, that the Hindoo imagination does
not in the wild exuberance of its images bring about the essential
nothingness of the phenomena which it makes use of, but rather through
just this very measurelessness and unlimited range of its visions
believes that it has annihilated and made to vanish all difference
and opposition between the Absolute and its mode of configuration. In
this extreme type of exaggeration, then, there is ultimately little of
real kinship with either true symbolism or Sublimity: it is equally
remote from the true sphere of beauty. It offers us no doubt, more
particularly in its more sober delineation of that which is exclusively
human, much that is endearing and benign, many gracious pictures and
tender emotions, the most splendid and seductive descriptions of
Nature, the most childlike traits of Love and naïve innocence, and
withal much too that is magnanimous and noble; but, none the less, if
we review it generally according to the fundamental import of all it
expresses, we shall find that the spiritual is throughout rooted in
sense, the meanest objects are placed on the same plane as the highest,
true definition is wrecked, the Sublime is lowered to the conception of
mere immeasurability, and that which is the original material of mythos
for the most part vanishes before our eyes in the fantastic dreams of
a restless and inquisitive imaginative power, and modes of shaping the
same devoid of all intelligent purpose.

(_c_) In conclusion, the purest form of representation which we
meet with at this stage of imaginative conception is that of
_personification_, as it generally applies to the _human figure._
For the reason, however, that the significance on this plane is
not as yet grasped as the free subjectivity of Spirit, but rather
either under a determination of abstract universality or as a mode
of natural existence, one that contains, for example, the life of
rivers, mountains, stars, or sun, for this reason it is only employed
as means of expression for this kind of content under a mode which
really detracts from the full worth of the human form. For the human
body, if we view it in its true definition, no less than the form of
human activities and events, expresses simply concrete Spirit and a
spiritual content, which is self-contained and subsistent in this its
reality, and possesses therewith no mere symbol or external sign.

From one point of view consequently this personification, albeit the
significance, which it is invoked to represent, is taken to belong
to the spiritual no less than the natural, yet, on account of the
abstractness which clings to this form of significance, is on this
stage of thought still of a superficial nature, and needs yet many
other modes of representation to be rendered clear to the closer
inspection, forms with which it is here confusedly mingled and
thereby itself made obscure. And, moreover, taking it under another
aspect, it is not the subjectivity here and its form which supplies
the characterization, but rather its _expressions_, actions, and so
forth; for it is in deed and action that the more defined line of
severation first asserts itself, which can be brought into relation
with the specific content of the universal significances. In that case,
however, we are again face to face with the defect that it is not the
conscious subject, but merely its _means of expression_, which supply
the signification, no less than the confusion of thought, that events
and deeds, instead of constituting the reality and the existence of
the subject as determinately self-realized, preserve its content and
significance elsewhere. A series of such actions is able therefore
very possibly to carry with it a certain result and consequence, which
is derived from the content which such a series subserves as its
expression. This consequent result is, however, to an extent equally
great, liable again to be interrupted and in part suspended by that
which is central in the personification and the man[47], because
subjective activity is also a stimulus to capricious action and its
manifestation, so that both that which is significant and that which is
destitute of this quality keep up their varied and irregular interplay
just in so far as the imagination is unable to unite their significant
characteristics and the forms which are appropriate to them in one
substantial and secure mode of association. And, moreover, if it is the
purely natural aspect of such facts which is exclusively accepted as
the unified content, in that case the material must inevitably prove
itself inadequate to support the human form, just as this, being only
fully adapted as a means of expressing Spirit, is on its side incapable
of representing what is wholly natural. In all these respects such a
mode of personification as the one we are examining fails to express
a true mode; for the truth of art requires, as the truth universally
requires, that there should be a complete concordance between the
inward and the outward, that is, the notion and its reality. Greek
mythology, for example, personified the Pontine sea; Scamander
possesses its river gods, nymphs, dryads, and so forth. In other words
it builds up Nature in the most various forms as the content of its
human divinities. It does not, however, suffer its personification
to remain purely formal and superficial, but creates thereby real
individuals, in whom the purely natural significance fades into the
background, and the human element, on the contrary, which has taken up
and absorbed such material out of Nature, becomes the prominent factor.
Hindoo art, on the other hand, is unable to advance beyond a grotesque
intermingling of these two sides of Nature and humanity, so that
neither is treated according to its rightful claim, and both are merely
given the forms which are appropriate to the other.

Speaking in a general way we cannot consider even these
personifications to be as yet strictly symbolical, for the reason that
owing to their formal superficiality they do not stand in any essential
relation to or mode of association more truly intimate with the more
determinate form which they are presumed to express. At the same time
we may note here, with respect to other particular modifications and
attributes, with which such personifications appear to be intermingled,
and which are taken to express the more defined qualities generally
attached to Divinities, an impulse in the direction of symbolic
representation, for which the personification then stands merely as the
universal type of widest connotation.

If we turn now to the more important examples of the imaginative sense
on the plane we are now considering, we have first to draw attention
to Trimûrtis, the triformed Godhead. This Deity includes in the first
place _Brahmâ_, the activity which brings forth and procreates, the
creator of the world, Lord of all the gods and much more beside. On
the one hand he is to be kept distinct from Brahman (as Neuter), that
is from the ultimate Being, and is the first-born of such. In another
aspect, however, he again seems to fall into union with this abstract
Godhead, as generally happens with Hindoo thought where the lines of
difference are rarely held secure, and part are allowed to vanish and
the rest simply to get confused with each other. The form with which
he is most closely identified has much that is symbolical about it;
he is formed with four heads and four hands, and with the latter are
his sceptre and ring[48]. He is of a red colour, an obvious suggestion
of sunlight, since these Divinities invariably carry qualities which
are of universal significance in Nature and which are thus personified
in them. The _second_ Deity of this triune Trimûrtis, is Vishnu, the
preserving Godhead, the _third_ Sivas, the destructive Power. The
symbols employed to represent these gods are countless. For by reason
of the universality of the significances they express they comprehend
an infinite number of varied activities. In part these are related to
particular phenomena of Nature, mainly the elementary, such as, for
example, the quality of "fiery,"[49] which is an attribute of Vishnu,
and frequently we have set before us shapes of the most antagonistic
description.

In the conception of this triform god we have the fact at once brought
home to us in the clearest way that the form of Spirit is not yet able
to assert itself in its Truth if for no other reason than this, that
here it is not the spiritual which constitutes the truly permeating
significance. That is to say, this trinity of gods would only be
Spirit if the third god were an essentially concrete unity, a unity
which returned upon itself from the differentiation and reduplication
of its substance. For God, according to the true conception of
Godhead, is Spirit as this active and absolute self-differentiation
and Unity, a conception which is generally what constitutes the notion
of Spirit. In this Trimûrtis, however, the triune God is not by any
means such a concrete totality, but merely a passage from this to that,
a metamorphosis, a procreator, a destroyer, and so forth. We must
be accordingly very careful not to imagine that we have discovered
the highest Truth in these most primordial gropings of man's reason,
and in this one note of concord which, no doubt, as mere rhythmic
expression[50], contains the triune form of Deity, that is, the
fundamental conception of Christian theology, believe that we already
have before us a recognition of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Starting from such fundamental conceptions as those of Brahman and
Trimûrtis, Hindoo imagination expatiates still further without let in
a countless number of the most varied formed Divinities. For those
primary significances of universal application which are apprehended
as essential Deity are of such a kind that they may be rediscovered
in an infinite number of phenomena, which are again personified and
symbolized as gods, and each and all combine in throwing the greatest
obstacles in the way of any intelligible system by reason of the
indefinite character and confusing volubility[51] of this type of
imagination, which fails utterly to grasp the real nature of anything
that it discovers, and merely wrests everything that it touches from
its own appropriate sphere. For these gods of subordinate rank, at the
head of which we may place such a Divinity as Indrus, who represents
the Air and the Heavens, the chief material is furnished by the general
forces of Nature, such as stars, rivers, and mountains conceived in
the various phases of their activity, their change, their influence on
mankind, whether beneficent or hurtful, preservative or destructive.
One of the most important subjects, however, of Hindoo imagination
and art is the origin of gods and the rest of creation, in other words
its Theogony and Cosmogony. For this type of imagination is generally
rooted in the continual effort to carry over that which is most removed
from sense into the very heart of the external world, or in the reverse
process once more to expunge that which stands nearest to sense and
Nature by means of the barest abstraction. Consequently the origin
of the gods is referred back to the primordial Godhead[52], and at
the same time the workings and existence of Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Sivas
are represented as actual in mountains, streams, and human events.
A cosmological content of this kind can, on the one hand, contain
an independent and specific order of Deities, while on the other
these gods are made to merge in those universal significances of the
supremest type of Godhead. Such theogonies and cosmogonies are numerous
and of every conceivable variety. When anyone ventures, therefore,
to say that the Hindoos have thus or thus portrayed the creation of
the world or the origin of Nature, such a statement can only be taken
to apply to a particular sect or book; you can very easily find a
perfectly different account of these events elsewhere. The imagination
of this people in the pictures and images they have created is
exhaustless.

A mode of conception which is conspicuous throughout the entire series
of these creation stories is the constantly repeated presentation of
the creative act not in the form of _spiritual fiat_, but of a purely
_natural_ process of _generation._ Only after having made ourselves
thoroughly conversant with this mode of imaginative vision shall we
discover the key to unlock the meaning of many representations which
at first totally confound all our feelings of shame, shamelessness
being here apparently driven to its furthest limits, and in its utter
sensuousness carried beyond all belief. A striking example of this
mode of imaginative treatment is offered us by the notoriously popular
episode from the Râmâyana, known as the descent of Gangâ. This tale
is narrated on the occasion when Râmas happens by chance to come to
the Ganges. The wintry and ice-covered Himavân, the prince of the
mountains, was father by the slender Menâ of two daughters, Gangâ,
the elder, and the beautiful Umâ the younger one. Certain gods,
more particularly Indras, beseech the father to send them Gangâ, in
order that they may institute the sacred rites, and as Himavat proves
himself quite ready to accede to their request Gangâ mounts on high
to the blessed gods. After this follows the further story of Umâ, who
after accomplishing wonderful actions of humility and penitence, is
espoused to Rudras, that is, Sivas. From this union spring up wild and
unfruitful mountains. For a hundred years long Sivas lay with Umâ in
the bridal embrace, without intermission, so that the gods aghast at
the procreative power of Sivas, and full of anxiety for the productive
child, beseech him that he will divert the stream of his strength on
the Earth. This passage the English translator has not ventured to
translate literally, for the reason that it flings too much for him
every shred of shame or modesty to the winds. Sivas hearkens to the
beseechings of the gods, and staying his former procreative ardour,
that he may not utterly confound the universe, he loosens the seminal
flood over the Earth. Out of this, transpierced with fire, rises up
the white mountain which separates India from Tartary. Umâ, however,
falls into scorn and anger at this complaisance, and thereon curses
all wedlock. In this section of the tale we have what are mainly
fearful and distorted pictures which run so entirely counter to our
ordinary notions of imagination and intelligent senses that the most
we can do is to observe what they would appear to offer in default of
either. Schlegel has omitted to translate this section of the episode
and merely added in his own words how Gangâ descends once more on the
Earth. And this took place in the following way. A certain forebear
of Râmas, Sagaras, was father of a bad son, and by a second wife he
was father of no less than 60,000 sons, who came into the world in a
pumpkin, were, however, raised up into stalwart men on clarified butter
in pitchers[53]. Now it chanced one day that Sagaras was of a mind to
sacrifice a steed, which was, however, seized from him by Vishnu in
the form of a serpent. On this Sagaras sends forth his 60,000 sons.
But no sooner had they come to Vishnu after great hardships and a
long searching than a breath of hers burns them all to ashes. After
a weary waiting a certain grandson of Sagaras, by name Ansumân the
Shining, son of Asamaschas, set forth to find his 60,000 uncles and
the sacrificial steed. He actually comes upon both the steed Siwas and
the heap of ashes. The king of birds, Garudas, however, notifies to
him the fact that unless the stream of the holy Gangâ flows down from
heaven over the heap of ashes his relations will be unable to return
to life. Whereupon the stalwart Ansumân endures for 32,000 years on
the mountain-top of Himavân the sternest mortifications. All in vain.
Neither his own chastisements nor those of yet another 30,000 years
of his son Dwilipas are of the slightest avail. At last the son of
Dwilipas, the glorious Bhagîrathas, succeeds in accomplishing the feat,
but only after mortifications which last 1,000 years. Then the Gangâ
plunges down; but in order that the Earth may not thereby shiver in
pieces, Siwas now bows his head so that the water runs into his mane.
Thereupon yet further mortifications are enjoined upon Bhagîrathas, in
order that Gangâ may be free to stream forth from these locks. Finally
she is poured forth in six streams; the seventh Bhagîrathas conducts
after mighty privations to the place of the 60,000, who mount up to
heaven, and therewith Bhagîrathas rules for yet many a year over his
people in peace.

Other theogonies such as the Scandinavian and the Greek are very
similar in type to the Hindoo. The principal feature of them all
is this of physical generation and production; but not one of them
plunges so headlong into the subject or in general displays such
caprice and impropriety in the images of its invention as the Hindoo.
The theogony of Hesiod is in particular far more intelligible and
succinct, so that at least one knows where one is, and is clear as to
the general significance; and this is so because the impression is
far more pronounced that the form and external embodiment of the myth
is set forth by the narrator as something external. The mythos starts
in this case[54] with Chaos, Erebos, Eros, and Gaia. The Earth (Gaia)
brings forth Uranos of her own accord, and then is mother by him of
the mountains, sea, and so forth, also of Cronos and the Cyclops,
Centimani[55], whom Uranos, however, shortly after birth incarcerates
in Tartaros. Gaia thereupon induces Cronos to castrate Uranos. The deed
is accomplished. And from the blood that falls on the Earth spring to
life the Erinnyes and the Giants. The castrated member is caught by the
sea, and from the sea's foam arises Cytherea. In all this description
the outlines are more clearly and decisively drawn. And we are thereby
carried beyond the circle of mere gods of Nature.

3. If we endeavour now to seize some point where the transition is
emphasized to the stage of real symbolism, we shall find the same
already in the first beginnings of Hindoo imagination. That is to
say, however preoccupied the Hindoo imagination may be in its efforts
to contort the sensuous phenomenon into a plurality of Divinities, a
preoccupation which no other people has displayed with anything like
the same exhaustless scope and countless transformations, yet from
another point of view in many of its visions and narratives it remains
throughout constant to that spiritual abstraction of a God supreme over
all, in contrast with whom the particular, sensuous, and phenomenal
is undivine, inadequate, and consequently is apprehended as something
negative, something which has finally to be cancelled. For, as we have
from the first noticed, it is precisely this continual involution of
one side on the other which constitutes the fundamental type of the
Hindoo imagination, and makes it for ever incapable of finding a true
principle of reconciliation. The art is consequently never tired of
representing, in every imaginable way, the surrender of the sensuous
and the power of spiritual abstraction and self-absorption. Of this
kind are the representations of toilsome mortifications and profound
meditations, of which not merely the most ancient epical poems,
such as the "Râmâyana" and the "Mahâbhârata," but also many other
works of art furnish most important examples. No doubt many of these
self-chastisements are undergone on grounds of ambition, or at least
with a view to definite objects, which do conduct the devotee to the
highest and most final union with Brahman, and to the mortification of
everything carnal and finite. An object of this kind is the endeavour
to secure the power of a Brahmin; but even in this there is always the
fact present to consciousness that the expiation and the continuance
of a meditation that is ever more and more diverted from the objects
of sense will raise the devotee over his birth-place in a particular
caste, no less than help him resist the power of Nature and the gods
of Nature. For this reason, that prince of Divinities of this class,
Indras, opposes most signally strenuous aspirants, and strives to
entice them away; or, in the case where all his seductions fail, he
invokes assistance from the supreme gods lest the entire heaven fall
into confusion.

In the representation of mortifications of this kind and the several
kinds and grades according to which they are ranked, Hindoo art is
almost as fertile in its invention as in its system of Divinities, and
it pursues the theme with the most thorough earnestness.

This, then, is the point from which we may now extend our survey in a
forward direction.



C. REAL SYMBOLISM


In the case of symbolical, no less than that of Fine Art, it is
necessary that the significance which it seeks to embody should not
merely be set forth, as is the case in Hindoo art, from the first
immediate unity of the same with its objective existence, such
as obtains before any severation or distinction has as yet been
emphasized, but that this significance should itself be independent and
_free_ from the _immediate_ sensuous content. This deliverance can only
so far assert itself as the sensuous and natural medium is both grasped
and envisaged as itself essentially negative, as that which has to be
and has been absorbed. It is a further requirement, moreover, that the
negativity, which is successful in making its appearance as the passing
off and the self-dissolution of the Natural, should be accepted and
receive embodiment as the _absolute import_ of the object generally,
as a phase, that is to say, of the Divine. But with a fulfilment of
such claims we are already beyond the limits of Hindoo art. It is true
that the consciousness of this negative side is not wholly absent
from the Hindoo imagination. Sivas is the destroyer no less than the
producer. Indras dies, nay, more, the Destroyer Time, personified as
Kâla the terrible giant, confounds the entire universe and all gods,
even Trimûrtis, who passes away at the same time in Brahman, just as
the individual in his self-identification with the highest form of
Divinity suffers his Ego and all his wisdom and will to vanish away.
In these conceptions, however, the negative element is in part merely
a transformation and change, in part only an abstraction, which allows
all definition to drop away, in order that it may thrust its path to
an indefinite and consequently vacuous and content-less universality.
The substance of the Divine on the other hand persists through change
of form, passage over and advance to a system of many Deities, and the
abrogation of that system once more in the one highest form of God
unalterably one and the same. It is not that conception of the one
God, which itself essentially possesses, as this unity, the negative
aspect as its own determination, both necessary and appropriate to its
own essential notion. In an analogous way the destructive and hurtful
element is placed according to the Parsee view of existence _outside_
the personality of Ormuzd in Ahriman, and consequently only makes a
contradiction and conflict manifest belonging under no form of relation
to Ormuzd, as a distinct phase of his own substance.

The actual point in the advance which we have now to make consists,
therefore, in this that, on the one hand, the negative aspect, fixed
by consciousness in an independent relation as the Absolute, is,
however, on the other, merely regarded as a phase of the Divine, as
a phase, however, which is not only as outside the true Absolute
incidental to another Godhead[56], but is to be so ascribed to the
Absolute, that the true God appears as a process in which He negates
_Himself_, and thereby contains this negative element as an inherent
self-determination of His own substance.

Through this enlarged conception the Absolute is for the first time
essentially _concrete_, that is self-determination, and thereby
essential unity, whose particular antitheses, as parts of a process,
appear to consciousness as the different determinations of one and
the same God. For the necessity of giving essential definition to the
absolute significance is just that which at this stage it is felt to be
of first importance to satisfy. All the significances up to this point
persisted by virtue of their abstract character as absolutely undefined
and consequently void of content, or were merged, when in a converse
direction they tended to clear distinction, immediately in the Being of
Nature, or fell into a conflict in respect to their configuration which
gave them no repose and reconciliation. This twofold defect we have now
to remove, both by showing the advance of Thought regarded as itself an
ideal process, and by illustrating that advance by means of particular
facts of the mind and institutions of nations on the objective plane of
history.

And in the _first_ place we may observe a more intimate bond of
association is set up between the Inward and Outward aspect of
consciousness in the increased recognition that every determination
of the Absolute is already essentially an inchoate movement in the
direction of expression. For every determination is essentially
distinction[57]. The External, however, is as such always defined
and distinct, and consequently there is thus an aspect immediately
presented, according to which the External is manifested in a form
more adequate to the significance than was possible under the modes
of conception as yet examined. The first definition, however, and
essential negation of the Absolute inevitably falls short of the free
self-determination of Spirit as _Spirit._ It is merely the immediate
negation of itself. This immediate and consequently natural negation
in its most comprehensive form of statement is _Death._ The Absolute
is consequently apprehended now in a way that it is compelled to
submit itself to this form of negation as a part of the essential
determination of its own notion, in other words it is obliged to enter
the path of extinction, and we observe consequently the glorification
of Death and grief in the first instance made present to the national
consciousness as the death of the dying sensuous material. The death of
Nature is cognized as a necessary part[58] of the life of the Absolute.
The Absolute, however, on the one hand, in order to be subject to this
phase of Death, must be posited already as determinate existence; and,
equally from another point of view, must not be suffered to remain in
the annihilation of Death, but must be held to _re-establish_ itself
in an essentially positive unity on a yet higher plane of existence.
Death is consequently not accepted here as constituting the entire
significance, but merely one aspect of the same. And though no doubt
the Absolute is in one sense viewed as a cessation of its immediate
existence, a passage over and beyond and a passing away, yet it is
quite as much in the reverse sense conceived as a return upon itself,
as a resurrection, as an eternal process of Divine realization rendered
possible by virtue of this evolutional principle of negation. For Death
is capable of a twofold meaning. Under the first it is the immediate
passing away of the natural; under the second Death is the extinction
of the exclusively natural and thereby the birth of a higher type, that
is, spiritual, from which the merely natural falls away in the sense,
that Spirit possesses in itself this phase as an essential phase of its
own substance.

For this reason, _secondly_, the form of Nature can no longer be
accepted in the immediacy of sensuous existence as adequate to the
significance referred to it, because the significance of the External
consists just in this, that it must die in the form of its real
existence and rise again.

On the same ground, _thirdly_, the mere conflict between significance
and form and that ferment of the imagination, which was the fantastic
product of Hindoo conceptions, drop away. The significance is, it is
true, even now not yet fully and with absolute clarity cognized in its
pure unity _free_ from all sense-presented reality, so that it could be
set forth in real _contrast_ with the form of its actual embodiment;
conversely, however, the form itself, this particular, object, that
is, whether in its glorified shape of grandiosity or in any other
more conspicuous form of caricature, as an image of animal life, a
human personification, event or action, is not taken to envisage for
immediate sense an adequate existence of the Absolute. This corrupt
form of identity is already surpassed as fully to the extent that it
still falls behind that other complete deliverance. And in the place of
both of these extremes we have asserted that kind of representation,
which we have above already described as the _real symbolical._ On the
one hand it is now _able_ to appear for the reason that the Inward, or
that which is conceived as significance, is no longer something which
merely, as in Hindoo conceptions, comes and passes away, at one moment
is absorbed immediately in externality, at another is withdrawn from
the same into the solitude of abstraction, but it begins to make itself
independently secure against the mere reality of Nature. And on the
other hand the symbol is now forced to seek some form of plastic shape.
That is to say, although the significance, identical in every way with
that which has hitherto obtained, possesses as a phasal condition of
its content the negation of the Natural, yet the true Inward now for
the first time shows a definite tendency to wrest its way from that
Natural, and is consequently itself still swallowed up within the
external mode of appearance, so that it is unable independently to be
brought home to consciousness in its clear universality without having
previously had to comply with the form of external reality.

Now the kind of _configuration_ which is implied by the notion of
that which generally constitutes the _fundamental significance_ in
symbolism, may be described in the following terms, namely, we find in
it that the definite forms of Nature, human activities and so forth,
neither--to express one aspect of it--represent or signify merely
themselves severally in their isolated natural characteristics, nor--to
emphasize the other aspect--bring their immediate form to consciousness
as the Divine actually visible to sense. They are rather employed to
_suggest_ that same Divine through qualities which they possess cognate
with a significance of more comprehensive range. For this reason it is
just that universal dialectic of Life, its origin, growth, collapse
in and awakening from Death, which also in this connection supplies
the appropriate content for the true symbolic type; and this is so
because we find in almost every province of natural and spiritual
life certain phenomena, which presuppose this process as the basis of
their existence, and consequently can be utilized as means of giving a
visible body to such significant aspects and of pointing by suggestion
to the same, a real affinity being actually inherent between the two
sides. Thus plants spring from their seed, sprout, grow, bring forth
fruit; the fruit corrupts and produces fresh seed. In the same way the
sun rises to a low elevation in winter; in Spring he mounts on high,
until we have his meridian reached in summer; it is then that he pours
forth his richest blessing or exerts the greatest destructive force;
after that he inclines once more towards the horizon. The various
stages of human life, too, childhood, youth, maturity, and old age,
illustrate precisely the same universal process. But in a special sense
specific localities such as the Nile-valley are adapted to the closer
particularization in the direction indicated.

In so far, then, as that which is purely fantastic is displaced by
these more fundamental traits of affinity and the more intimate
applicability of the expression to the import it expresses there arises
a thoughtful process of selection with reference to the comparative
congruity or incongruity of the symbolizing forms, and the intoxicated
eddy to and fro which prevailed is laid to rest in a more intelligent
circumspection.

We consequently observe that a union more at one with itself reappears
in the place of that which we found in the first stage of our process,
subject, however, to this characteristic difference, that the identity
of the significance with its objectively real existence is no longer
one immediately envisaged, but one that is _set up_ out of the
difference and consequently not one previously discovered, rather we
should say a mode of union that is the _product of mind_ (Spirit). That
which, in its most general terms, we call the _Inward_ begins at this
point to assume the solidity of self-subsistence, to be conscious of
itself; it seeks for its counterfeit in the objects of Nature, which
on their part possess a similar reflection in the life and destinies
of Spirit. Out of this eager movement to recognize the one side in
the other, and by means of the external to bring for itself visibly
to sense and the imaginative faculty the significance, as also to
envisage by virtue of that Inward the significance of the external
shapes through a union in which both sides are associated, we get that
vast impulse of art which finds its satisfaction through means which
are purely symbolical. Only when the Inward is free and is driven
forward to make clear to the imaginative vision in real form what it
essentially is, and to have before itself this very vision, moreover,
in the form of an external work, do we find that the genuine impulse
of art, and the particularly plastic arts, begins to be a living fact.
Then it is that the necessity is felt to clothe the Inward with a
form not merely previously discovered from the resources of spiritual
activity, but rather one that is minted out of spirit (mind) for the
first time. In the symbol, then, there is a second form _created_,
which, however, is not independently valid for itself as its main
purpose, but is rather employed to envisage the significance, and
stands consequently in a dependent relation to the same.

It were possible to apprehend the above relation in such a way as
though the significance were that point from which the artistic
consciousness starts on its journey, and that only after having found
this it begins to look round for means to express its universal
conceptions through external phenomena cognate in their affinity to
such conceptions. This, however, is not the way that real symbolic
art proceeds. For its characteristic distinction consists in this,
that its penetration fails as yet to grasp the significances in their
independent consistency, independent, that is, from every mode of
externality. For this reason its point of departure is rather from
that which is immediately presented and its concrete existence in
Nature and Spirit. This it thereupon, in the first instance, expands
to the measure of the universality of such significances, whose
determination such objective real existence contains only under more
restricted conditions, adding this wider range in order that it may
create a form from Spirit, which is to make that universality visible
to consciousness in this particular reality when once it is set forth
clearly before perception. Regarded as symbolical forms, therefore,
the images of art have not as yet attained a form truly adequate
to Spirit, inasmuch as Spirit itself is not as yet at this stage
essentially clear and thereby free Spirit; but we have at least here
embodiments, which essentially proclaim the fact to us, that they are
not merely selected to represent simply themselves, but are intended to
point to significances of profounder intension and more--comprehensive
range. That which is purely natural and sensuous asserts itself as fact
and nothing beside; the symbolical work of art, however, whether it
be the phenomena of Nature or the human figure that it makes visible
to the eye, points at the same time over and outside such facts to
something further, which, however, must possess an intimate root of
affinity with the images that are thus displayed, and an essential bond
of relation with them. This association between the concrete form and
its universal significance may conceivably be present in many different
ways. At one time the emphasis will be laid on the external aspect, and
it will consequently be more obscure; at another, however, the basis of
affinity will be more pronounced as in the case when the universality,
which is to be symbolized, constitutes, in fact, the essential content
of the concrete phenomenon. In this case naturally it is a much simpler
matter to grasp the symbolic character of the object.

The most abstract mode of expression in this respect is _number_,
which, however, it is only possible to use as an indication of a
further meaning beyond that it ordinarily elucidates when this
significance is itself, essentially numerical. The numbers seven and
twelve are frequently met with in Egyptian architecture, because
seven is the number of the planets, and twelve is that of the lunar
revolutions or the number of feet that the water of the Nile must
necessarily rise in order to fructify the land. Such a number is then
regarded as sacred in so far as it is present as a determinant in the
great elementary relations, which are revered as forces in the whole
life of Nature. Twelve steps or seven pillars are to this extent
symbolical. The same kind of numerical symbolism has an extensive
influence upon the form of widely famous mythologies. The twelve
labours of Hercules, for example, appear to contain a reference to the
twelve months of the year; for if Hercules under one aspect of the myth
is no doubt presented to us as the thoroughly human impersonation of a
hero, in another he unquestionably indicates a significance of Nature
under a symbolized form, and, in fact, is a personification of the
course of the sun.

In a further and more complete sense symbolical configurations of
space, labyrinthine passages, and such like carry a symbolical image
of the course of the planets, just as dances, too, in virtue of their
complex evolutions symbolically express the motion of the great
elementary bodies.

And further, on a higher plane, the bodies of animals are utilized
as symbols, but most succinctly of all the human figure, which, even
at this stage, as we shall see later on, appears to be elaborated in
modes more compatible with its intrinsic worth for the reason that even
now Spirit in general makes a real movement to embody itself from out
the mere swaddling clothes of Nature in a shape more adequate to its
own self-subsistent personality. Such, then, constitutes our general
concept of the true form of symbolism and the necessity under which
art labours to express the same. And in order that we may discuss the
more concrete exemplifications of this type of symbolism, it will be
necessary in dealing with this first plunge of Spirit into the wealth
of its own resources to leave the East and direct our attention mainly
on the West.

As a symbol of universal import to indicate the point of view where
we now stand, we may perhaps first and foremost fix before our eyes
the image of the Phoenix, which is its own funeral pile, yet ever is
rejuvenated out of the flames of its death and rises from the ashes.
Herodotus informs us (II, 73) that at least in representations he saw
this bird in Egypt, and, in fact, it is the _Egyptian_ people who also
supply us with a focus for the type of symbolical art. Before, however,
we proceed to the closer consideration of Egyptian art we will mention
several other myths, which form, as it were, the passage to that
national symbolism which we find most elaborate, no matter from what
direction we approach it. Such are the myths of Adonis, that of his
death, and the lament of Aphrodite over him, the funeral festivals,
etc., conceptions and rites which find their original home on the
Syrian coast. The service of Cybele among the Phrygians possesses the
same significance, which also finds its echo in the myths of Castor and
Pollux, Ceres and Proserpina.

As the essence of such significance we find in the above quoted
examples, before everything else, that phasal condition of negation we
have already alluded to, the death, that is, of the natural regarded
as a basic and absolute condition of the Divine process, emphasized
as such, and made visible in its independence. It is in this sense
that we can explain the funeral festivals that celebrate the death of
the god, the excessive lamentations over his loss, which is once more
made good through his rediscovery, resurrection, and rejuvenescence,
making it possible for the festivals of joy to follow. This universal
significance contains further its more definite relation to Nature.
In winter the sun loses his force, while in spring he returns once
more, and with that Nature regains her youth, she dies and is reborn.
In examples such as these the Divine, personified as a human event,
discovers its significance in the life of Nature, which then from a
further point of view becomes a symbol for the essential character of
the negative condition generally, in spiritual things no less than
natural.

It is in _Egypt_, however, that we have to look for the perfect
example of symbolical representation in its systematic elaboration of
characteristic content and form. Egypt is the land of symbol, which
proposes to itself the spiritual problem of the self-interpretation
of Spirit, without being able successfully to solve it. The problems
remain without an answer; and such solution as we are able to supply
consists therefore merely in this, that we grasp these riddles of
Egyptian art and its symbolical productions as this very problem which
Egypt propounds for herself but is unable to solve. For the reason
that we find that Spirit here still endeavours in the external objects
of sense, from which again it strains to free itself, and further
labours with unwearied assiduity, to evolve from itself its essential
substance by means of natural phenomena no less than to embody the same
in the form of spirit for the _vision of the senses_, rather than
as the pure content of mind, this Egyptian people may, in contrast
to all the instances previously examined, be described as the nation
Art claims for herself[59]. Its works of art, however, remain full of
mystery and silence, without music or motion; and this is so because
Spirit here has not yet truly found its own life, nor has learned how
to utter the clear and luminous speech of mind. In the unsatisfied
stress and impulse, to bring before the vision through her art, albeit
in so voiceless a way, this wrestle of herself with herself, to give
shape to the Inward of her life, but only to become conscious of her
own Inward, no less than that which universally prevails[60], through
external forms which are cognate with it--we have in a sentence the
characterization of Egypt. The people of this wonderful land was not
merely agricultural, but also constructive, a folk which tossed up the
soil in every direction, delved lakes and canals, and exercised their
artistic instincts not merely in giving visible shape to buildings of
enormous solidity, but in carrying works themselves of vast dimension
to a like extent into the bowels of the earth. To erect buildings of
this kind was, as we have long ago learned from Herodotus, a principal
occupation of this people, and one of the chief exploits of their
kings. The buildings of the Hindoo race are also unquestionably of
colossal size; we shall, however, find nowhere else a variety which can
compare with that of Egypt.

1. Reviewing now the general conceptions of Egyptian art with a closer
attention to particular aspects of it, we may in the first place define
the fundamental principle of so much of it as follows, that we find
here the Inward is securely held in its independent opposition to the
immediacy of external existence. And what is more, this Inward is
conceived as the negation of Life, in other words the dead thing, not
as the abstract negation of the evil and hurtful thing, such as Ahriman
in contrast to Ormuzd, but as form essentially substantive.

(_a_) To illustrate this thought further, the Hindoo merely subtilizes
his life to the most empty of abstractions, that is in result one that
therewith negates every form of concrete content. Such a Brahm-becoming
process is not to be found in Egypt; rather we find here that the
invisible possesses a fuller significance; the corpse secures the
content of the living body itself, which, however, as torn away from
immediate existence, in its retirement from actual life[61], still
possesses its relation to that which is alive, and in this concrete
form is maintained as self-subsistent. It is a well-known fact that
the Egyptians embalmed and revered cats, dogs, hawks, ichneumons,
bears, and wolves (Herod., II, 67), but most of all the dead human body
(Herod., II, 86-90). By them the honour paid to the dead is not that of
burial, but its preservation from age to age as a corpse.

(_b_) And moreover we may observe that the Egyptians do not merely
remain constant to this immediate and still wholly natural permanency
of the dead. That which is preserved in its physical or natural aspect
is also conceived to endure in a form present to the imagination.
Herodotus informs us that the Egyptians were the first who held the
doctrine that the human soul is immortal. We consequently find that
they are the first who present to us a more exalted mode of this
resolution of the natural and spiritual, a mode that is to say, under
which it is not merely the natural body which secures an independent
self-subsistence.

The immortality of the soul is a conception which borders closely upon
the freedom of Spirit. The Ego is here apprehended as removed from the
purely natural mode of its existence, reposing on its own substance.
This knowledge of itself, however, is the principle of freedom. No
doubt we are not justified in asserting that the Egyptians grasped
the notion of spiritual freedom in its profoundest sense. We must not
imagine that their belief in the immortality of the soul is identical
with our own form of that belief; but they already possessed the power
to retain securely that which was separated from Life under a form
of existence visible only to the imagination, no less than one in
which it was identical with the bodily material. They have thereby
made possible the passage to the full emancipation of Spirit, albeit
it was but the threshold of the temple of freedom that they passed
over. This fundamental conception of theirs is further expanded to a
unified and substantial Kingdom of the Departed set up in contrast to
the immediate presence of the real. A Court of Justice of the Dead is
held in this invisible state over which Osiris as Amenthes presides.
One of similar character is also instituted in the sphere of immediate
reality, justice being executed even among men over the dead, and after
the decease of a king every one was entitled to submit his grievances
to that court.

(_c_) If we now proceed to inquire what is the _symbolical_ form of
art, which is given to such conceptions, we must look for this among
the characteristic features of Egyptian architecture. The form of this
architecture is twofold; there is one type that is superterraneous,
while the other is subterraneous.

On the one hand we find underground labyrinths, gorgeous and extensive
excavations, passages half a mile in length, dwellings covered with
hieroglyphics elaborated with every possible care. On the other we have
piled above their level those amazing constructions among which we
may first and foremost reckon the _pyramids_. For centuries men have
ventilated various notions as to the precise meaning and significance
of these pyramids. It is now, however, assured beyond dispute that they
are nothing more or less than the enclosures of the graves of kings or
sacred animals, such as the Apis, the Cat, or the Ibis. In this way we
have before our eyes in the pyramids the simple prototype of symbolical
art. They are enormous crystals which secrete an Inward within them;
and they so enclose an external form which is the product of art, that
we are at the same time made aware they stand there for this very
Inward in its severation from the mere actuality of Nature, and that
their entire significance depends on that relation. But this kingdom
of Death and the Invisible, which here constitutes the significance,
possesses merely the one and, what is more, the formal aspect
appropriate to the true type of art, that is its dissociation from
immediate existence; it is for this reason primarily but a Hades, not
yet a Life, which, although raised above sensuous existence as such,
is none the less at the same time essentially a defined existence,
and thereby intrinsically free and living Spirit. Consequently the
embodiment for such an Inward still remains in relation to the
determinacy of the same's content quite as much a wholly external form
and envelopment. Such an external environment, in which an Inward
reposes under a veil, are the pyramids.

2. In so far, then, as the Inward can be generally envisaged as an
external object to immediate perception, the Egyptians in their
relation to the aspect opposed to this externality have come to worship
a Divine existence in living animals, such as the bull, the cat, and
various others. That which is alive is on a higher plane than the
purely inorganic object, inasmuch as the living organism possesses an
Inward, to which the external shape points, which, however, persists
as an Inward and consequently a realm of mystery. This sacred cult of
animals must consequently be understood as the vision of a secreted
soul[62], which as Life is a power superior to that which is merely
external. To us no doubt it can only appear as a repugnant fact that
animals, dogs and cats, are held sacred instead of that which is truly
spiritual.

This worship, moreover, has nothing symbolical in it viewed simply as
such; for it is the actual living animal, Apis or the like, which is
here itself revered as the existence of God. The Egyptians, however,
have used the shapes of animals in a symbolical way. In that case
they are no longer valid, simply for what they are, but it is further
assumed that they express a more universal import. We find the most
ingenuous illustration of this in the use of animal masks, which we
find more particularly under representations of embalming, at which
process certain individuals, who take an active part, either in opening
the corpse or removing the intestines, are depicted wearing such masks.
It is obvious that the animal's head is not taken to present the animal
itself, but a significance at the same time distinct from it and more
universal. The forms of animals are also utilized in other ways than
this in admixture with the human form. Human figures are to be found
with heads of lions, which have been interpreted as images of Minerva;
then there are heads of the hawk, and in the heads of Ammon we find
the horns still retained. Examples such as the above obviously imply
symbolical relations. In a like sense the hieroglyphical writing of
the Egyptians is in great measure symbolical, for it either endeavours
to make its meaning comprehensible through the images of real objects
which do not stand for themselves, but a universality which is cognate
with them, or, as is still more frequently the case, in the so-called
phonetic aspect of this style of writing, it signifies particular
letters by means of the specific mark of some external object, whose
initial letter possesses in speech the same tone as that which it is
the intention to express.

3. And generally it is the fact that in Egypt pretty nearly every
conformation is symbolical and hieroglyphical, expressing not itself
but indicative of something more, with which it possesses affinity,
or in other words a cognate relation. The truest forms of the symbol,
however, are only completely illustrated in such cases where we find
that this relation is of a more profound and fundamental character
than those we have just adverted to. We will now briefly enumerate
a few constantly recurring examples of this more important type of
affiliation.

(_a_) Precisely as Egyptian belief[63] surmises a mysterious Inwardness
of content in the animal form, we find the human figure represented in
such a way that the most characteristic intension[64] of subjectivity
is still asserted through an external relation, and consequently is
unable to unfold into the freedom of Beauty. Particularly remarkable
in this respect are those colossal figures of _Memnon_ which, reposing
on themselves, motionless, with arms glued to the body, feet close
together, inflexible, stiff and lifeless, are set up face to face
with the sun, waiting for his ray to strike them, animate them, and
make them resonant. Herodotus, at any rate, informs us that these
Memnonic figures emitted a musical note on the sun's rising. The
higher criticism has no doubt expressed itself as sceptical on the
latter point; the fact, however, of a distinct note has recently been
once more established both by Frenchmen and Englishmen; and though it
appears that this echo is no result of previous mechanical ingenuity,
we have an explanation of it in the fact that, as sometimes happens
with minerals which make a crackling noise in water, the tone of these
images of stone is actually produced by the collective action of the
dew, the morning cool, and the subsequent impact of the sun's rays, to
the extent, that is, that tiny fractures appear in the stone which then
again disappear. In any case we may attribute to these colossal shapes
the symbolical import, that they do not possess the spiritual principle
of Life free in themselves, and consequently require that their
animation should be brought to them externally by Light, which alone is
able to unbar the music of their life, instead of having the power to
accept the same from that real soul of Inwardness, which essentially
carries with it measure and beauty. In contrast to them the human
voice is the echo of personal feeling and the soul's self, without any
external stimulant, just as the height of human art generally consists
in the fact that the Inward of Spirit supplies the form thereof from
its own substance. The Inward or soul of the human form is in Egypt
still a mute, and in its animation it is the relation to external
nature which alone commands attention.

(_b_) A further type of symbolical conception is to be found in Isis
and Osiris. Osiris is an object of procreation and birth, and is done
to death by Typhon. Isis seeks for the scattered members, finds,
collects, and buries them. This mythos of the god has, then, in the
first place as its content purely _natural significance._ From one
point of view, that is to say, Osiris is the sun, and his life-history
stands as symbolic for his yearly course; from another, however, he
signifies the rise and fall of the Nile, which is necessarily the
source of all fruitfulness in Egypt. For in Egypt there may not be a
drop of rain for years together, and it is the Nile which primarily
waters the land by its floods. In winter time it flows but a shallow
stream within its bed; then, however, with the summer-solstice
("Herod.," II, 19) it begins for a hundred days to rise, pours over its
banks and streams far and wide over the land. Finally the water dries
up beneath the sun's heat and the scorching desert winds, and once
more retires to its course. Under such conditions the tillage of the
soil is carried out with ease; the most luxurious vegetation springs
up. Everything buds and ripens. The sun and Nile, and the way both of
them become weak or strong, these are the conspicuous forces of Nature
in this land, which the Egyptian has symbolically depicted under a
human form in the myths of Isis and Osiris. To this type of symbolism,
too, belongs the symbolical representation of the zodiac, which is
associated with the year's course, just as the number of the twelve
gods is bound up with the months. Conversely, however, Osiris typifies
under another aspect the entirely _human._ He is held sacred as the
founder of agriculture, of the division of the soil, property and laws,
and his worship is consequently to an equal extent related to human
activities, which are connected in the closest manner with ethical and
judicial functions.

In the same way he is judge of the Dead, and secures as such a
significance wholly released from the mere life of Nature, an import
under which the symbolical tends to pass away for the reason that
here the Inward and Spiritual is of itself content of the human form,
which, under such a mode of relation, begins to conserve the Inward
essentially belonging to it, one, that is, which through its external
form signifies merely its own substance. This spiritual process,
however, assumes again in equal measure as its content the external
life of Nature, and, for example, in temples, number of steps, floors,
and pillars, in labyrinths and their passages, windings and chambers,
represents the same in an external manner. Osiris is thus quite as much
the natural as he is the spiritual life in the different phases of his
process[65] and its transformations; and his symbolical embodiments are
partly symbolic of the elements of Nature; while again in part these
changes of Nature are themselves merely symbols of spiritual activities
and their various phases. For this reason, too, the human form persists
here as no mere personification, such as we found to be the-case
previously, because here the natural aspect, albeit from one point of
view it appears as the real significance, yet from another is itself
merely asserted as a symbol of the Spirit; and, generally speaking,
at this stage of conception, where we find that the Inward struggles
to come forth from the sense-vision of Nature, it is in a position of
subordinance.

For the same reason we find here that the human figure already receives
an entirely different type of elaboration, attesting thereby a real
effort to penetrate the arcana of true Inwardness and Spirit, though
this endeavour also fails as yet to attain its object, that is, the
essential freedom of the Spiritual. And it is by reason of this very
defect that the human figure remains before us with neither freedom nor
serene clarity, colossal, brooding, petrified, legs, arms, and head
glued straitened and tight to the rest of the body, without the grace
or motion of Life. Thus it is that art is first ascribed to Daedalus,
in that he loosed arms and feet from their fetters, and endowed the
body with movement.

On account of this alternative aspect of symbolism above referred to
symbolism in Egypt is, in addition to its other characteristics, a
totality of symbols in the sense that what in one respect is asserted
as significance is employed as symbol in a sphere cognate with it. This
ambiguous association of a symbolism which makes significance and form
intertwine, which is further actually typical or suggestive of much,
and thereby is already concurrent with that inward subjective sense,
which alone is capable of following such indications in a variety of
directions[66], is the characteristic distinction of these images,
albeit by reason of this ambiguity the difficulty of interpreting them
is of course increased.

A significance of this type--attempts at deciphering which are
unquestionably nowadays carried too far for the reason that pretty
nearly every kind of form is virtually set before us as symbolical
in some relation--may very possibly from the point of view of the
Egyptians themselves have been clear and intelligible as significance.
But, as we insisted at the very entrance of our inquiry, the
appropriate motto for the interpretation of Egyptian symbolism is
_implicite multum nihil explicite._ There is a type of workmanship
undertaken with the express endeavour that it shall carry its own
interpretation on the forehead, but we only find there evidence of the
effort; it stops short of the essential point of self-illumination. It
is in this sense that we must fix our eyes on the works of Egyptian
art. They contain riddles, the full solution of which is not merely
withheld from ourselves, but was equally beyond the reach of the great
majority of the artists who created them.

(_c_) The works of Egyptian art in their excessively mysterious
symbolism are therefore riddles, let us rather say the objective
riddle's self. And we may summarily define the _Sphinx_ as symbol of
the real significance of the genius of Egypt. It stands as a symbol for
symbolism itself. In countless numbers, set forth in rows of a hundred
at a time, we come across these Sphinx-forms on Egyptian soil; they
are hewn from the hardest stone, polished, covered with hieroglyphics,
and in the vicinity of Cairo of such colossal dimensions that their
lion-claws alone measure a man's height. Their animal bodies lie in
repose, above which as bust a human body rears itself; now and again
we find the head of a ram, but in the most common case it is that of
a woman. Out of the obtuse strength and robustness of animality the
spirit of man is fain to press forward, albeit still unable to attain
the perfect representation of his own freedom, or a counterfeit of
his body in motion; and this is inevitable, for he is still forced to
remain blended in the company of that Other which confronts himself.
This straining after self-conscious spirituality, which fails to grasp
itself from the truth of its own substance in a form of external
reality which is alone adequate to express it, and instead envisages
and brings the same home to consciousness in that which is merely
cognate with it, but also that which is equally foreign to it, is, in
its general terms, the symbolical; and we find it here concentrated to
a point as the riddle.

It is in this sense that the Sphinx in the Greek mythos, which itself
again is open to symbolic interpretation, appears as the monster
which propounds its riddle. The sphinx asked here the famous and
problematical question: "Who is it, who walks in the morning on four
legs, at noon upon two legs, and in the evening on three?" Oedipus
discovered the simple answer that it was man himself, and hurled the
sphinx from the rocks. The resolution of the symbol consists in the
illumination of all that is implied in the significance of one word,
Spirit, just as the famous Greek inscription cries out to mankind:
"Know thyself." The light of consciousness is that clarity, which
suffers its concrete content to shine all luminous through the form
which is wholly adapted to unfold it, and in its positive form of
existence simply reveals that which it is in truth.

[Footnote 37: _Bedeutung_.]

[Footnote 38: What Hegel means is that calling an aspect of sense
bodily or natural itself implies a distinction from that which is
spiritual, or only cognized by mind, and this distinction is not
present to the earliest human cognition of Divine reality.]

[Footnote 39: _Das Lichtreine._]

[Footnote 40: Except in the conceptions of the Hebrew prophets this is
only true subject to qualification even of the God of Israel. For he
was evidently associated with the thunder, to take but one case--the
deliverance of the tables of stone on Sinai.]

[Footnote 41: _Phantasie_ may often be translated by the word
imagination, but here the element of caprice and dependence on sensuous
image rather than creative impulse directed by a principle of selection
is to be emphasized.]

[Footnote 42: _Ein Taumel_, _i.e._, the dance as of intoxication.]

[Footnote 43: This is obviously a difficult passage to follow. The
main thing to remember is that Hegel is here describing the movement
of a dialectical process, that is the purely objective, rather than
the point of view of personal or even national experience. Such vivid
expressions as _Taumel_ and _schamlos hineinrücken_ remind one of the
Platonic dialectic.]

[Footnote 44: Hegel's editor has Brahman here, but according to a
passage lower down (p. 59) it should rather be Brahmâ.]

[Footnote 45: _Hinaufschrauben_, lit., a screwing up to--a screwing
that in fact crews the head off.]

[Footnote 46: _Verdumpfens._ Either Hegel wrote _Verdummens_, or more
probably _Verdampfens._ The idea of "becoming mouldy" makes no sense.]

[Footnote 47: This I think is the sense, though Hegel expresses it by
using words such as _das Personificieren und Vermenschlichen_, and
lower down _das Subjektiviren._ But previously he has rather contrasted
that false kind of personification which seeks for the significant
in the expression of the subject, his deeds and acts, rather than in
grasping the motive centre of personality, the subjective principle
itself, and it appears more intelligible in a passage, which is
sufficiently hard to follow in any ease, to preserve that contrast.]

[Footnote 48: There is apparently only one ring and sceptre, but the
words used are capable of the interpretation that would attach one for
each of the hands.]

[Footnote 49: Hegel cites Wilson's Lexicon, _s.v._ 2.]

[Footnote 50: _Dem Rhythmus nach_, that is, the Hindoo conception
is entirely superficial, and expresses rather a rhythmic order than
a profound spiritual truth which this number expresses, a truth
which as Hegel has previously observed may be expressed under other
determinations than the numerical.]

[Footnote 51: _Unstätigkeit_, instability, flightiness, detachment from
a fundamental principle.]

[Footnote 52: That is Brahmâ apparently.]

[Footnote 53: The order of the words would strictly mean that the sons
were in the pitchers and it is quite possible that this is the meaning.]

[Footnote 54: That is, in Greek cosmogony.]

[Footnote 55: What: _Centimanen_ refers to I do not know, possibly a
name for Arges, Ceropes, and Brontes.]

[Footnote 56: The sense is "which is not merely (to take the obvious
case of opposition which is, however, _not_ the one here described)
totally outside the Absolute and incidental to," etc. Hegel's words
would admit of the interpretation that this was part of the conception
he is describing. But this is obviously not so, for, in that case, the
negative would be ascribed to both the Absolute and the "other God."]

[Footnote 57: _Ist Unterscheiden_, is that which involves
differentiation. To posit a quality is to distinguish from other
qualities. A fundamental, aspect of Hegelian logic.]

[Footnote 58: _Glied_, part of one organic totality.]

[Footnote 59: Hegel uses an expression somewhat similar to Milton's
"Among the faithless faithful only he." _Den Bisherigen_ refers
primarily, of course, to the Persian and Hindoo peoples.]

[Footnote 60: _Wie des Innern überhaupt_, _i.e._, the Inward with its
significance as the Absolute.]


[Footnote 61: _In seiner Abgeschiedenheit vom Leben_. In other words
the corpse was preserved as still the only appropriate external form of
Life. Though Hegel separates the two aspects of Egyptian belief they
were necessary concomitants of each other.]

[Footnote 62: I have translated _Innerem_ here by "soul," but it
expresses of course too much if taken strictly in its most personal
sense.]

[Footnote 63: _Aberglaube_, not "superstition" so much as belief that
is intuitive, not rationally deduced. The emphasis is on _ahnt._]

[Footnote 64: Hegel puts it in the rather obscure and contradictory way
that the human figure is represented as "still _having_ the most unique
form of subjective intensity (_Das eigenste Innre der Subjectivität_)
outside it."]

[Footnote 65: That is, the mythological history of the God.]

[Footnote 66: Lit., "Which alone is able to apply itself (that is, to
the work of interpretation) in a variety of directions."]




CHAPTER II


THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SUBLIME


The perspicuity that has no riddles to expound, which is the object
of symbolic art and veritably the mark of Spirit self-clothed to the
perfect measure of its own substance, can only be attained on condition
that first and foremost the significance be presented to consciousness
distinct and separate from all the phenomena of external existence.
To the union of both immediately envisaged we have traced the absence
of art among the ancient Parsees. The contradiction involved in their
severation, followed by the association which it then stimulated
under the mode of immediacy, was the source of the fantastic type of
Hindoo symbolism. Finally, we have seen that in Egypt, too, the free
and unfettered recognition of the Inward principle and a significance
essentially independent from the phenomenon was lacking; and this
resulted in the mystery and obscurity of a symbolism still more
complete.

The first decisive act of purification, or, in other words, express
separation of the essential substance[67] from the sensuous present,
that is from the empirical facts of external appearance, we must
accordingly seek for in the Sublime, which exalts the Absolute above
every form of immediate existence, and thereby effects that initiatory
mode of its abstract liberation which is the basis of the spiritual
content. As Spirit in its concreteness the significance is not yet
apprehended; but it is, however, conceived as an Inwardness essentially
existent, reposing on its own resources, and of such a nature that
purely finite phenomena are alone inadequate to express its truth.

Kant has raised a very interesting distinction between the idea of the
sublime and the beautiful; and indeed all that he discusses in the
first part of his critique of the Judgment from the twentieth section
to the end--in spite of its considerable prolixity and its reduction of
every form of determination to a fundamentally subjective principle,
whether it be the content of feeling, imagination, or reason--still
possesses a real interest. We may in fact recognize this very reduction
on the ground of its general principle of relation to be just[68]; in
other words, to borrow Kant's own expressions, if the matter of our
consideration is primarily the Sublime in Nature, it is not in any fact
of Nature, but only in the content of our emotional life that such a
Sublime is to be discovered, and, further, only in so far as we are
conscious of a Nature peculiar to ourselves which involves the added
assumption of one that lies outside of us. The statement of Kant is
to be taken in this sense where he says: "The true sublime cannot be
enclosed in any sensuous form; it is only referable to the ideas of
reason, which, albeit no truly adequate representation can be given
them, are excited and awakened to life within the human soul by just
this very incompatibility of the permissibly sensuous representation
with its object[69]." The sublime is, in short, generally the attempt
to express the infinite, without being able to find an object in
the realm of phenomenal existence such as is clearly fitted for its
representation. The infinite, for the very reason that it is posited
independently as invisible and formless significance in contrast to
the complex manifold of objective fact, and is conceived under the
mode of inwardness, so long as it remains infinite remains indefinable
in speech and sublimely unaffected by every expression of the finite
categories.

The earliest content, then, which the significance secures at this
stage consists in this, that in contrast to the totality of the
phenomenal it is the essentially substantive _One_, which itself being
pure Thought is only present to thought in its purity. Consequently
it is no longer possible to inform this substance under the mode
of externality, and to that extent all real symbolical character
disappears. If, however, an attempt is made to envisage this essential
unity for sense-perception, such is only possible under a mode of
relation according to which, while retaining its substantive character,
it is further apprehended as the creative force of everything external,
in which it therefore discovers a means of revelation and appearance,
and with which it is accordingly joined in a positive relation. At the
same time it is an essential feature in the expressed content of this
relation that this substance is asserted above all particular phenomena
as such, no less than above their united manifold; from which it then
follows as a still more consequential result that the positive relation
is deposed for one that is _negative_; and the negative consists in
this that a purification of the substance is thus effected from the
phenomenal taken as any particular thing, that is, in other words, that
which is also not appropriate to it and which vanishes within it.

This mode of giving form, which is annihilated by the very thing which
it would set forth, so that it comes about that the exposition of
content affirms itself as that which renders the exposition null and
void is in fact the _Sublime._ We have therefore not, as we found to be
the view of Kant, to refer the Sublime exclusively to the subjective
content of the soul, and the ideas of reason which belong to it, but
rather form our conception of it as having its fundamental source
in the significance represented, in other words the one absolute
substance. We must, then, further deduce our classification of the
art-type of the Sublime from this twofold relation of the substantive
unity regarded as significance to the phenomenal world.

The characteristic which is held in common by both aspects of this
relation, whether we view it positively or negatively, consists in this
that the substance is posited above the particular appearance, in which
it is assumed to have found a representation, although it can only be
declared thereby under the form of a relation to the phenomenal in its
general terms, for the reason that as substance and ultimate essence
it is itself essentially without form and out of the reach of concrete
external existence. We may describe _pantheistic_ art as the first or
affirmative mode of conception at this stage, a type of conception
which we come across partly in India, and also to some extent in the
liberal atmosphere and mysticism of the more modern poets of Persian
Mohammedanism, and finally in the still profounder intensity of thought
and emotion which characterizes it when it reappears in western
Christianity.

Generally, defined substance is cognized at this stage as immanent in
all its created accidents, which for this reason are not as yet deposed
to a mere relation of service, viewed simply, that is, as an ornament
of glory to the Absolute, but are affirmatively conserved by virtue
of the indwelling substance; and this is so albeit it is the One and
the Divine alone which is set forth and exalted in all particularity.
By this means the poet, who contemplates and reveres this unity in
all things, and sinks his own individuality, no less than every other
object in this contemplation, is able to maintain a positive relation
to the substance, with which he associates all other objects.

The _second_ or _negative_ celebration of the Power and Glory of the
one God is that genuine type of Sublimity which we find in Hebrew
poetry. In this the positive immanence of the Absolute in the created
phenomena is done away with, and in place thereof we have the _one_
substance independently affirmed as sovereign Lord of the world, who
subsists over against the universe of His creations, which are posited
under a relation to this Supreme Being of essential and evanescent
powerlessness. If under such a view any representation is attempted of
the Power and Wisdom of this Unity under the form of the finite objects
of Nature and human destinies, we find nothing here that resembles the
Hindoo's distortion of such objects by the unlimited accretion to their
measure. The Sublimity of God is rather brought home to our senses by
means of a representation whose entire object is to show us that all
that exists in definite guise, with all its splendour, embellishment
and glory, is a loyal accident in His service, a show that vanishes
before the Divine essence and consistency.




A. THE PANTHEISM OF ART


Anyone who makes use of the word pantheism nowadays exposes himself
thereby to the grossest misunderstanding. For, to take but one aspect
of the difficulty, this word "all" signifies generally in our modern
acceptation of the term "all, and everything in its wholly empirical
particularity." We have at once recalled to us, for example, this
particular box with all its attributes, its specific colour, size,
form and weight, or that particular house, book, animal, table,
stool, oven, streak of cloud and so on, to the end of the list. When
we consequently find the charge advanced by not a few of our modern
theologians against philosophy, that it makes a God of everything in
general, it is quite obvious that this "everything" is taken in the
sense we have just adverted to, and this it is which is thus bodily
thrust upon her shoulders. In one word the complaint which attaches
to it is absolutely unwarranted. Such a conception of pantheism only
exists in the heads of stupidity, and is not discoverable in any form
of religion whatever, not even in those of the Iroquois and Esquimaux,
to say nothing of any philosophy. The "Everything" in what has been
termed pantheism is therefore neither this nor that particular thing,
but rather "Everything" in the sense of the "_All_," that is the One
substantive essence, which no doubt is immanent in particular things,
but is cognized in abstraction from their singularity and its empirical
reality, so that it is not the particular as such, but the universal
animating essence or soul, or to adopt a more popular way of speaking,
it is the true and the excellent, both equally a real presence in this
particular thing, which are here affirmed and indicated.

This it is which constitutes the real meaning of pantheism, and we
shall only have occasion now to employ the expression in this sense. It
applies first and foremost to the Orient, whose type of conception is
based on the thought of an absolute unity of Godhead and of everything
else as subsisting in this Unity. As such Unity and All the Divine
can only be presented to consciousness by means of the ever recurrent
evanescence of the limited number of particular objects, in which
its Presence is expressed. On the one hand we have here the Divine
envisaged as immanent in the most diverse objects, whether it be life
or death, mountain or sea, and with still closer intimacy no doubt
as the most excellent and pre-eminent among and in all determinate
existence. On the other hand, inasmuch as the One is this and again
that other and that other beyond it, and in short is discharged into
everything, all particular existence appears for that reason to be
a thing which is cancelled and vanishes, for no particular is alone
this One, but this One is this manifold of particulars which pass away
before semi-perception, as such particulars into the universe which
comprises them. For if the One is Life, it is also at another point
Death, and is to that extent not merely life, so that it is neither
as life nor the sun nor the sea that these or any other objective
realities constitute the Divine and One. At the same time we do not
find here, as in the genuine type of the Sublime, that the accidental
is expressly posited in the negative relation of mere service. So
far from this being so, substance is essentially identified with one
particular and accidental existence, inasmuch as it is this One in
everything. Conversely, however, this very particular, because it
is equally subject to change, and the imagination does not restrict
substance to one definite existence, but moves over every definition,
letting it fall that it may advance to another, is thereby relegated
in its turn to the accidental, over which the One is superposed in the
sublimity thus conjoined with it.

Such a way of viewing existence therefore can only be expressed in art
through poetry; the plastic arts are closed to it, inasmuch as they
bring before the vision the definite and particular, which in their
contrast to the substance present in the objects of Nature has to be
given up in a determinate and persistent form. Where we find pantheism
in its purity no plastic art is found as a mode of its presentation.

1. Once more we may adduce, as a first example of such pantheistic
poetry, the literature of the Hindoos, which along with its fantastic
symbolism has also elaborated the type of art under discussion with
distinction. In other words the Hindoo race, as we have seen, proceed
in their conceptions from the point of most abstract universality and
unity, which is then carried forward to the specific shaping of gods
such as Trimûrtis, Indras, and the rest. This process of definition,
however, is not adhered to with constancy; but to a like extent is
suffered once more to break up, so that we find inferior gods are
absorbed in superior gods, and the highest of all in Brahman. From
this it is sufficiently obvious that this Universal constitutes the
one persistent and unalterable basis of all. And if, as we freely
admit, the Hindoos evince the twofold impulse in their poetry, namely,
either to exaggerate the particular existence, in order that it may
appear to the senses compatible with the significance of the Absolute,
or, in the converse case, to suffer every form of definition to pass
as mere negation when contrasted with the one abstraction of Being,
yet at the same time there is another aspect of their literature, in
which we also find artistic representation under the purer mode of
imaginative pantheism we have just described, a mode in which the
immanence of the Divine is exalted above all particular existence
in which it is presented to sense and which as such disappears. We
may no doubt be rather inclined to recognize in this later mode of
conception a certain similarity with that type of the immediate unity
of pure thought which we found to be characteristic of the religious
consciousness of the Parsees. Among the Parsees, however, the One
and Excellent is conserved in its independence as itself a fact of
Nature, that is, Light. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the One,
or Brahman, is merely the formless One; and this it is which in its
transformations through the infinite variety of the phenomenal world,
first gives rise to the pantheistic mode of representation. So we read
of _Krishna_ (_Bhagavad-Gita_, Lect. VII, II. 4 _et seq._): "Earth,
water and wind, air and fire, reason and egoity are the eight pieces
of my essential force; yet knowest thou somewhat more in me, a more
exalted essence, which animates the earthly and supports the world. In
it all existences have their origin. Ay, verily, thou knowest I am the
origin of the entire universe as also its annihilation. Aught higher
than myself is not; in me is this All conjoined together, as a chaplet
of pearls on a thread. I am the taste of sweetness in all that flows;
I am the splendour in the sun and moon, the mystic Word in the sacred
writings, manhood in man, the clean savour in the Earth, brightness
in flame, in all Being Life, meditation in all who repent. In that
which has Life the Power of Life, in the wise Wisdom, in the glorious
Glory. Everything that is true of its kind, and everything that is
specious and obscure proceeds out of me. I am not in them, but they are
in me. Through the illusion of these three qualities all the world is
made foolish, and knows me not who am unalterable. Moreover also the
Divine illusion, even Mâya, is my own illusion, which is hard indeed to
surpass, albeit all who follow after me step over this illusion." In
this passage we have indicated in the most striking terms just such a
substantive unity as the one above discussed, not merely from the point
of view of its immanence in immediate sense, but also from that of its
advance beyond and over all singularity.

In a similar manner _Krishna_ affirms of himself that He is the most
Excellent among all the different forms of existence (Lect. X, 21):
"Among the star's I am the radiant sun, among the human signs the
moon, among the sacred Books the Book of Hymns, among the senses
the spiritual, Meru among the tops of the mountains, the lion among
animals, the vowel A among all letters, among the seasons of the year
the blooming spring-time, etc."

This enumeration, however, of superlative excellence, and we may add
the description of that which is merely a change of forms, among
which it is always one and the same thing that is envisaged, despite
any superficial appearance such may give us at first of a prodigal
imagination, is none the less, by reason of this very equality of
content, extremely monotonous and in general empty and tedious.

2. Under a higher mode and in a freer manner from the subjective point
of view we find, _secondly_, oriental pantheism is elaborated in
Mohammedanism more particularly among the _Persians._

And here we are confronted with a relation of some singularity when we
direct our attention expressly to the point of view of the individual
poet.

(_a_) To explain this more fully we would point out that so long as
the poet yearns to behold the Divine in everything, and really so
beholds it, he also surrenders his own personality; but, while doing
so, he realizes quite as vividly the immanence of the Divine in his
spiritual world thus expanded and delivered; and consequently there
grows up within him that joyful ardour of the soul, that liberal
happiness, that revel of bliss, which is so peculiar to the Oriental,
who in freeing himself from his own particularity seems wholly to
sink himself in the Eternal and Absolute, and henceforth to know
and feel the image and presence of the Divine in all things. Such a
self-absorption in the Divine, such an intoxicated life of bliss in
God borders closely on mysticism. Under this aspect no volume is more
famous than the Oschelaleddin-Rumi, of which Rückert, with the help of
his marvellous powers of expression, which enable him to make light of
both words and rhymes with all the wealth and freedom of the phantasy
that comes so natural to the Persian poet, has supplied us with the
fairest examples. Love to God, with whom man identifies himself in most
boundless surrender, beholding Him as the One through every part of His
Universe, with whom and to whom every and each thing is related and
referred--this it is that gives us the focus of this type of thought, a
centre which radiates in every direction.

(_b_) And, further, while in the true type of the sublime, as will
appear shortly, the most excellent objects and the most glorious
shapes are employed merely as the ornament of God, and as servants to
celebrate the splendour and majesty of the One, being set before our
eyes to do Him honour as Lord of all creation, in pantheism, on the
contrary, it is the immanence of the Divine in external fact which
exalts the determinate existence itself of the world, Nature, and
humanity to its own self-substantial glory. The identical Life of
Spirit in the phenomena of Nature and all human relations animates and
spiritualizes the same in their own nature, and is further the source
of that characteristic attitude of subjective feeling in the soul of
the poet toward the objects he celebrates in his song. Suffused with
the animating influx of this glory the soul is essentially serene,
independent, free, secure in its comprehension and greatness; and
in this positive identification of itself with such qualities it
penetrates imaginatively with its life into the very heart of objective
existence, sharing the restful unity that it finds there, and grows up
in most blissful, most blithesome intimacy with the natural world and
its munificence, with the drinking-booth no less than the beloved,
and, in short, all that is held worthy of praise or affection. We find,
no doubt, the same kind of self-absorption in the romantic temperament
of the West. Generally speaking, however, and more particularly in
the North, it is not so gladsome, spontaneous, or free from yearning;
or, at least, it remains more exclusively shut up in itself, and is
consequently selfish and sentimental. A spiritual mood of this type, in
its depression and gloom, finds its most forceful outlet in the popular
songs of barbarous peoples. The spontaneous and joyful emotional
atmosphere is, on the contrary, congenial to the East, and particularly
characteristic of the Mohammedan Persians, who openly and gladly
surrender themselves with all their soul to the Divine influence, and
indeed to everything that appears to merit such devotion, while they
do not fail to retain the freedom of independence in such surrender,
and consciously to preserve the same in their attitude to the world and
all that surrounds them. We may, in fact, observe in the ardour of this
passion, the most expansive ecstasy and parrhesia[70] of the emotional
life, through which, in its inexhaustible wealth of gorgeous and
splendid images, one emphatic note of joy, beauty, and happiness rings
again and again. If the Oriental suffers or is unfortunate he takes
his reverses as the unalterable fiat of Destiny, and falls back upon
the strength of his own resources without any increase of depression,
sensitiveness, or vexation of spirit. In the poetry of Hafis we hear
often enough of the lover's woes and laments[71], as of many another
kind, but our poet persists through grief, no less than in happiness,
as free of care as ever. This is the mood of that sometime refrain:

/$
     For thanks, in that the present glow
       Of friendship circles thee,
     Light strong the taper e'en in woe,
       And joyful be.
$/

The taper teaches us both to laugh and to weep; it laughs through the
flame of shining merriment, albeit it melts at the same time in hot
tears; in the act of consumption it spreads wide the brightness of
joviality. This is also the general character throughout of this type
of poetry.

Among the objects frequently referred to in Persian poetry we
may mention flowers and jewels, and, above all, the rose and the
nightingale. It is a matter of frequent occurrence to represent the
nightingale as bridegroom of the rose. This gift of personality to the
rose and love to the nightingale may be abundantly illustrated from
Hafis. "Out of gratefulness, O rose," he sings, "that thou art the
sultana of Beauty, see to it that thou settest not a proud face to the
love of the nightingale." The poet himself speaks of the nightingale
of his own soul. When we of the West, on the contrary, refer in our
poetry to roses, nightingales, or wine, and such matters, we do so in
a wise much nearer to prose. The rose merely serves us for ornament,
as in the expression, among others, "garlanded with roses." If we
listen to the nightingale it is but to follow the bird with our own
emotions; we think of the grape-juice, and call it "the breaker of
our cares." Among the Persians, however, the rose is no mere image or
ornament, no symbol, but itself appears to the poet as possessed with a
soul, as loving bride, and he transpierces with his spirit the rose's
very heart. Precisely the same character of a gorgeous Pantheism is
still impressed on the most modern Persian poems. Herr von Hammer, for
instance, has given us a description of a poem which was forwarded,
among other gifts of the Shah, to the Emperor Francis in the year 1819.
It contains an account of the exploits of the Shah in 33,000 distiches,
who made a present of his own name to the Court poet in question.

(_c_) Goethe, too--here in contrast with the more perturbed atmosphere
and the concentrated emotion of the poetry of his youth--was carried
away in advanced age by the breadth of this careless and blithesome
spirit; and though already a veteran, swept through by the breath
of the East, dedicated the evening glow of his poetic passion, in a
flood of extraordinary fervour to this freedom of emotion which, even
where controversy is the sub ect-matter, still retains the beauty of
its careless temper. The songs of his Westöstlicher Divan, are by no
means the mere play of trivial social urbanities, but originate in a
precisely similar spirit of free and unrestrained emotion. In a song of
his to Suleica they are thus described by himself:

/$
     Pearls from the poet,
     Thine is the treasure,
     Thine was the big swell
     Of passion tumultuous,
     Which strewed them on desolate
     Strand of his life.
     Gold-tips I call it,
     Pierced with bright jewels,
     Tenderly conned o'er
     By tapering fingers.
$/

"Take them," he exclaims to his beloved:

/$
     Circle thy neck with them,
     Close, close to thy breast!
     These raindrops of Allah
     The meek shell hath ripened.
$/

Poetry such as this is the product of an experience of the widest
range, a sense which has held its own in many storms, a depth and also,
too, a youth of the heart--in other words:

/$
     World of Life's own drift of forces,
     World, the wealth of whose wave-roll
     Caught afar the bulbul's passion,
     Won the song which shook the soul.
$/

3. In this unity of pantheism, moreover, if emphasized in its relation
to _personal_ life, which feels itself united with God thereby, and
the Divine as this presence intuitively cognized, we have, speaking
generally, that type of _mysticism_ which, under this more intimate
mode, has also been elaborated in the pale of Christendom. We will
adduce but one example, namely, that of Angelus Silecius, who, with the
greatest audacity and depth of conception and emotional fervour, has
expressed the essential presence of God in objective Nature, the union
of the self with God, and the Divine with human personality, with an
extraordinary power of mystical presentment. The more genuine type of
Oriental pantheism, on the contrary, is inclined to insist more upon
the vision of the One substance in all phenomena and the self-surrender
of the individual, who thereby secures the most supreme expansion of
conscious life no less than the bliss of absorption into all that is
most noble and excellent by virtue of the absolute release from all
finitude.

B. THE ART OF SUBLIMITY

The One substance, however, which is here conceived as the real
significance of the entire universe, is only truly posited as
_substance_ where we find it suffered to retire into itself as pure
Inwardness and substantive Power out of its presence and realization
beneath the shifting forms of the phenomenal, and thereby is _set
forth_ in self-consistency as against all finitude. It is not till
we come to this intuitive vision of the essence of God as absolutely
Spiritual and apart from all image, and thus opposed to the things of
the World and Nature, that the Spiritual is completely wrested from all
that pertains to mere sense-perception and Nature, and delivered from
determinate existence in the finite. While conversely, however, the
absolute substance still maintains a relation to the phenomenal world
from which it is reflected back upon itself. In this relation is now
asserted that _negative_ aspect already adverted to, which consists
in this, that the entire universe, despite all the fulness, power,
and glory of its phenomenal contents, is expressly affirmed in its
relation to substance as that which is essentially of a purely negative
subsistence, a creation of God, subject to His power and service. The
world is therefore envisaged as the revelation of God, and He is the
_Goodness_ which permits the created thing that has no essential claim
to exist, none the less to exist in relation to Himself, nay, further
to have independent existence and thereby freely to conserve Him. This
conservation on the part of the finitude, however, is without real
substance, and in opposition to God the creature is here assumed to
be that which passes away and is powerless, so that at the same time
its _claim to existence_[72] is exhibited as a part of the goodness of
the Creator, which not only veritably affirms the impotence of that
which is essentially nothing apart from Himself, but thereby asserts
His substance as the source of all Power. It is this relation, so far
as it is set forth by art as the fundamental relation, both of content
and form, which brings before us the art-type of the real _Sublime._
The Beauty of the Ideal and Sublimity no doubt present features of
contrast. In the Ideal the Inward transpierces external reality, whose
inward essence it really is under the mode at least, that both aspects
are adequate to each other, and consequently appear to be in perfect
fusion with one another. In the Sublime, on the contrary, the external
existence, in which substance is envisaged for sense, is deposed
in its opposition to that substance, such deposition and vassalage
constituting the only mode, by means of which the God who is in His own
seclusion without form, and in His positive essence incapable of being
expressed by aught that is of the world and finite, can be envisualized
by artistic means. The Sublime pre-supposes the significance in the
self-subsistence of One, in relation to which externality is defined as
in subjection, in so far as that Inward substance fails to appear, but
its transcendent character is so asserted, that in the end nothing can
be represented save just this essential and active transcendency[73].

In the symbol the mode of the _external form_ was the main point
emphasized. It must possess a significance, and yet fail completely
to express it. In contrast to symbol of this kind and its obscure
content we have now a _significance_ in the absolute sense of the
term conjoined with its full recognition. A work of art is now the
actual discharge of pure essence conceived as the intensive purport of
everything, of an essence, however, which deliberately affirms that
very incompatibility of form to significance, which was only implicitly
present in the symbol, to be the actually transcendent significance of
God Himself within the sphere of worldly existence, and above all that
is contained therein.

It is a significance which is therefore sublime in the work of art,
which is exclusively concerned to express the same as thus explicitly
declared. We may no doubt with justice accept the description of
"_sacred_," as applicable generally to symbolical art, in so far as it
accepts the Divine as comprised in the content of its productions; but
the art of the Sublime alone can make good its claim to the distinction
without any deduction, for it is here alone that God receives all the
honour. In this sphere, owing to the fundamental character of the
significance implied, the content is generally of a more restricted
nature than that we find in genuine symbolism, whose relation to
the Spiritual is that of an effort and nothing more, and which in
the continuously shifting nature of its relations to to the world
offers such a wide field, either for transformations of that which is
spiritual into natural images, or of that which is essentially material
under accordant fusion with the Spirit.

We find as nowhere else this art of the Sublime, as a mode of its
original appearance, in the religious conceptions of the Hebrew race
and their sacred poetry. We say poetry advisedly, because plastic art
cannot possibly be in question here, where it is assumed that no image
whatever is adequate to express the nature of the Divine, and that
the part of poetry alone by means of the spoken or written word can
be employed for such a purpose. A closer examination of this type of
religious conception will secure to us the following points of view
most worthy of our general attention.

1. If we look at the content of this poetry under the aspect of its
most universal import, one of our first conclusions will be that God,
as Lord of a world created to serve Him, is not conceived as incarnated
in any form of the external, but rather as personality withdrawn
from all determinate and worldly existence into the solitude of His
pure Unity. For this reason that[74] which in genuine symbolism was
still associated with supreme Unity, falls apart under the view we
are considering into its twofold aspect, on one side the abstract
subsistency of God, on the other the concrete existence of the world.

(_a_) Now God Himself as this pure self-subsistency of the One
substance is essentially without form, and under this abstract
conception cannot be brought closer to the envisagement of sense. That
which therefore the imagination is able to seize at this stage is
not the Divine content viewed under the aspect of its pure essence,
inasmuch as this latter precludes the possibility of artistic
representation under any form adequate to it whatever. The only content
therefore that is left open to it is that of the _relation_ of God to
His created world.

(_b_) God is the creator of the universe. This is the purest expression
of the Sublime itself. In other words we find that here for the first
time all those fanciful conceptions of _generation_ and purely physical
_procreation_ of external fact by God disappear. Each and all give
place to the thought of creation by virtue of spiritual power and
activity. "God spake: Let there be Light, and there was Light." A
sentence dong ago cited, as a striking illustration of the Sublime by
Longinus. And such indeed it is. The Lord of all, the One substance,
proceeds, it is true, under the mode of self-expression; but the type
of this bringing forth is the purest, nay, a mode of expression,
aetherial so to speak, and without material form, the Word that is to
say, the medium of thought as the ideal Power, in conjunction with
whose mandate that it shall exist, the existing thing is veritably and
immediately posited under the relation of tacit obedience.

(_c_) Into this created world, however, God is not conceived to pass
over as into His reality; rather He abides withdrawn behind Himself,
albeit this opposition supplies no secure ground for a logically
developed dualism. For that which has been brought into being is His
work, possesses no self-consistency as apart from Him. It is solely a
witness to _His_ Wisdom, Goodness, and Justice in general, just that
and no more. The One is Lord over all; His dwelling is not in the facts
of Nature. They are solely the accidents of His Greatness, without
potency in themselves, which can indeed suffer the show of His essence
to appear, but are unable to make the reality of it visible[75]. And
this it is which constitutes the Sublime in its reference to the Divine.

2. Moreover, inasmuch as the one God is thus severed from the
concreteness of the phenomenal world and posited in isolated fixity,
while the externality of determinate existence is on its side defined
and placed in subordination as the finite, both natural and human
existence are now viewed under the novel aspect that they cannot be
conceived as manifesting the Divine without at the same time making
visible their essential finiteness.

(_a_) The most direct way of bringing home to ourselves the
significance of the above contrasted relations may be expressed in the
statement that here for the first time we have Nature and the human
form set before us _cut off from the Divine_, prosaic fact in short.
It is a Greek tale that when the heroes of the Argonautic Expedition
passed in their ships through the straits of the Hellespont, the
rocks which hitherto had crashed open and shut like shears suddenly
came to a standstill rooted firmly for evermore in the ground. In a
manner somewhat similar the process of the finite toward stability in
intelligible definition, as contrasted with the infinite essence, moves
onward in the sacred poetry of the Sublime, while in the conceptions of
symbolism, where we have the finite overturned in the Divine and the
latter quite as frequently thrust forth from its own substance into
temporal existence, nothing is permitted to keep its due position. If
we turn, for example, from ancient Hindoo poetry to the Old Testament
we find ourselves at once in a totally different atmosphere, one
in which we feel ourselves thoroughly at home, however much we may
discover in the circumstances, events, actions, and characters an
environment either alien or different to that in which we live. From a
world of tumble and confusion we are transported to another, and have
human figures presented to us, which appear as natural as those we see
with our eyes, characters with the stable outlines of patriarchal life,
which in the truth of their delineation stand so near that they receive
an immediate assent from our intelligence.

(_b_) In a general view of existence such as the above which is able
to grasp the natural process of life and to accept as valid the claim
of natural laws, _wonder_ for the first time is a really active
force. In Hindooism everything is a wonder and consequently is no
longer wonderful. No wonder can enter a world where the intelligible
connection of facts is invariably broken, where everything is wrested
from its place and turned topsy-turvy. For the wonderful presupposes
the rational sequence of events no less than the clear perceptions of
ordinary consciousness which, when it meets with some example of causal
effect produced by a higher law breaking the customary chain of events
now for the first time notifies the exception as a wonder. Wonders of
this kind, however, are no real or specific expression of the Sublime,
for the reason that the ordinary course of natural phenomena is
conceived as quite as much the product of the Will of God and evidence
of Nature's submission as such interruption of the same.

(_c_) We must rather look for the real Sublime in the fact that under
this view the entire created world is limited in time and space, with
no independent stability or consistency, and as such an adventitious
product which exists solely to celebrate the praise of Almighty God.

3. This recognition of the nullity of objective fact and the exaltation
and extolment of God are at this stage the source of man's _own_
self-respect, and in these he looks for his own consolation and
satisfaction.

(_a_) In this connection the Psalms supply us with classical examples
of the genuine Sublime, and are set forth as a precedent for all
times of what our humanity at the highest point of its spiritual
exultation has superbly expressed as the reflection of its religious
consciousness. Nothing in the world can here make good its claim to
independent subsistence, inasmuch as everything exists and subsists
simply through the Power of God, and only exists as in duty bound to
extol His mightiness no less than to acknowledge its own essential
nothingness. In the imagination of pantheism, which mainly unfolded in
the direction of material substance an infinite _extension_ of range
was most remarkable: what we most are amazed at here is the power of
spiritual exaltation which suffers everything else to fall away that
it may declare the unique Almightiness of God. An extraordinarily
forceful illustration of this temper is the 104th Psalm, "The Light is
Thy mantle which Thou wearest; Thou spreadest out the heavens like a
carpet, etc." Light, heavens, clouds, the pinions of the winds, each
and all are here nothing by themselves, merely an external vesture, the
chariot or messenger in the service of God. A further expansion of the
same idea is the extolment of the Wisdom of God, which has ordained
all things. The springs, which leap from their sources, the waters,
which flow between the hills, by the banks of which the birds of the
air sit and carol among the branches; the grassy vine, which gladdens
the heart of men and the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord hath planted;
the sea, and its swarms without number; the whales which sport therein,
all these hath the Lord made. And all that God has created He also
preserves. "Thou hidest Thy Face, and they are affrighted; Thou takest
their breath away and they are gone and become again as dust." The 90th
Psalm, that prayer of Moses, the man of God, insists expressly on the
nothingness of man, where we read: "Thou sufferest them to pass away
like a brook; they are like as a sleep, even as the grass, which is
soon withered, and in the evening is cut down and dried up. Thy scorn
maketh us to pass away; Thou showest Thine anger and we are gone."

(_b_) Two ideas are therefore associated together with the Sublime,
if viewed in its relation to the human soul, first, that of man's
finiteness, and secondly, that of the insurmountable aloofness of God.

(_α_) For this reason the idea of _immortality_ is not to be found
where this mode of conception obtains in its original purity; for this
idea involves the assumption that the individual self, the soul, the
spirit of man is essentially a self-subsistent entity. In the religion
of the Sublime it is only the One that is apprehended as imperishable;
opposed to that all else merely subsists and passes away, is neither
essentially free nor infinite.

(_β_) And, further, on a similar ground man is conceived in his
absolute _unworthiness_ before God; his exaltation consists in the fear
of the Lord, in a trembling before His scorn. Over and over again, with
a directness which tears aside every veil and opens the very depths, we
have the cry of the soul to God depicted, the sorrow over the sense of
its nothingness, increasing lament and groanings unutterable.

(_γ_) On the other hand if the individual persist in his finiteness of
opposition to God, this deliberately willed persistence is wickedness,
which as _evil_ and _sin_ belongs only to the natural and human
condition, and is conceived as remote from the One undifferentiated
substance as pain and everything else that is essentially negative.

(_c_) _Thirdly_, however, within this very condition of spiritual
nakedness, and, in despite of it, man secures a freer and more
independent position. On the one hand out of the fundamental repose and
constancy of God viewed in reference to His Will and the commands which
that Will imposes upon humanity, arises the _Law_; while under another
point of view the wholly unambiguous distinction between that which is
human and that which is Divine, between the finite and the Absolute, is
implied in this type of human exaltation. Therewith the judgment upon
good and evil, and the onus of decision in respect to either the one or
the other is transferred to the individual soul itself. This relation
to the Absolute, and the question it involves as to the fittingness or
unfittingness of man over against the same presents, therefore, also
an aspect, which applies to the individual himself, his own behaviour
and action. In other words we may trace in man's rightful acts and his
following of the Law a relation to God which is, side by side with
the former one, an affirmative relation, a relation which has to
bring generally the external condition of his existence, whether it
be positive or negative, weal, enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain,
unhappiness and oppression into union with the obedience of his heart
or his stubbornness of spirit against the Law, and accept the same in
the one case as favour and reward, in the other as trial and punishment.

[Footnote 67: _Des An-und-für-sich-seyenden, i.e._, the explicit
content of all that is implied in actuality cognized as an object in
itself.]

[Footnote 68: According to Hegel the conception of Kant is right in
that (_a_) He makes the Sublime to consist in a relation between the
phenomenal fact and something which it is not; and (_b_) that he lays
it down that no mere representation by means of phenomenal form can
adequately express it. He is wrong, however, in that he refers the
Sublime for its source wholly to the subjective content, _i.e._, that
Nature which is peculiar to ourselves (_in uns._)]

[Footnote 69: "Critique of the Judgment," 3rd ed., p. 77.]

[Footnote 70: Parrhesia, _i.e._, πἀρρἥσια,--speaking freely or beyond
ordinary bound.]

[Footnote 71: _Den Schenken_ should be _die Schenken_, and a few
lines below _der Kerze_ should be _die Kerze._ I omit the _Schenken_
altogether. Of course it is possible _der Kerze_ is Genitive, "in the
woe of the taper," and the verb intransitive; but this is very harsh.]

[Footnote 72: This appears to be the meaning of _Garechtigkeit._]

[Footnote 73: _Sondern so darüber hinausgeht, dass eben nichts als
dieses Hinauseyn und Hinausgehen zur Darstellung kommen kann._ That
is, the art of the Sublime is based essentially on a contradiction,
for while it assumes the One substance to be the significance of the
external world, it is the truth of that significance that it points to
that which transcends externality.]

[Footnote 74: The thought here is not strictly logical. What is
associated by symbolism with Unity is the external Other, what is
divided by Hebraic conception is the entire content of the Real
both in its spiritual and external aspect. But the general sense is
sufficiently clear.]

[Footnote 75: This I take to be the point of the contrast between the
words _scheinen_ and _erscheinen_.]




CHAPTER III


THE CONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM OF THE COMPARATIVE TYPE OF ART


The result we have now arrived at in the above consideration of the
Sublime, and in contradistinction to the strictly unpremeditated
type of symbolization, consists partly in the _separation_ of its
own independent Inwardness, consciously apprehended in its quality
of significance, from the concrete appearance that is thereby
distinguished from it, partly also in the direct or indirect
affirmation of the _incompatibility_ of the two above mentioned
aspects to one another, by which it appears that the significance as
the universal passes beyond the particular fact and its singularity.
But in the imagination of pantheism, no less than in the type of the
Sublime, the real content, that is the One universal substance of all
concrete existence, was unable to be presented to imaginative vision
or sense-perception without some relation to created existence, albeit
created under a mode inadequate to express the essence of that Unity.
This relation, however, was attached to the substance itself, which,
in the negativity of its accidents, supplied the proof of its Wisdom,
Goodness, Power, and Justice[76]. For this reason the relation between
significance and content is also in the case of the Sublime, at least
in a general way, of a kind that is both _essential_ and _necessary_,
and the two sides thus linked with each other are not yet, in the
strict sense of the term, external to each other. It is, however,
inevitable, for the reason that it is implicitly present in symbolism,
that this externality should come to be directly posited and appear
in the forms we have now to consider in this concluding chapter on the
art of symbolism. We may summarily describe them as _conscious_[77]
symbolism, or, in a still more direct way, the _comparative_ type of
art.

In other words, what we understand by conscious symbolism is this,
that the significance is not merely independently cognized, but is
_expressly_ set forth as distinct from the external mode, in which it
is represented. The significance then appears, as in the case of the
Sublime, to receive an independent expression which is not essentially
in the actual embodiment given to it under the mode employed[78].
The relation, however, of both to one another no longer continues
to be, as in the type last examined, a mode of relation which is
fundamentally due to the significance itself, but is a more or less
haphazard association, which may generally be expressed as the product
of the _subjectivity_ of the poet, the absorption of his spirit in an
external object, the result of his wit or invention; a mode, in short,
which enables the poet at one time rather to make a beginning directly
from a sensible phenomenon, and to imagine for it from his own mind
a spiritual significance cognate with it, and at another to select
in preference as his point of departure the real or only relatively
personal idea, with a view to embodying the same, or even to do nothing
more than relate one image with another, which presents characteristic
features of resemblance.

This kind of linking together must consequently be distinguished from
that still naïve and _unconscious_ symbolism in virtue of the fact that
now the individual recognizes the inward essence of the significances
he adopts for the content of his creation no less than, the positive
nature of the external objects, which he employs as means of comparison
for the more direct presentment of the same, placing both in this
juxtaposition with clear intention owing to the similarity he has
discovered between them. The distinction, on the other hand, between
the present type and that of the Sublime is rather to be traced to the
fact that though under one aspect it may be true that the separation
and juxtaposition of the significances with their concrete shaping in
the work of art is itself set forth in express relief to a less or
higher degree, yet, on the other hand, for the reason that it is no
longer the Absolute itself that is accepted as content, but any defined
and restricted significance whatever, the typical relation of the
Sublime falls away, and in its place a relation is set up within the
act of severance thus intentionally made between the real significance
and its embodiment, a relation which in effect produces the very result
in the sphere of premeditated comparison that we found unconscious
symbolism in its own way proposed as an object.

In one word, so far as _content_ is here concerned, the Absolute
itself, _the Lord of creation_, can no longer be conceived as the
significance which Art seeks after. That this is so is rendered
inevitable by the already obvious fact that on account of the
severation of more concrete existence from the notion, and further,
if only under the mode of comparison, the juxtaposition of both sides
thus separated, the category of_finitude_ is there and then accepted
by the artistic consciousness, in so far as it conceives this form
as the real and ultimate one; and for this reason, moreover, the
imagined significances, being selected wholly from the sphere of the
finite, have no further association whatever with the Absolute as the
fundamental significance of all created things. Sacred poetry stands
out in entire contrast to this, for in this God is the exclusive
significance of all things; as set over against Him, they have
no stability at all, but vanish or are nothing. If, however, the
significance is able to discover its image and parallel of resemblance
in that which is itself essentially _restricted_ and finite, it follows
that it must itself to that extent be limited in its range, as, in
fact, it is in the type of symbolic conception which now occupies our
attention, where that which is found is nothing more than an image,
necessarily external to the content, selected purely at random by the
poet for the sake of the _similarity_ it presents to the content, and
as such regarded as relatively adequate thereto. For this reason there
is but one trait left us in the comparative type of art, which is also
shared by that of the Sublime, and it is this that every image, instead
of embodying the fact and significance directly under a mode adequate
to their full reality, is only taken to present an image and similitude
of either.

For these reasons this kind of symbolization is, if we conceive it
apart as an independent whole, a generic class of subordinate rank.
The form which it supplies is merely the descriptive selection of a
portion of sensuous existence immediately perceived, or of a prosaic
idea of the mind[79], in other words, the significance is expressly to
be distinguished from it. And, further, in a measure such an employment
of comparison in works of art, which are shaped out of homogeneous
material, and in their specific form constitute an indivisible whole,
can only assert itself as relatively valid, that is, as mere ornament
and accessory, such as we find it, in fact, in the genuine products of
classic and romantic art.

It is a further consequence that if we regard the entire sphere of
this type as the union of the two stages which preceded it on the
ground that it not merely comprehends within itself the _separation_
of significance from external reality, which is the fundamental
_causa rationis_ of the Sublime, but also includes the _reference_ of
a concrete phenomenon to a universal import cognate with it, as we
have seen was asserted in the real type of symbolism, such a union
is notwithstanding in no way a higher type of art; it is, in truth,
despite its very clearness, a superficial way of apprehending things,
limited in its content and formally more or less prosaic, which falls
away into the consciousness of commonsense as fully remote from the
secretly fermenting depth of genuine symbolism as it is from the height
of the Sublime.

So far as the _classification_ of our present subject-matter is
concerned we may observe, first, that in this act of comparative
differentiation, which presupposes the significance independently,
and affirms either a sensuous or imaginary form in a relation of
opposition to it, there is the aspect held constantly throughout
that the significance is here accepted as of most importance, and
the form is solely the embodiment of the same and external to it;
but along with this the further difference makes its appearance,
namely, that it is sometimes the one aspect of this opposition which
is first pre-eminently emphasized, and made the significant point of
departure, while at other times it is the other. And owing to this
fact we have either the embodiment presented us as an independently
external, immediate fact or phenomenon of Nature, which is then
related by comparison to a significance of a more general bearing, or
the significance is independently come by in another way, and only
afterwards a mode of embodying it is selected from some external
source, it matters not what.

Relatively to the above distinctions we may classify our material under
the two first fundamental and a third and other supplementary divisions
as follows:

A. In the _first_ it is the _concrete phenomenon_, whether the
selection be made from Nature or human events, incidents, and actions,
which constitutes both the point of departure in the process of
artistic conception, and the substance of essential weight in the
reproduction. It is no doubt exhibited solely on account of the more
general significance, which it contains and signifies, and is only so
far unfolded, that it may contribute to the object of embodying this
significance in a specific occurrence or condition cognate with it. The
comparison, however, of the general significance and the particular
case is not as yet _expressly_ set forth as _subjective_ activity, and
the entire reproduction will not merely be the embellishment of a work
which actually possesses a substantive position without it, but is set
forth as itself claiming to give the character of an independent whole.
The types of this class are the fable, the parable, the apologue, the
proverb, and the metamorphosis.

B. In the _second_ phase the _significance_ on the contrary is that
which is first presented to consciousness, and the concrete embodiment
is that which is merely incidental or accessory to it, possessing no
independent subsistency of its own, but appearing as wholly subordinate
to the significance, so that we are now also made more immediately
aware of the element of personal caprice in the selection of this
rather than any other image. This mode of production is unable in the
great majority of cases to reach the point of a fully perfected work
of art, and is consequently forced to leave the forms it supplies as
appurtenant to other artistic images. The important types of this
class are the riddle, the allegory, the metaphor, the image, and the
simile.

C. _Thirdly_, and in conclusion, if rather by way of supplement, we
have yet further to include within our list the didactic poem, and
purely descriptive poetry, inasmuch as in these types of poetry we
find, on the one hand, that the presentment of the general character
of the objects in the clearness under which they are made intelligible
to commonsense[80], no less than on the other that the exhibition of
their concrete appearance receives a substantially independent form,
and by doing so effects with elaborate completeness the severation of
that which only in its union and really reciprocal fusion is capable of
giving us a genuine work of art.

This separation of the two phases essential to the process of
art-production carries with it the result that the various forms which
find their place in the entire subject-matter under discussion have
merely a claim to fall in as part of an inquiry into the modes of art
in virtue of the fact that poetry, and only poetry, is in a position
to express such a relation of self-contained independence as between
significance and form. As opposed to this it is the very problem of the
plastic arts to manifest such significant content in and through their
external form and viewed thus externally.

A. MODES OF COMPARISON, WHICH HAVE THEIR ORIGIN UPON THE SIDE OF
EXTERNALITY

The attempt to arrange the several kinds of poetic production which
are apportioned to this first stage of the comparative type of art
carries with it no little difficulty, and is a fruitful source
of embarrassment. They are, that is to say, hybrid species of a
subordinate rank, which in no way whatever mark out any necessary
aspect of art They stand in the domain of Aesthetic presenting features
analogous to certain animal types, and other exceptional phenomena
in natural science. In both spheres the difficulty consists in this
that in either case it is the notion of the science itself, which
is the ground of its classification and specific differences. As
differentia of the notion these are also at the same time distinctions
really adequate to the notional process, and intelligible as such;
with these latter such transitional modes are unable fully to conform
for the reason that they are merely defective types, which proceed
from a previous phase that is fundamental without being able to reach
the next one. This is no fault of the notion, nay, supposing that we
preferred to make such ancillary types the basis of our classification,
instead of pointing out their relation to the specific phases of the
_notional_ process of our subject-matter, we should have presented us
precisely that aspect of them which was inadequate to this process
as the irreproachable mode of their development. A true principle of
classification, on the contrary, is compelled to proceed from the true
notion, and such _hybrid_ types as those now discussed can only be
suitably placed where the genuine and independently stable ones show a
tendency to dissolve and pass over into others.

Apart from such considerations, however, the artistic types referred to
belong to the _forecourt_ of artistic symbolism, inasmuch as they are
generally incomplete, and to that extent _merely_ a search after art in
its truth. Such a movement no doubt presents the essential ingredients
of a genuine mode of configuration, but it lays hold of them in their
aspect of finitude, separation, and purely relative propinquity;
it fails consequently to rank on the same level. When we discuss,
therefore, the fable, apologue, and the rest we must treat these forms
not as though they belonged to _poetry_ in the specific sense, as it
differs among other things from music no less than the plastic arts,
but only with the view of pointing out the relation in which they stand
to the _generic_ types of art. It is only thus their specific character
can be elucidated. To such an object the notion of the genuine types of
the art of poetry, whether epic, lyric, or dramatic, will not assist us.

We propose now to differentiate these forms in the following order;
we shall begin with the _fable_, proceed after that to discuss the
_parable_, _apologue_, and _proverb_, and conclude our inquiry with the
_metamorphosis._



1. THE FABLE

Hitherto we have throughout merely dwelt upon the formal aspect of the
relation of an expressed significance to its embodiment; we have now
furthermore to elucidate the content, which declares its suitability
for such a mode.

In our previous consideration of the various aspects of the _Sublime_
we saw that at the point where we have now arrived, it is no longer a
matter of any importance to envisualize the Absolute and One in its
indivisible Power by means of the nothingness and impotency of the
created thing to rise up to that infinite transcendency. We are now
on the plane of the finite consciousness, and have only to concern
ourselves with a finite content. If we direct our attention conversely
to the genuine symbolical type, to which the comparative is under
a certain aspect equally related, we find that here that _inward_
aspect, which stands in opposition to the form up to this point
always immediately presented, the natural shape, that is to say, is
the spiritual, a truth that even in Egyptian symbolism received ample
illustration. To the extent, however, that everything natural is left
standing, and preconceived in its position of isolated _solidarity_,
the spiritual is also something both _finite_ and _defined_, that is
to say man and his finite aims and the natural maintains a certain,
albeit theoretical[81], relationship to these objects, a significant
suggestion and revelation of the same to the use and weal of mankind.
The phenomena of Nature, storms, flight of birds, the constitution
of the intestines of animals and so forth, in the significance they
possess for human interests, are now accepted in a totally different
sense to that they figured in the conceptions of Parsees, Hindoos, or
Egyptians, for whom the Divine is still linked to the Natural under
the mode that man, as an integral part of Nature, moves to and fro in
a world full of gods, and his personal action consists in the display
through his activities of this very identity of Life, whereby this
doing of his, in so far as it is compatible with the natural existence
of the Divine, appears itself as a revelation and bringing forth of
the Divine in mankind. When, however, man is withdrawn into himself,
and intuitively seeks for his freedom within the closed doors of his
own substance[82], he becomes intrinsically the object of his own
personality; he acts, transacts his affairs, and works as he himself
wills; he possesses a personal life of his own, and feels the essential
character of his aims as part of himself, to which the natural is only
related as something outside him. Consequently Nature becomes insulated
around him, serves him under such an aspect that in his attitude to the
Divine he no longer secures an envisagement of the Absolute in her, but
simply regards her as a means, through which the gods enable him to
discover such a knowledge of themselves as may contribute most to his
advantage, unveiling their will to the human spirit through the medium
of Nature and suffering the purpose thereof to declare itself through
mankind. An identity of the Absolute and Nature is here presupposed, an
identity in which _human aims_ are pre-eminently emphasized. A type of
symbolism such as this, however, is not within the province of art, but
that of religion. That is to say, the _vates_ or prophet subordinates
every significant relation of natural events, pre-eminently to the
service of practical ends, whether it be in the interest of the
particular designs of individuals, or in that of the common action of
an entire people. Poetry, on the contrary, is bound to recognize and
express even the practical situations and relations in a more universal
form adapted to contemplation.

What we have, however, to deal with now is a natural phenomenon, an
occurrence, which, in its passage, exhibits a particular relation,
which maybe accepted as symbol for a general significance in the
circle of human deeds and dealings, in other words for an ethical
maxim, a saw, for a significance, therefore, whose content unfolds
a reflection over the nature of the course which either is taken or
ought to be taken in human matters, that is, facts which are related to
volition. Here it is no longer the Divine will, which is self-revealed
in its essential nature to mankind through natural events, and their
religious import. We have nothing more than a quite ordinary course of
everyday occurrences, from the isolated reproduction of which we are
able to abstract in a way commonly intelligible an ethical _dictum_,
a warning, ensample, or rule of prudence, by whatever name we choose
to call it, which is set before us in a form that appeals to our
imagination for the sake of the reflection it carries with it. And this
is just the way in which we ought to regard the fables of Aesop.

(_a_) In other words, the fables of Aesop in their original form are
just such a mode of conceiving a natural relation or event between
single natural objects generally, mainly between animals, whose
intercourse with one another is based on the same practical necessities
of life that are the motive force in that of humanity. This relation or
occurrence, as viewed in its more general characters, is consequently
of a kind that may happen in the sphere of human life, and as such
carries with it a significance for man.

As thus explained the genuine fable of Aesop is therefore the
reproduction of a condition of animate or inanimate life, of some
occurrence in the animal world for example, which is not by any
means composed at haphazard, but is put together in conformity with
natural fact and genuine observation, and so reproduced in the form of
narrative that, in its relation to human existence, and particularly
the practical aspect of the same, a general maxim may be deduced from
it. The requirement of _primary_ importance that it implies, therefore,
is that the particular case in question, which is to supply the
so-called moral, must not be purely _imaginary_, that is to say, first
and foremost the substance of the composition must not present facts
which run _counter_ to the mode of their appearance in real life. The
narrative may be further and yet more clearly characterized in this
that it does not record the particular case itself in its universality,
but rather the mode under which this, taken in its concrete singularity
and as a real fact, is in such external reality the type for all action
based upon analogous circumstances.

This original form of the fable leaves upon it, and this is the
_third_ point to which we direct attention, the impress of most
_naïveté_, because in it the didactic aim and the deduction of general
significances of utilitarian colour do not appear to be that which was
the original intention of the narrator, but rather something which
turned up afterwards. For this reason the most attractive among
the so-called fables of Aesop will be those which correspond most
emphatically with this naïve tone and narrate actions, if such an
expression may here be used, or at least relations and events, which
in part are founded upon animal instinct, partly are the expression of
some other natural relation and partly are generally put together for
their own sake rather than exclusively composed as the fancy of the
moment happened to dictate. For this reason it is further sufficiently
obvious that the motto _fabula docet_, which has attached itself to
these fables as we now have them presented us, either takes the true
spirit out of them, or frequently is something like a fist in our
eyes[83], so that quite as often as not we are inclined to deduce the
intended maxim's opposite, or one or two as good if not better.

In further elucidation of this conception of these Greek fables we
propose now to offer a few illustrations. The oak and the reed stand
in the teeth of the storm-wind. The slender reed merely bows before
it, the stubborn oak snaps. This is a frequent enough occurrence in
a great storm. In its ethical suggestion what we have here is some
man of high position and inflexible temper as opposed to one of more
modest station who, through his natural pliancy, is able in misfortune
to keep himself secure on such ordinary levels, while the great man
goes to ground through his pride and obstinacy. An analogous case is
the fable of the swallows which we find in the Phaedrus. The swallows
and other birds with them see a rustic sowing the flax seed, from the
growth of which the bird-snare is to be made. The provident swallows
fly away, the other birds think nothing of the morrow; they abide
at home and are caught. A real phenomenon of Nature is also at the
bottom of this fable. It is a notorious fact that in autumn swallows
are off to southerly climes, and consequently are absent when birds
are snared. The same thing may be said of the fable about the bat,
which is despised by day and night, because it belongs to neither the
one nor the other. A more general human significance is attributed to
real prosaic incidents of this class, much as pious people are only
too ready nowadays to interpret everything that occurs in a sense
that is edifying or useful. It is, however, not essential to such a
purpose that in every case the true fact of Nature should appear at
once as obvious. In the fable, for instance, of the fox and the raven
we are unable at first blush to recognize the natural fact, although
it is not wholly absent. It is, in truth, a genuine characteristic
both of ravens and crows that they set about cawing when they happen
to catch sight of strange objects, whatever they may be, whether man
or beast, in sudden motion. Natural relations of a similar kind lie
at the root of the fable of the thorn-bush, which plucks the wool off
the passer-by, or wounds the fox that seeks refuge there, or that
of the countryman who warms a snake in his bosom. Others set forth
occurrences which may naturally form part of animal experience; take,
for instance, the first example of the fables of Aesop where the eagle
devours the cubs of the fox and carries off a hot coal attached to the
sacrificial flesh which sets his nest on fire. And, in conclusion, we
find that others contain traits of old myths, such as the fable of
the dung-beetle, eagle, and Jupiter, where the circumstance borrowed
from natural history--we will pass it by for what it is worth--appears
to be referable to the different seasons of the year when the eagle
and dung-beetle respectively lay their eggs; at the same time we may
observe a clear intimation here of the traditional importance of the
scarab, which, however, even in our present example, is already treated
with an inclination toward comedy, an inclination still more pronounced
in Aristophanes. As an excuse for not entering more fully here into the
question how many of these fables can actually be traced to Aesop we
mention the already well-established fact that only of quite a small
minority--the last-cited one of dung-beetle and the eagle is among
them--can it be shown that they date from Aesop's time, or that in
general terms there is any flavour of antiquity about them to support
the view that Aesop is in fact their author.

Of Aesop himself we are informed that he was a deformed and humpbacked
slave; and for his place of residence we are transported into Phrygia,
the very land, that is, which marks the passage from the immediately
symbolical and the existence still fettered on Nature, to a land in
which man begins to take real hold of the spiritual and himself as
the source of the same. In our present connection, no doubt, he does
not behold the animal and natural world in the way the Hindoos and
Egyptians beheld it, that is, as something of itself, superior and
Divine. He regards it with prosaic vision as something whose relations
are only of service in the presentment of a picture of human act and
avoidance. His conceits are further merely the reflections of wit,
without real energy of soul or depth of insight and a fundamental grasp
of reality, without poetry and philosophy, in fact. His opinions and
maxims are, in consequence, fairly rich in sensuous image and traits of
cleverness, but we never get beyond the digging away into mere trifles,
which, instead of creating free shapes from the unfettered life of
spirit, is contented to discover some additional aspect that is new
in material already close at hand, such as the specific instincts and
habits of animals or other daily occurrences of little moment; and this
is so because that which he would teach he is still afraid to express
freely, and is only able to make it intelligible in a kind of riddle
which is at the same time always being solved. Prose has its origin
in the slave, and in the same way prose clings to the entire type of
conception with which we are now concerned.

Despite this fact, however, the experience of almost all nations and
times has in one form or another run through these old tales; and
however much any particular people whose literature is generally well
versed in fable may pride itself as possessing more than one fabulist
of distinction, we shall find that their poetry is for the most part
merely a reflection of these primary sallies of invention, merely
translated into the vernacular of the age. All that has since been
added to the general heritage of such conceits falls far behind the
original legacy in real merit.

(_b_) There are, however, among these fables of Greek descent a
number which betray the greatest poverty of invention and execution,
being mere pegs on which to hang the instructive moral, so that the
contents, whether they refer to gods or animals, have merely a formal
significance. Yet even these are far enough removed from the modern
tendency of doing violence to the animal world as we find it in
Nature. An example of this tendency is that fable of Pfeffel about
a marmot which collected provisions in autumn, an act of foresight
which another marmot neglected, and so was brought to the condition
of beggary and starvation. Or there is that other of the fox, the
bloodhound, and the lynx, of whom it is narrated that they presented
themselves before Jupiter, together with the talents which exclusively
belonged to them of cunning, keen scent, and clear sight, and requested
that these gifts should be equally divided between them; the fable goes
on that they obtained such consent under these rather surprising terms:
"The fox gets a blow on the forehead, the bloodhound is good for no
more hunting, the Argus Lynx receives a cataract." That a marmot should
cease to make provision for its wants, or that the three animals above
mentioned should ever incidentally meet with, or be naturally capable
of receiving, a proportionate division of their respective gifts is
contrary to all reason and consequently meaningless. A better fable
than those above cited is that of the ant and the grasshopper, or that
other of the deer with the beautiful horns and the slender legs.

Conformably to the tenor of fables of this kind we have grown, as
a rule, accustomed to accept the moral of the fable as that which
is of first importance, and to regard the narrative as _merely_ an
external form, and consequently an event entirely _composed_ with a
view to expound that moral. Embodiments of this sort, however, more
particularly when the occurrence described is wholly at variance with
the natural character of specific animals, are in the highest degree
insipid, attempts at invention which mean less than nothing. The real
ingenuity of a fable consists exclusively in this that it is able to
impart to that which already exists in determinate form a further and
more universal significance than that which is immediately presented.

The question has further been raised, in reference to the general
assumption that the essence of a fable consists in setting before us
the actions and speech of animals rather than those of mankind, as to
what it is precisely which attracts us in this allusion. We cannot
suppose, however, that there is after all much that is attractive in
such a furbishing up of our humanity in animal form, even though it
should exceed or at least differ from that of a comedy of apes and
dogs, where, apart from the sight of the general cleverness of the
dressing up, the entire interest consists rather in the deliberate
contrast between animal nature as it really is and appears, and that
represented as taking part in human affairs. On grounds of this sort
Breitinger finds the attraction to consist entirely in the element
of the _marvellous._ In the original type of the fable, however, the
appearance of animals endowed with speech is _not_ put before us as
anything uncommon or surprising. And for this very reason Lessing is
of the opinion that the introduction of animals is really of great use
in helping us to understand and _assisting_ the poet to _abridge_ his
exposition; in other words we are well acquainted with the qualities
of animals, the cuteness of the fox, the magnanimity of the lion, the
voracity and violence of the wolf, and are consequently able to set
before our minds a concrete image in place of such abstract qualities.
An advantage of this kind, however, in no essential degree mitigates
the triviality of the relation when it has become one purely of form,
and generally it is even a disadvantage to place animals thus before
us instead of men, for the reason that the animal form remains a mask,
which, so far as intelligibility is concerned, _veils_ fully as much as
it _declares_ the significance.

The most important fable of this kind should be in that case the
old history of Reinecke, the fox, which is notwithstanding strictly
speaking no fable at all.

(_c_) In other words we may in conclusion add a _third_ type of the
fable, in which we find that there is already a tendency to pass beyond
the real boundaries of the type. The ingenuity of a fable consists, as
already pointed out, in the discovery of particular cases among the
variety of natural phenomena, which we are able to use as evidential
support of general reflections upon human action and behaviour, without
essentially displacing the animal and natural world from its own native
mode of existence. For the rest this general application or adaptation
of the particular case to the so-called moral is an exercise of
personal caprice, or shall we say native wit, and is therefore to all
intents and purposes an affair of pleasantry. It is this aspect which
receives the main emphasis in the type of fable now before us. The
fable is in fact accepted as a witty jest. Goethe has written many a
delightful and ingenious poem in this vein. The following lines occur
in one of them, which is entitled "The Barking Dog":

/$
     Down every road afield we ride
       On business bent or pleasure;
     And ever in our wake full-cry
       A hound's bark beats the measure.
     Loosed from our horse's stable he
       _Will_ always gallop beside us:
     And this is what his clamour proves!
       We ride, are with the riders.
$/

It is equally necessary here, as in the case of Aesop's fables, that
objects which are borrowed from Nature should receive their native
aspect, and only bring before us in their action and habits human
circumstances, passions, and traits, which have a close affinity to
those of the animal world. The story of Reinecke is one of this kind,
and is really more a fairy-tale than a fable in the strict sense.
We find in the content of this the reflection of an age of disorder
and lawlessness, of evil generally, weakness, baseness, violence,
and shamelessness, of unbelief in religion, that merely retains the
appearance of a mastery, or indeed an established position in the
world-drama; and the result is that craft, cunning, and selfishness
have it all their own way. It is, in fact, the condition of the
Middle Ages, more especially as developed in Germany. The powerful
vassals pay, it is true, some appearance of respect to the king; but
practically every man does as he pleases--robs, murders, oppresses
the weak, betrays the king, finds a way somehow to the favours of the
queen, so that if the community just holds together that is about
all. Such is the human content, which by this fable is preserved,
not in a mere abstract proposition but in an entire _complexus_ of
conditions and characters, and by reason of its baseness fits in with
the animal nature exactly, under the forms of which it is unfolded.
For this reason we find nothing embarrassing in the fact that it is
without any reserves transferred to the animal realm; and for the same
reason the particular form it takes does not so much appear as an
exceptional case cognate with it; rather we are inclined to feel the
singularity of it make way for a certain breadth of universality, a
vision emphasizing the general truth: "Such is the way things happen
in the world." The comical side consists in the forms under which the
whole is put together, drollery and jest being freely mingled with the
bitter earnestness of the situation; the general effect of which is
that we not only have human meanness admirably depicted through that
of animals, but we are further made a present of the most entertaining
traits, and most characteristic anecdotes wholly peculiar to animal
life, so that, despite all tartness to the palate, our final view
is that of a comedy whose main intention is neither bad nor purely
capricious, but one that has genuine earnestness to support it.


2. PARABLE, PROVERB, APOLOGUE

(_a_) _The Parable_

_Parable_ has this general affinity with _fable_, that it accepts
events from the circle of common life, but also makes them the
depositors of a higher and more universal significance, expressly with
a view that the same shall become intelligible and objective by means
of that daily occurrence in its ordinary guise. A difference, however,
at once asserts itself between the parable and fable, and it is this,
that the former selects such occurrences in _human_ action and habits,
as we have them every day before our eyes, rather than in Nature and
the animal world; it then expands the particular case selected, which
appears trite enough at first as such a particular, to the range of
wider interest, by suggesting through it a higher kind of significance.

For this reason the range and the importance of the significances in
wealth of _content_ can materially be increased and deepened[84],
while, if we take the point of view of form, it is clear that the
subjective process of intentional comparison and setting out of a
generally instructive reflection already marks the acceptance and
appearance of a more advanced type.

As a parable, still united to a wholly practical end, we may view
the means of persuasion used by Cyrus to induce the Persians to
rebel (Herod., I, cap. 126). His letter to the Persians advised them
to betake themselves to a certain spot provided with sickles. When
there he set them all on the first day to clear with hard labour a
certain field overgrown with thistles. On the following day, however,
after they had rested and bathed, he conducted them to a meadow
and supplied them with ample cheer in the shape of food and wine.
Finally, at the close of the feast, he asked of them which of the two
days had proved the most enjoyable. All voted naturally for to-day
rather than yesterday; the former had brought them only good things,
while the latter had been a day of weariness and toil. On this Cyrus
exclaimed: "Follow me, and many will be the good days such as the
present has brought you. Refuse to follow me, and countless labours
are in store quite a match for those of yesterday." Of a type akin
to the above, though of profoundest interest and the widest range
considered relatively to their significance, are the parables we meet
with in the Gospels. Take, for example, that of the sower, a narrative
which as such possesses the most unimportant subject-matter, and
whose significance centres throughout in the comparison it supplies
to the preaching of the kingdom of heaven. The significance in these
parables is wholly a religious gospel, to which the human occurrences,
wherein such is imaginatively presented, stand in a relation similar
to that between the animal and human world in the fables of Aesop,
where the former elicits the meaning of the latter. Of a like breadth
of content is the famous story of Boccaccio, which Lessing converted
in his "Natham" into the parable of the three rings. The substance of
the narrative is also in this case taken by itself nothing remarkable;
the extraordinarily wide, reach of its content arises wholly from the
way the differences between and the relative validity of the three
religions, namely, the Jewish, the Mohammedan, and the Christian, are
suggested by it. The same thing may be said of the latest novelties in
this type of art, the parables of Goethe for example. Take that of the
"cat-pasty." In this a famous _chef_, in order to prove himself hunter
no less than cook, went out hunting, but shot a tom-cat instead of
a hare, which he then served up to the company sauced with his most
consummate art. This is no doubt a reference to the Light theory of
Newton. We have here under the guise of the hare-pie which the cook
tried in vain to elaborate out of a cat a reflection of that abortive
type of physical science which the mathematician will assume to be
something better than it is. These parables of Goethe frequently have
a strong touch of drollery about them, an aspect which they share with
his fables by the help of which he was wont to shed himself of life's
disappointments.

(_b_) _The Proverb_

The _proverb_ forms as it were the middle point of this sphere. In the
form of their execution, that is to say, proverbs lean at one time in
the direction of the fable, at another to that of the apologue. They
give us a particular case selected for the most part from the daily
walk of mankind, which, however, is to be interpreted universally. Take
the example, "One hand washes the other," or those others, "Every one
wheels before his own door," "Who digs a grave for another, falls into
it himself," "Bake a pudding for me and I will staunch your thirst,"
and others like them. To wise saws of this type belong the many
apophthegems that Goethe has contributed to modern literature, often
of exquisite grace and profound to a degree. These are not modes of
comparison of the type that the general significance and the concrete
phenomenon are opposed to one another in separation, but the former is
immediately expressed with the latter.

(_c_) _The Apologue_

The _apologue_ may be regarded as a parable, which not only serves
in the way of _comparison_ to render visible a general significance,
but rather in this its very form reproduces and expresses the general
moral, the same being actually included in the particular case,
which is, however, related as only a single example. Conformably to
this definition we may call Goethe's "Der Gott und die Bajadere" an
apologue. Here we find the Christian tale of the repentant Magdalene
reclothed in accordance with Hindoo ideas. The Bajadere[85] exemplifies
the same humility, a like strength of love and faith; God puts her to
the proof, an ordeal she completely sustains, and her exaltation and
reconciliation follows. In the apologue also narrative is so extended
that the outcome of it furnishes the moral itself, bare of any parallel
to support it, as may be illustrated from "The Treasure-Finder":

/$
     Work by day and guests at night,
     Weeks of moil, feasts of delight,
     Such the Future's spell for thee.
$/


3. THE METAMORPHOSIS[86]

The _third_ mode we have to discuss in its contrast to the fable,
parable, proverb, and apologue, is the _metamorphosis._ This is no
doubt of a kind which is both symbolical and mythological; it sets
forth, however, expressly furthermore the natural in its opposition
to the spiritual. That is to say, it confers on an object immediately
present to sense such as a rock, animal, flower, or spring the
peculiar significance of being a _delapsus_ and a _punishment_ of
spiritual existences. Such are the examples of Philomela, the Pieredes,
Narcissus, and Arethusa, all of whom, through some false step, passion,
transgression or the like, became subject to irreparable guilt or pain,
and for this reason were deprived of the freedom of spiritual life,
and united to the substance of physical nature. From one point of view
Nature is not regarded merely under its external and prosaic aspect,
simply, that is, as mountain, river-source, tree and so forth, but it
further receives a content which is bound up with some action or event
of spiritual life. The rock is not simply stone, but Niobe herself, who
weeps for her children. From the other point of view this human action
implies guilt of some kind, and this metamorphosis into the physical
phenomenon is accepted as a degradation of Spirit.

It is therefore necessary to distinguish these metamorphoses of human
individuals or gods very sharply from the genuine type of _unconscious
symbolism._ To return to Egypt, for example, the Divine is here in
part immediately envisaged in the mysterious and secluded intension
of animal life, partly, too, the real symbol is here a natural form
which is immediately associated with a wider significance cognate to
it, despite the fact that this form is unable to supply the determinate
existence fully commensurate with it; and this is so for the reason
that neither in respect to its form or its content has unconscious
symbolism arrived at the free outlook of Spirit. Metamorphosis, on
the contrary, emphasizes the essential distinction between Nature and
Spirit, and by doing so marks the _passage_ from that which is both
symbolical and mythological to that which is in the _strict sense_
mythological, under, that is to say, a conception of the latter, which,
albeit that it proceeds in its myths from a concrete fact of Nature
such as sun, sea, rivers, trees, earth, and the like, nevertheless,
further and expressly sets this purely natural aspect on one side and
apart, divesting such natural phenomena of their inner content and
individualizing the same as a spiritual Power in the adequate artistic
form of gods clothed in the lineaments of humanity, whether we regard
them as external shape or spiritual activity. In this sense Homer and
Hesiod have given to the Greeks their mythology, a mythology which
by no means merely consists in the revelation of the significance of
such gods, by no means is merely an exposition of moral, physical,
theological, or speculative doctrine, but one that is a mythology in
the strict sense, that is the origin of a spiritual religion under the
genuine guise of our humanity.

In the Metamorphoses of Ovid the most heterogeneous material is brought
together quite apart from the entirely modern spirit in which myth is
treated. Beside the mere aspect of metamorphosis, which could here in
general terms only be conceived as a kind of mythical representation,
we have the specific character[87] of this type raised in an
exceptional way in these narrations, in which embodiments of this sort,
which are commonly accepted as symbolical, or are already received in
their entirely mythical character, appear to have been converted into
metamorphoses, and that which is elsewhere united is so presented as to
assert an opposition between its significance and form, and the passage
of the one into the other. In this way, for instance, the Phrygian
or Egyptian symbol, the wolf, is so separated from its intrinsic
significance, that the same is converted into a previous existence if
not actually into the kingship of the Sun, and the existence of the
wolf is conceived as resulting from an act of that human existence. In
the same way in the song of the Pierides the Egyptian gods, the ram,
the cat, and so forth are imaged as such animal forms, in which the
mythical gods of Greece, Jupiter, Venus, and the rest have concealed
themselves from sheer fright. The Pierides themselves, however, by
way of punishment, in that they dared to rival the Muses with their
singing, are changed into woodpeckers.

Looked at from another side it is equally necessary, with a view to
securing the more accurate definition, which the content wherein the
significance consists essentially carries, that we distinguish the
metamorphosis from the fable. That is to say in the fable the binding
together of the moral with the natural fact is an association that is
_harmless_; for in this the thing of Nature, regarded under the mode
in which it differs in its natural aspect from Spirit, does not affect
the significance, although there are certainly single examples of the
fables of Aesop, which, with but slight alteration, would be instances
of metamorphosis. As such may be cited the forty-second fable of the
bat, the thorn-bush, and the diver, whose instincts are explained as
due to the ill-luck of former experiences.

And here we must end our passage through this the first circle of the
comparative type of art. It started from that which was immediately
present to sense, that is, the concrete phenomenon. We proceed now from
the point we have arrived at to examine a further kind of significance
which the type unfolds.



B. COMPARISONS, WHICH IN THEIR IMAGINATIVE PRESENTMENT HAVE THEIR
ORIGIN IN THE SIGNIFICANCE.

Forasmuch as the severation of significance from embodiment is the
hypostasized form for consciousness, within which the relation of both
originates independently, it is both possible and inevitable that in
the articulation of the self-subsistency of one side no less than
the other a start should be made not only from external existence,
but conversely and as emphatically from that which is _immediately
present_ to the conscious subject, in other words general conceptions,
reflections, emotions, and principles of thought. For this inward
aspect is equally with the images of external objects a subject-matter
present to consciousness and in its independence of that which is
external proceeds on its way from its own resources. In the case,
then, where we find the significance is the point of departure, the
expression, that is, the reality, appears as the _modus formulandi_,
which is abstracted from the concrete world in order to give a visible
and sensuously defined shape to the significance regarded as abstract
content.

Owing, however, to the reciprocally indifferent relation under which
both sides confront each other, this association which binds the two
sides together is, as we have already seen, no essentially explicit and
necessary union; consequently the relation, such as it is, that is no
actual reflection of objective fact, is rather a _product_ of _active
mind_, which no longer even disguises this its fundamental character,
but rather deliberately exposes it in the form of its representation.
The very embodiment possesses this binding together of form and
content, soul and body, under the guise of concrete _animation_[88],
as essentially and explicitly the substantial union of both sides
in the soul as in the body, in the content as in the form. In the
case before us, however, what is presupposed by consciousness is the
dislocation of the two sides, and consequently their association is the
vivification of the significance simply for consciousness by means of
a shape external to it, and an indication of a real existence, equally
subjective in its character through the relation of the same to the
general conceptions, emotions, and thoughts common to humanity. For
this reason what is mainly emphasized in these forms of comparative art
is the subjective art of _the poet_ in his creative capacity, and in
complete works of art we have mainly in our attitude to this particular
aspect of them to separate that which strictly is appurtenant to their
subject-matter and its necessary embodiment from that which is attached
to them by the poet as mere ornament and embellishment. Such accessory
detail, which we cannot fail to distinguish, that is, consisting
mainly of images, similes, allegories, and metaphor, is precisely
that part of his work in virtue of which he earns his title to fame
with most people, a tendency which is all the more common because it
indirectly bears witness to the insight and subtlety which enables such
critics to discover our poet and draw attention to that aspect of his
invention which is so entirely his own. But for all that, as we have
already observed, in genuine works of art such forms as those we are
discussing can only be regarded as accessory, although we doubtless do
find in previous works on _Poetics_ such incidental features treated as
precisely those which go to make the poet.

Furthermore however, though unquestionably in the first instance
the two sides which have to be associated stand in a relation of
indifference to one another, yet in order to justify the subjective
relation and comparison, the embodiments must also in the character of
its content itself include the same relations and qualities under a
cognate mode to that which the significance intrinsically possesses;
the grasp of this similarity is, in fact, the one sure ground upon
which the setting forth of the significance in union with this specific
form rather than any other, and the envisagement of such import by
its means is based. Lastly, inasmuch as we begin here, not from the
concrete phenomenon, by the abstraction of a general characteristic
from that, but conversely from this universal itself, which the
intention is to have reflected in an image, the significance secures
the position which makes it stand out actually as the real object, and
as such is predominant over the sensuous picture which is the _modus_
of its envisagement.

The series in which we propose now to examine the particular types we
have mentioned as belonging to this phase of comparative art may be
indicated as follows:

_First_ in order, as most cognate to the previous stage, the _riddle_
will enlist our attention.

_Secondly_, we have to examine the _allegory_, in which as the main
feature we shall find the abstract significance assert a mastery over
the external form.

_Thirdly_, we have the class of the comparison in its strict sense;
_metaphor, image_, and _simile._


1. THE RIDDLE

The true symbol is essentially enigmatical in so far as the
externality, by means of which a general significance is made apparent,
still differs from the import it is intended to express: in other words
it thereby raises the doubt as to what is the exact signification
applicable to the form. The riddle, however, appertains to conscious
symbolism, and an obvious distinction between it and the genuine
symbol is to be found in the fact that in the former case the meaning
is clearly and fully _recognized_ by the propounder of it, and the
form which veils that which is to be interpreted by it is therefore
_intentionally_ selected for this very purpose. The genuine symbol is
both before and after the act of selection an unsolved problem, the
riddle, on the contrary, is essentially a problem that is solved. It is
therefore with very good reason that Sancho Panza exclaims: "I should
much prefer to hear the solution first and the riddle afterwards."

(_a_) _First_, then, in the invention of the riddle, the point from
which the process starts, is the apprehended meaning, the signification
of it.

(_b_) The _second_ step consists in the intentional selection of
traits of character and other qualities from the common experience of
the external world, which--such is always the aspect of Nature and
external objects of every kind--are placed relatively to one another
in piecemeal fashion, and in thus setting them forth in disparate
contiguity, which makes their singularity the more striking. And
inasmuch as they are so placed they are without the enfolding unity
of mind, and their array and association intentionally distract has so
far no intrinsic significance whatever. And yet for all that, and this
is the other aspect of the riddle, they do expressly point to a unity
in relation to which even traits to all appearance most heterogeneous
contain, notwithstanding, both a real sense and significance.

(_c_) This unity, which may be styled the subject of these distract
predicates, is just the simple preconception, the word that solves
our riddle, to discover or divine which from the apparently confused
medley of the mode under which it is propounded is the riddle's
problem. Thus interpreted we may call the riddle the facetiousness of
symbolism, aware that it is such which puts to the proof acuteness
of insight and aptness at putting things together, and finally, by
stimulating the zest of solution, breaks into and destroys the very
mode of presentation it has itself set up. In the main we shall find
this, form, therefore, most employed in human speech, though we
may find exceptional examples of it also in the plastic arts[89],
architecture, horticulture, and painting. With regard to its historical
appearance the East is first and foremost responsible, and we may date
its advent in that intermediate and transitional period out of the
more obtuse type of symbolism into one of more intelligent knowledge
and comprehension. Entire peoples and historical epochs have taken
delight in the solution of such problems. It also plays an important
part in the Middle Ages among the Arabs and the Scandinavians, and as a
particular example it is much in evidence in the minstrel tourneys on
the Wartburg. In modern times it is mainly under the more modest guise
of recreation and purely social pleasantry that we cross it.

In the riddle we have opened a practically limitless field for
witty and striking conceits, which in their reference to any given
circumstance, occurrence, or object take the form of a play upon words
or an epigrammatical sentence. On the one hand we have presented
an object trite to a degree, on the other some conceit of the mind
which emphasizes unexpectedly with conspicuous force some aspect
or relation, which we failed to perceive in that object on first
confronting it, and which now attaches to it the light of a new
significance.


2. THE ALLEGORY

The counterpart to the riddle in this sphere of comparative art, where
the point of departure is from the generality of the significance,
is the _allegory._ From a certain point of view this form, no less
than the former, endeavours to make more visible to us the definite
qualities of a general conception through qualities in materially
concrete objects which are cognate therewith; but in contrast to that
form this is not done in the interest of a partial concealment and
a mysterious problem; rather it is now quite the other way with the
express object of absolute revealment; to an extent, in fact, that all
which is external, and is as such utilized by it, must become through
and through transpicuous with the significance which has to make its
appearance therein.

(_a_) It is therefore in the first place concerned to personify
abstract conditions of a general character or similar qualities
both from the human and the natural world, such as religion, love,
justice, strife, fame, war, peace, the seasons, death, and the like,
and conceive them under the mode of _personality._ This subjective
aspect, however, is neither in respect to its content nor its external
form in itself either a real subject or individual, but persists as
the abstraction of a general conception, whose content is merely
the _barren_ form of subjectivity which may be called as truly a
grammatical subject[90]. In other words an allegorical being, despite
every attempt to clothe it in the lineaments of humanity, entirely
falls short of concrete individuality, whether it be a Greek god, a
saint, or any other genuine example. It is, in fact, so forced to
pare away[91] from the substance of subjectivity, in order to make it
conform with the abstract character of its significance, that all
the true definition of individuality disappears. It is therefore only
a just criticism of allegory to say that it is frosty and cold, and,
having regard to the abstract quality of its significances, even in the
point of invention, that it is rather the result of the matter-of-fact
understanding than that of the complete vision and emotional depth
of genuine imagination. Poets, such as Virgil, for example, are
particularly ready to give us examples of allegorical individualization
simply because they are unable to create gods of the Homeric type of
personality.

(_b_) _Secondly_, however, the significant character of allegorical
material is at once _defined_ in its abstraction, and only by means of
such definition is it intelligible; the expression of such particular
aspects, for the reason that it is not immediately unfolded in that
which is in the first instance a purely _generalized_ conception of
personality, is consequently forced to appear alongside of the subject,
simply as the predicates which elucidate the same. This separation of
subject from predicate, generality from particularity, is the second
feature of the frostlike appearance of the allegory. The envisagement
of the determinate and specific qualities is borrowed from the modes of
expression, activity, and resultant effects which make their appearance
in virtue of the significance, when that secures its realized form
in concrete existence, or from the various means which subserve it
in its true realization. For example, war is delineated through
weapons, cannons, drums, and standards, etc.; the yearly seasons, by
an enumeration of the flowers and fruits, which pre-eminently spring
up under the favouring influence of the particular seasons. Objects
of this kind may further receive purely symbolical relations, as, for
instance, Justice may be brought home to our minds by means of the
scales and fillet, Death by that of the hour-glass and scythe. For the
reason, however, that the significance in allegory is the dominant
factor, and the more specialized presentment is subordinate to it
under an equally abstract form, for it is, after all, itself merely
an abstraction, the embodiment of such definable characteristics only
secures the validity of an _attribute_ pure and simple.

(_c_) In this way the allegory is under both these aspects without
vital warmth. Its general personification is empty, the definite mode
of its externalization is only a sign, which taken independently has
no longer any meaning, and the _centrum_, which is thus constrained to
gather up the variety of the attributes into a focus does not possess
the potency of a truly subjective unity which is itself self-embodied
in its real and determinate existence inter-related throughout, but is
rather a purely abstract form, for which the substantial filling-up
with particular traits, which, as we have seen, never succeed in rising
above the rank of the formal attribute, remains as something external.
Consequently we may say that in so far as the allegory sets up any
claim to real self-consistency, in which it personifies its abstraction
and their delineation, it is not to be taken seriously. In other
words, that which is both implicitly and explicitly self-substantive
is unable really to conform with an allegorical being. The _Dikê_
of the ancients, for instance, is not on all fours with allegorical
individualization. She is universal Necessity personified, eternal
Justice, the universally potent subject, the absolute substantivity of
the relations which co-ordinate Nature and spiritual Life, that is, she
is the absolute Self-subsistent itself, in the train of whom all other
individuals are bound, whether gods or men. Herr Frederick von Schlegel
has, it is true--we have already referred to the fact--ventured the
opinion that every work of art must of necessity be an allegory. Such
an expression of opinion is only true if limited to the sense that
every work of art must contain a general idea and a significance which
is itself essentially true. What we have above, on the contrary,
included under the term allegory is a mode of presentation which only
conforms to the notion of art incompletely, being itself no less
in content than in form subordinate to it. Every human event and
development, every relation in which life is concerned, possesses no
doubt intrinsically an aspect of universality, which may be emphasized
as such, but abstractions of this kind are already to be found in the
general contents of consciousness, and merely to assert them in their
prosaic aspect of generality and external delineation, which is the
point where the allegory halts, is still to fall short of the true
sphere of art.

Winckelmann has also written an immature work on allegory, in which he
has ranged together a large number of examples, but failed for the
most part to distinguish those which exemplify the symbol and allegory
respectively.

Among the particular arts within which we find examples of the
allegory, poetry is really acting contrary to its laws when it takes
refuge in such a mode of presentment; sculpture on the contrary is in
most directions barely complete without it, more especially modern
sculputure, which freely admits of that which is native to portraiture,
and so must avail itself of allegorical figures in order to delineate
more closely the relative aspects under which the individual
presentment is posed. On Blucher's monument, for example, which has
been raised to him here in Berlin, we find both the genius of Fame and
Victory, although, having regard to the general treatment of the war of
liberation, this allegorical aspect is once more set aside by means of
a series of particular scenes such as the departure of the army, its
march, and victorious return. Generally speaking, however, where the
subject of sculpture is portraiture the sculptor will avail himself
gladly of allegorical representation as offering to the simplicity
of his central figure the contrast of environment and variety. The
ancients on the other hand, on their sarcophagi for example, more
frequently made use of general mythological representations of such
figures as Sleep, Death, and the like.

Allegory generally is far less common in the antique than it is in
the romantic art of the Middle Ages, although it must be added that
such romance as it possesses is not really referable to allegory. The
frequent appearance of allegorical conception at this particular epoch
of human history is to be thus explained. From a certain point of
view we find that the content of the Middle Ages is preoccupied with
particular types of individuality and the personal aims, generally
focussed in love and honour, and resulting in vows, wanderings, and
adventures, which are common to them. Individuals of this type and the
events of such lives invariably offer the imagination a wide scope
for the inventive faculties, and the composition of accidental and
capriciously imagined collisions and their resolution. On the other
hand, in direct contrast to this motley show of worldly adventure we
have the universal, taking it here as the stability of the ordinary
relations and conditions of life, a universal which is not, as was
the case in the ancient world, individualized in the figures of
self-subsistent gods; consequently we find it freely and naturally
emphasized in independent isolation as such universality alongside
of these particular types of personality and their specific modes
of appearance and activity. If the artist therefore happens to have
before his mind the general conditions of life we have adverted to,
and assuming that he is desirous of giving artistic embodiment to them
in some form other than the accidental mode common to his age, that
he wishes, in short, to emphasize their universality, he has no other
alternative than to accept the allegorical type of presentment. This is
precisely what we find in the sphere of religion.

The Virgin Mary, Christ, the actions and dramatic events of apostolic
history, the saints with their penances and martyrdoms, are, it is
true, even here individualities in the full sense; but Christendom
is also to an equal extent concerned with the general conceptions of
abstract spiritual qualities, such as will not comply with the concrete
definition of actual persons inasmuch as the relation of _universality_
is precisely the mode under which they are presented, of which examples
are Love, Faith, and Hope. And generally the truths and dogmas of
Christendom are independently cognized by the religious consciousness,
and a main interest even of their poetry consists in this that these
doctrines are emphasized in their _universal_ aspect, that Truth is
known and believed in as _universal_ truth. In that case, however, it
is necessary that the concrete presentation should remain a subordinate
factor, itself external to the content, and allegory is just the form
which satisfies this want in the easiest and most sufficient way.
Conformably to this the divine comedy of Dante is full of allegorical
matter. Theology, for example, in this poem is run together in fusion
with the image of his beloved lady Beatrice. This personification,
however, wavers in the lines of its delineation; and this uncertainty
of outline is that which constitutes the beauty of it, and places it
halfway between genuine allegory and a vision of his youthful love.
In the ninth year of his life he looked on her for the first time:
she appeared to him no daughter of mortal men, but of God. His fiery
Italian nature conceived a passion for her, which the years failed to
extinguish. And conscious that it was she who awoke in him the genius
of poetry he finally sets himself the task, after he had lost in her
that which was most loved in the fairest flower of its promise, of
composing that wonderful monument of the most intimate and personal
religion of his heart in the poetic masterpiece of his life.


3. METAPHOR, IMAGE, SIMILE

The _third_ sphere of content attached to the riddle and the allegory
consists in the _imaged thing_ generally. The riddle veiled the still
independently cognized significance and the mode of its shaping in
cognate, albeit heterogeneous and distantly placed traits of definition
was still of most importance. Allegory on the contrary emphasized
the perspicuity of the significance so strongly as the predominant
aim, that the personification and its attributes appear deposed to
the rank of mere signs. The imaged thing now connects this clarity of
allegorical expression with that impulse of the riddle to envisage the
significance which stands out clearly before the mind in the form of an
externality cognate with it; the result, however, is not that it gives
rise to problems which have first of all to be solved, but rather that
the imaged shape appears, by means of which the preconceived conception
is revealed with absolute transparency, notifying itself as that which
it really is.

(_a_) _The Metaphor_

The _first_ point we have to draw attention to in the _metaphor_ is
this, that it may be accepted at once as essentially a simile, in so
far as it expresses clear and self-subsistent significance in a similar
phenomenon of reality comparable with it. In the comparison as such,
however, both sides of the comparison, that is the real meaning and
the image, are definitely kept apart from each other, while on the
contrary in the metaphor this separation, albeit it is essentially
present, is _not_ as yet clearly _posited._ For this reason Aristotle
long ago distinguished comparison and metaphor by his statement that
a "how" is added to the former which is absent from the latter. In
other words the metaphorical expression specifies but _one_ aspect,
the image. In the context, however, to which the image is attached,
the real significance which is intended lies so near that it is at
the same time immediately asserted without any direct separation of
it from the image. When it is said, for example: "the Spring-time
of these cheeks," or "a sea of tears," we are inevitably forced to
accept such an expression as an image rather than an actual fact,
an image whose significance the context at the same time expressly
designates. In the symbol and allegory the relation of actual meaning
to external form is not asserted either so immediately or necessarily.
From the fact that an Egyptian staircase consists of nine stages,
and a hundred other circumstances of similar pregnancy, it is only
the adept, the connoisseur, and the professor who will derive a
symbolical significance, and doubtless will scent out and discover
much that is both mystical and symbolical into the bargain, which is
so much ingenuity of research thrown away for the reason that what is
discovered is not there. This may have happened often enough to my
honoured friend Creutzer, no less than our latter-day Platonists and
the commentators of Dante.

(_a_) In range and variety of form it is impossible to exhaust the
resources of metaphor; its definition, however, is simple. It is a
wholly abbreviated comparison, in which we find, as a fact, image and
significance are not as yet set in opposition to one another, but only
the image is introduced by it; at the same time, however, the meaning
which is thus attached to the image is not its real meaning; this is as
it were effaced, and by virtue of the content in which it is set we are
enabled to recognize the significance which is really intended in the
image itself, albeit that meaning is not expressly asserted.

For the reason, however, that the meaning that is thus rendered
intelligible under the image only comes to light by virtue of the
context, the significance which is expressed in metaphor cannot claim
the importance of an independent artistic presentation; their mode of
appearance is purely incidental, so that metaphors, in a still more
emphatic degree, can only be employed as the external embellishment of
an essentially independent work of art.

(_β_) The metaphor is mainly used in the expressions of speech, which
we may usefully consider in this relation under the following aspects.

(_αα_) In the first place every language includes within its own
compass a host of metaphors. They arise from the fact that a word,
which in the first instance merely designates something entirely
sensuous, is carried over into a spiritual sphere. "_Grasp"_,
"_comprehend"_[92], and generally a number of words connected with
the processes of thought, have in regard to their original meaning a
content that is wholly sensuous, which is consequently abandoned and
exchanged for the meaning applicable to mind; the first meaning is
sensuous, the second spiritual.

(_ββ_) By degrees, however, the metaphorical aspect disappears in the
general use of such a word, which as the current coin of language is
converted from an expression which is not strictly accurate to one that
is so, the effect of this process being that image and import, owing
to the habitual frequency with which the latter is only conceived in
the former, cease to differ from one another, and the image merely
immediately presents the abstract significance itself instead of a
concrete mode of vision[93].

When we take, for example, the word "grasp" in the sense applicable to
mental life it entirely escapes us that there is any sensuous relation
implied between the hand and external objects[94]. In living languages
this distinction between genuine metaphor and words which already
through usage have fallen to the level of a mere means of expression
is readily established; the reverse is the case with dead languages,
for the reason that here mere etymology is unable finally to bring our
minds to a decision, inasmuch and in so far as the question does not
depend on the original source of that word, and its general development
in speech, but first and foremost on the fact whether a word which
has all the appearance of being used in a picturesque and metaphorical
sense had or had not already lost by habitual usage under a meaning
applying exclusively to spirit, and in the speech when alive, its first
sensuous significance and been absorbed wholly in that higher sense.

(_γγ_) When this takes place the invention of new metaphors, which
are the exclusive product of the poetical imagination becomes for the
first time a vital necessity. That in which this invention is mainly
concerned consists _first_ in transferring the phenomena, activities,
and conditions of a higher level of fact in a way that illustrates
the content of less important material, and in bringing to light
significances of such inferior matter in the form and image which
stands above them. The organic, for example, is by itself essentially
of higher importance than the inorganic, and to carry forward that
which has no life within, the range of vital phenomenal enhances its
expression. We may illustrate this with the saying of Ferdusi: "The
keenness of my sword _devours_ the brain of the lion, and _drinks_ the
dark blood of the courageous." In a yet more enhanced degree we find
the same result when that which is of Nature and sensuous is imaged,
and thereby raised and ennobled in the form of _spiritual_ phenomena.
So we have such common turns of speech as "_smiling_ fields," and
"_angry_ flood," or in the language of Calderon: "The waves _sigh_
beneath the burden of ships." In these examples that which exclusively
applies to humanity is diverted to the expression of Nature. The Latin
poets use such metaphorical language often enough, as we may find
in our Virgil, take the example: _Quum graviter tunsis gemit area
frugibus_ (Georg., III, 132).

Conversely and in the _second_ place that which pertains to mind is
brought in the same way more close to our powers of vision through the
image of natural objects. Such fanciful presentations, however, can
very readily degenerate into mere trifling and far-fetched conceits,
when that which is essentially without life receives notwithstanding
every appearance of individuality, and really spiritual activities are
assigned to it with perfect seriousness. The Italians more especially
have given themselves over to illusive trickery of this kind, and even
Shakespeare is not wholly free from them, as in that passage from
"Richard II" (Act V, sc. I), where he makes the King say to the Queen
on parting:

/$
      For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
      The heavy accent of thy moving tongue
      And in compassion weep the fire out;
      And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black
      For the deposing of a rightful king.
$/

(_γ_) Finally, if we look at the aim and interest of that which is
metaphorical, the first thing which strikes us is that a word in the
strict sense is an independently intelligible expression, the metaphor
otherwise. The question consequently presents itself, what is the
reason of this twofold means of expression, or, to put it another way,
why is it that we have the metaphorical which essentially implies
this division? The common explanation is that metaphors are used to
give vivacity to poetical composition, and this animating effect is
the ground in virtue of which Heyne, in particular, insists on their
value. The vivacity consists in the support they offer to imaginative
vision in the direction of clear definition, divesting the word, which
is always something generalized, of its purely indefinite character,
and bringing it home to sense by means of an image. No doubt a greater
degree of vivacity is to be found in metaphors than in the strict
expressions of ordinary speech; genuine vitality, however, is not to
be sought for in metaphors, whether in isolation or combination, whose
figurative plasticity, it is true, may frequently include a relation,
which by good chance attaches at the same time to the expression an
increased perspicuity and a higher definition, but quite as often, if
every detail of the process of thought is thus figuratively emphasized
in isolation, makes the whole unwieldy, overloading it thus with its
emphasis on singular aspects.

The genius of metaphorical diction is consequently, as we shall have to
elucidate more closely in our consideration of simile, to be regarded
as responding to a need and potency of mind and the emotional life,
which will not rest satisfied with that which is entirely simple,
ordinary, and homely, but make an effort beyond this and over into
something more recondite under the attraction which distinction offers
and the impulse to co-ordinate contrasted effects. This binding
together has itself again various causes, which may be notified as
follows.

(_αα_) _First_, we have it for the sake of _reinforcing_ an effect. The
emotional life, under the pressure and movement of its passions, gives
visible utterance to these forces by means of the piling up of sensuous
image. More than this, it strives to express its own whirl and tumble,
or persistence in the ideas which crowd upon it by means of a similar
letting itself go into phenomena cognate with such a condition, and its
own free movement among images of the greatest variety. In Calderon's
supplication to the Cross Julia utters the following words when she
looks upon the dead body of her only just deceased brother, and her
lover, Eusebio, the man who has killed Lisardo, stands before her:

/$
     O that I might close for ever
     Eyes before this blood here guiltless,
     Blood which cries for vengeance with its
     Flooding stream of purple flowers!
     Would that I could deem thee pardoned
     In the rush of tears that blind thee:
     Wounds and eyes are mouths which swallow
     Lies which seek admittance never, etc.
$/

With a still more vehement burst of passion Eusebio starts back from
the sight of her, when Julia finally is for surrendering herself to
him, as he exclaims:

/$
     Flaming sparks thine eyeballs scatter;
     Every sigh is breath that scorches;
     Every word is a volcano,
     Every hair a scribbled lightning,
     Every word is Death, and every
     Soft caress is Hell's own anguish;
     Such the horror stirs within me
     As I see--O awful symbol,
     Crucifix thy bosom carries.
$/

The human soul on the swell of its emotion keeps adding image on image
to that immediately confronting it, and with all this impetuous seeking
to and fro for new means of expression barely lays to rest its own
tumult.

(_ββ_) A _second_ rationale of the metaphorical consists in this that
the human soul, after adding to its own depth by this the motion of
its own life into the varied survey of objects cognate with it, is
stirred at the same time to cast itself free of the externality of
such objects, to the extent that it seeks to rediscover itself in what
is external; it transmutes that external in its own free activity,
and by clothing both itself and its passions in the forms of beauty,
proclaims furthermore its power to present in visible semblance its own
exaltation above the bare fact.

(_γγ_) A _third_ ground of figurative expression, and one of at
least equal force, may be found in the purely ribald exuberance of
the phantasy, which is unable to set before us an object in its own
outlines for what they are worth, or a significance in its unadorned
simplicity, but on all occasions hankers after some concrete embodiment
cognate with it, or is overmastered by the ingenuity of a personal
caprice, which, in order to escape the commonplace, abandons itself to
the charms of the piquant novelty, a caprice that is never satisfied
until it has discovered for us points of affinity in material the most
remote apparently from that before us, and has thereby related the same
to the most distant objects.

And we may here observe that it is not so much the _prosaic_ and
_poetic_ style generally as the style of the _classic_ world in
contrast with that of later periods which presents such a marked
difference in the pre-eminent importance they attach to genuine or
metaphorical expression respectively. It is not merely the Greek
philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, or the great historians and
orators, such as Thucydides and Demosthenes, but also the great poets,
Homer and Sophocles, who, albeit we find examples of the simile in all
them, remain on the whole, and without exception, constant in the use
of their direct form of expression[95]. Their plastic severity and
sterling substance will not permit them such a multifarious product,
as is bound up with the use of metaphor, nor will it suffer them, even
for the sake of gathering the so-called flowers of expression, to waver
fitfully in devious ways from their ideal mintage of the completely
simple and co-ordinate result as of one metal cast in one mould. The
metaphor, in fact, is always an interruption to the logical course of
conception and invariably to that extent a distraction, because it
starts images and brings them together, which are not immediately
connected with the subject and its significance, and for this reason
tend to a like extent to divert the attention from the same to matter
cognate with themselves, but strange to both. The prose of ancient
writers in the extraordinary clarity and flexibility of its utterance
and their poetry in the repose of its completely unfolded content[96],
are equally removed from the frequent use of metaphor by modern writers.

On the other hand it is particularly in the East, and above all the
later literature of Mohammedan poetry, which makes use of the indirect
or figurative modes of expression, and, indeed, finds them essential.
The same thing may be said, if less emphatically, of modern European
literature. The diction of Shakespeare, for instance, is full of
metaphor. The Spaniards, too, are very fond of this flowery region,
and, indeed, have wandered off into it to the point of the most
tasteless exaggeration and superfluity. Jean Paul falls under the
same charge. Goethe by virtue of the equal strength and clarity of
his vision to a less extent. Schiller, however, is even in his prose
exceedingly rich both in image and metaphor; in his case this is rather
due to his effort to bring really profound ideas within the range of
the imaginative vision without being forced to expound all they imply
for the mind in the technical language of philosophy. We behold and
find there the essential unity of the speculative reason reflected on
the mirror of Life as it stands before us.

(_b_) _The Image_

We may place the _image_ midway between the metaphor and the simile.
It has, in fact, so close an affinity with the metaphor that we may
regard it as merely a metaphor _fully amplified_[97], an aspect which
at the same time marks its very close resemblance to the simile; there
is, however, this distinction, that in the case of the image as such
the significance is not set forth in its independent opposition to
the concrete external object expressly compared with it. That which
we term the image arises when two phenomena or conditions, which by
themselves stand substantially apart, are placed in concurrence so that
one condition supplies the significance which is made intelligible
by means of the other. The first, that is to say, the fundamental
_modus_ of the definition constitutes here the relation of _independent
consistency_[98], and is the line of _division_ of the spheres in
their separation, from which both the significance and its image are
deduced; and that which is common to them, the qualities and relations
and so forth, are not, as in the symbol, the indefinite universal and
substantive itself, but the self-defined concrete existence on the one
side no less than on the other[99].

(_a_) Under a relation such as this the image may possess as its
significance a whole series of conditions, activities, contrasts, and
modes of existence, and manifest the same through a series of a similar
nature from an independent if cognate source, without emphasizing in
so many words the significance as such within the limits of the image.
The poem of Goethe, entitled "The Song of Mahomet," is of this kind.
It is merely the title here which shows us that in the image of a
rocky water-spring which, in the freshness of youth, leaps over the
cliff's edge into the abyss, and which then spreads away with the rush
of tributary springs down the plain, ever and anon taking up fraternal
rivers, which gives further a name to localities, and sees whole
towns subject to its glory, until it finally bears in the tumultuous
folds of its rapturous heart all these splendours, the brothers, its
possessions, its children, to the great source that awaits them--it
is, we repeat, merely the title which explains to us that in this
comprehensive and radiant image of a mighty river we have the first
bold appearance of Mahomet, then the rapid spread of his teaching,
and, finally, the deliberately planned attempt to bring all nations
to the _one_ faith set forth with such singular directness. We may
view in a similar way many of the Xenien of Goethe and Schiller, those
sentences edged in part with scorn, but as often the mere vehicle of
good spirits, which were flung at the public and its weak authors in
particular. Take the pair of distiches which follow, as an example:

/$
     Stille kneteten wir Salpeter, Kohlen und Sewefel,
     Bohrten Röhren, gefall' nun auch das Feuer work euch!

     Einige steigen als leuchtende kugeln und andere zünden,
     Manche auch werfen wir nur spielend das Aug' zu erfreun[100].
$/

Ay, we have in truth seen not a few rockets of this order changed
to dull ash, to the exceeding entertainment of the better half of
public opinion, only too delighted when the rabble of commonplace and
miserable quality, which had for a long time spreadeagled it far and
wide and laid down the law, received a genuine smack in the mouth and a
bucket of cold water over its precious body into the bargain.

(_β_) In these last examples there is, however, already a _second_
aspect brought to view, which in our consideration of the image
should be emphasized. In other words the content is in these cases
an _individual_ which acts, brings before us objects, experiences
specific states, etc., and then is reflected in the _image_ not as
such a subject, but merely with a reference to his particular actions,
workings, and experiences. The individual himself as subject is, on
the contrary, introduced without an image, and it is only his actions
and relations strictly viewed which contain the form of indirect
expression. Here, too, as in the case of the image generally, it is
not the _entire_ significance which is separated from its mode of
embodiment, but the subject is alone set forth independently, while
the definite content of that subject receives at the same time the
form of an image; and the result is that the subject is imagined in
such a way as though it was itself the means which supplied the imaged
form of their existence to the objects and actions in question. The
metaphorical relation is, in fact, ascribed to the individual subject
expressly named. This confusion, or at least interfusion of the direct
and indirect modes of expression has frequently been the subject of
adverse criticism, but we do not find very solid ground to support
it[101].

(_γ_) Orientals are to an extraordinary degree distinguished by the
bold use they make of this type of imagery. They will unite together
and intertwine in one image entirely _independent_ forms of existence.
Take for example this sentence of Hafiz: "The life-course of the
world is a bloodstained dagger, and the drops which fall therefrom
are crowns." Or that other: "The sword of the sun drips in the red of
morning with the blood of Night, over which it has won the victory."
Or again this: "No one has yet drawn aside the veil from the cheeks of
thought as Hafis since the day when the tips of the locks of the Word's
bride were curled." The meaning of this image may be apparently thus
expanded. Thought is the bride of the word; so Klopstock calls the word
the twin-brother of Thought, and since this bride has been adorned by
man with delicately turned words, no one is likely to be more competent
than Hafis to suffer the thought thus adorned to appear in the clarity
of its unveiled beauty.

(_c_) _The Simile_

From this last type of imagery we may proceed without a break to
the consideration of _simile._ For in the image we already find the
initial appearance of the independent and imageless expression of
this significance, the subject of the image being here designated.
The two types are, however, distinguished by this that in the simile
everything which exclusively manifests the image in a figurative form
is furthermore able to receive an independently subsistent mode of
expression as significance, which thereby appears alongside of its
image and is placed in comparison with the same. The metaphor and image
declare the significances without making that declaration explicit,
so that it is only the context, in which either metaphor or image
occur, which shows without disguise what their meaning veritably is
intended to be. In the simile, on the contrary, both aspects, image and
significance, albeit no doubt we find at one time it is the image, and
at another the significance which is most clearly and fully emphasized,
are kept completely apart and set forth each in its isolation, and only
then, and in such severation are related to one another in virtue of
the similarity of their content.

Viewed in this relation it is possible to characterize the simile as
to some extent merely a vain _repetition_, in so far, that is, as one
and the same content is reproduced in a twofold, or it may be threefold
or fourfold form. In part, too, we may even see in it a frequently
wearisome _superfluity_, for the reason that the significance is
already there as an independent factor, and requires no further mode
of figuration to render it intelligible. The question consequently
presses upon us here with even more insistence than in the case of the
image and metaphor, what essential interest and object there may be in
the employment of isolated examples or a whole number of similes. For
their use is not to be justified on the commonly received ground of
mere vivacity, and the contention that they increase the lucidity of
expression will assist us just as little. On the contrary similes make
a poem only too frequently insipid and overweighted, and an image or
metaphor by itself can possess a clarity fully as pronounced without
there being any previous necessity to attach the significance to either
as something still outside.

We must consequently conceive the object of the simile to consist in
this, that the subjective[102] imagination of the poet, however much
it has brought home to the artist's consciousness the content, which
it seeks to express, with distinctive emphasis according to its more
abstract generality and expresses it in this universal aspect, yet it
finds itself equally under a constraint to seek out a concrete form
for it, and to envisualize for itself in the phenomena of sense that
which already is clearly before the mind as its significance. Looked
at in this way we shall find that the simile is, no less than the
image and the metaphor, indicative of the bravery which invariably
distinguishes imaginative power when it faces its object, it matters
not what, it may be a single object of sense-perception, a definite
condition, or a general significance--the enterprise, that is, to bind
together with its own activity that which lies remote from it in its
external environment, and by so doing to carry away by force objects of
the greatest variety, and unite them to the interest which its unified
content possesses, and generally to annex to the matter in hand a whole
world of diversified phenomena. And this power of the imagination
continually to find out the new plastic shape, and cement together
heterogeneous material by means of the relations and associations of
sense is, in general terms, also the rational basis of the simile.

(_α_) In the _first_ place, then, this impulse to compare can find
satisfaction simply by virtue of the demand which it satisfies, without
bringing to light, that is to say, anything else in the brilliancy of
its images than the bravery of the imagination itself. And this is but
the same thing as that revelry[103] of imaginative power, which, more
particularly in the East, with all the easy-going tranquillity of the
South regales itself in the wealth and splendour of its images nor
seeks any other object, while it seduces the hearer to give himself up
to the same spirit. At the same time we are frequently astounded by
the amazing force, with which the poet surrenders himself to ideas of
the most startling contrasts, and displays a cunning of combination
which far exceeds all the effort of mere wittiness as an indication of
genius. Calderon, too, supplies us with many comparisons of this type,
more particularly in his pictures of important and splendid pageants
and festive processions, in his descriptions of chargers and cavaliers,
or in his reference to ships, which on one occasion he calls "birds
without pinions, and fish without fins."

(_β_) A _second_ and more intimate aspect of these comparisons is that
in virtue of which we find them to be a _tarrying by_ one and the same
object, which becomes thereby the substantial centre of a series of
other ideas remote from it, by pointing to or illuminating which the
interest of the content compared receives a tangible increase.

This protraction of the interest round one centre may be explained in
several ways.

(_αα_) As the _first_ we may draw attention to the _absorption_ of
the soul in the content, which is the source of its _animation_, and
which attaches itself so intimately to it, that it is unable to detach
itself from the permanent interest thus excited. We may at the same
time observe that a fundamental difference once more asserts itself in
this respect between the poetry of the East and the West resembling
that we have already adverted to our discussion of Pantheism. In
other words the Oriental is in his absorption less dominated by the
personal relation, and consequently without the languish and yearning
of self-interest: his longing, such as it is, remains a more impersonal
delight in the object under comparison, and consequently more of a
contemplation. He looks about him with a free mind, sees in everything
which surrounds him, everything which stirs either his mental faculties
or his heart, an existing image of that which actively concerns his
sense-life and his spiritual forces, and with which he abounds. This
type of the imagination which is free from all mere self-obsession,
delivered, I mean, from all morbid introspection discovers its
satisfaction in the figurative conception of the object itself, and
most of all when that object, by virtue of the comparison instituted,
is extolled, exalted, and declared in line with that which is most
glorious and beautiful. The West is in its general contrast more remote
from this impersonal spirit, and in its grief and pain more inclined to
languish and yearn itself away.

This dallying, as we may call it, is then pre-eminently an interest
of the _emotional_ life, more particularly of love, which delights
to take refuge in the objects of its suffering and its raptures; and
as often as it finds itself unable to break loose from such feelings
finds naught that is wearisome in the task of repainting the object
ever anew. The lover is above all things the prodigal in wishes, hopes,
and ever changing conceits. Among such conceits we have to reckon
the simile, to which love and the emotions generally have recourse,
all the more readily for the reason that they take up and absorb
the entire soul, and are themselves the independently motive source
of comparison. Whatever is their immediate content, is, that is to
say, a beautiful object arrested in its singularity, whether it be
the mouth, the eye, or the hair of the beloved. In such a state the
human soul is active, restless, and the states of joy and pain are
neither without life nor in repose, but full of activity and motion,
are up and down, which at least is continuous in this that it is for
ever bringing all material of whatever kind into relation with the
one emotional centre of the world of the heart. In other words the
interest of comparison has its root in the feeling itself, which is
insistently conscious of the fact, for example, that there are other
objects in Nature which are beautiful, or have given rise to pain and
so on. Consequently love draws these objects with the aid of the simile
into the sphere of its own content, and makes the same wider and more
universal thereby. If the object of the simile is, however, entirely
_isolated_ in its _material_ form, and brought into juxtaposition with
objects of a similar nature, we shall find, and particularly so where
similes of this sort are piled one on the top of another, that such
a composition is due to emotion of a still rather superficial order,
and to reflection equally wanting in depth; the result will be that
the variety which merely plays round an external material will readily
appear to us insipid and of no vital interest, because we have here
no spiritual relation interpenetrating it. We may illustrate such an
effect from the fourth chapter of the Song of Solomon where we find
the words: "Behold thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou
hast doves' eyes within thy locks; thy hair is as a flock of goats,
that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep
that are even shorn, which came up from the washing, whereof everyone
bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread
of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of
pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like a tower of David builded
for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of
mighty men. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins,
which feed among the lilies[104]. Until the day break and the shadows
flee away." This _naïveté_ is to be met with in many of the comparisons
of Ossian. Take for example the words: "Thou art as snow on the
heather; thine hair is as mist on the kromla, when he curls himself up
on the rock, and glistens toward the gleam in the West; thine arms are
as two arrows in the halls of the mighty Fingal."

Of the same kind, only here in wholly a rhetorical way, are the
following words Ovid places in the mouth of Polyphemus (Met. XIII,
vv. 789-807): "Thou art more white, O Galatea, than the leaf of the
snow-white meadowland; more blooming than the fields, more slender than
the elm; more brilliant than glass, more arch than the tender little
roebuck; smoother than the shell ever-polished by the sea; more dear
than Winter's sun, or the shade in Summer; nobler than the fruit-tree,
more comely than the lofty plane." And so on through all the nineteen
hexameters, a description not wanting in rhetorical beauty, but as
the presentation of an emotion, which rouses little interest, itself
equally lacking in interest.

We may find many examples of this style of comparison in Calderon,
although a halt, by the way, of this kind is more suitable to lyrical
emotion simply, and fetters the march of drama far too insistently,
if it is not actually motived by the subject-matter. Don Juan, for
instance, during the progress of the action, describes at length in
this way the beauty of a veiled lady whom he had followed. This is what
he says to a third person:

/$
     Natheless in despite and often
     Through the gross and barriered darkness
     Of that intranslucent veil,
     Flashed a hand of sheen most splendid,
     Mistress pure of rose and lily,
     Princess, to whose matchless glory
     E'en the snow's gleam paid obeisance,
     Slave all murk of Aethiop moulding.
$/

The matter is wholly different, however, when any one capable of
_profound_ emotion, expresses his life through images and similes,
in which the most secret folds of spiritual feeling are unveiled,
the soul here either identifying itself with some scene of external
Nature, or making such a scene the counterfeit of a spiritual content.
We may cite Ossian once again in illustration of this better use of
image and comparison, although the range of objects which serve him
in such similitude is jejune, mainly restricted to clouds, mists,
storms, trees, streams, thistles, grasses, and other facts equally
obvious. Here is one of them: "The Present[105] brings joy to us, O
Fingal; it is as the sun on Kromla, when the hunter has mourned its
absence a whole year long and now it breaks forth from the clouds." In
another passage of the same writer we find these words: "Did not Ossian
hearken but now to a voice? Is it then the voice of the days that are
no longer? Ofttimes, oft as the evening suns, comes the memory of times
that are gone into my soul." And for another instance take this bit of
narration: "Pleasant are the words of song, saith Kuchullin, and dear
to the heart are the tales of times far away. They are as the quiet
dew of the morning on the hill of the roe-deer, when the sun trembles
faintly on his flank, and the pool lies motionless and blue in the
dale." In the case of Ossian this halting by the same emotions, and
their similitudes expresses the attitude of an old age which out of
weariness and exhaustion turns to sorrowful and painful memories. And
generally a recourse to comparisons is evidence of an inclination to
melancholy and effeminate emotion. The desire and interest of such a
soul lies far away and foregone; and for this reason we find as a rule
that, instead of bracing itself up manfully, it yields to its longing
to lose itself in something else. Many of the figurative expressions
of Ossian consequently are quite as much a response to this wholly
personal mood as they are a reflection of ideas mostly of a mournful
colour, and of the restricted circle beyond which he is unable to pass.

But, conversely, it is quite possible that _passion_, in so far as
it is able to concentrate its forces on one content, despite its own
unrest, with the object of finding a counterfeit of the soul in the
natural world around it, may fluctuate to and fro in a variety of
images and similitudes, which are all purely conceits of the fancy
over one and the same object. A fine example of this we have in that
monologue of Juliet from "Romeo and Juliet," in which she apostrophizes
the night as follows:

/$
     Come, night; come Romeo; come, thou day in night;
     For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
     Whiter than new snow on a raven's back:
     Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
     Give me my Romeo; and when he 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.
$/

(_ββ_) The similes of epic poetry as they come before us over and
over again in Homer stand out in a marked contrast to the above type
of almost purely lyrical simile in which sentiment is absorbed in the
heart of its content. In the former case the aim of the poet, when
he may by any chance wish to dally with the comparative mode around
some specific object, is, on the one hand, interested in raising us
over the active curiosity, expectancy, hope, and fear, by which we are
moved relatively to the several situations and exploits of his heroes
during the actual progress of events over, that is to say, the general
concurrencies of cause, action, and consequence, and in fixing our
attention upon the images which he places before us in their plastic
repose, purely for our contemplation, serene as the works of sculpture.
This repose, this absolution from the merely practical interest that
we may enter into that which he places visibly before our eyes comes
upon us with all the more force in so far as everything with which
he compares the object is taken from a field entirely remote from
it. Moreover, this halting round the simile possesses the further
significance that by virtue of this kind of twofold painting of the
same object its importance is emphasized, and is thus not permitted
to be whirled away in the mere shifting stream of the song and the
events it celebrates. Take, for example, what Homer says of Achilles,
when that hero, fired with anger, confronts Aeneas ("Iliad," XX, vv.
164-175):

/$
     As when the harmful king of beasts (sore threatened to be slain
     By all the country up in arms) at first makes coy disdain
     Prepare resistance, but at last when anyone hath led
     Bold charge upon him with his dart, he then turns yawning head,
     Fell anger lathers in his jaws, his great heart swells, his stern
     Lasheth his strength up, sides and thighs waddle with stripes to learn
     Their own power, his eyes glow, he roars, he leaps to kill,
     Secure of killing: so his power then rous'd up to his will
     Matchless Achilles, coming on to meet Anchises' son[106].
$/

Much in the same spirit he speaks of Pallas, when she averted the arrow
which Pandaros had let fly against Menelaus ("Iliad," IV, vv. 130-131):

"She did not forget him, and warded off the arrow e'en as a mother
flicks away some fly from her son, as he lies in sweet slumber."

And again further on when the arrow, notwithstanding, wounds Menelaus
(vv. 141-146):

/$
     Yet forth the blood flow'd, which did much his royal person grace,
     And show'd upon his ivory skin, as doth a purple dye
     Laid, by a dame of Caïra, or lovely Maeony,
     On ivory, wrought in ornaments to deck the cheeks of horse;
     Which in her marriage room must lie; whose beauties have such force,
     That they are wish'd of many knights, but are such precious things,
     That they are kept for horse that draw the chariots of kings;
     Which horse, so deck'd, the charioteer esteems a grace to him;
     Like these, in grace, the blood upon thy solid thighs did swim,
     O  Menelaus, etc[107].
$/

(_γ_) A _third_ motive cause of similes, quite distinct from that
of purely imaginative riot as also the self-absorbed sentiment or,
under its other aspect, the dallying round important objects with
the figurative power of the fancy, we have now to emphasize with
particular reference to dramatic poetry. The content of the drama is
made up of the conflict of passions, activities, pathos, actions, and
the accomplishment of the thing willed by the soul, a content which
does not, as in the case of the epic, take the form of a narrative of
past events, but the dramatic poet places the individuals themselves
before our eyes and makes them unfold their emotions personally in
an objective form, and their actions as taking place in the present:
his mediate position between ourselves and the objects represented
therefore ceases. Looked at from this point of view it would appear as
though in order to make this presence in Nature clear to us a primary
requirement of drama would be that the expression of passions and
the vehemence of their grief, consternation, and delight should be
painted as naturally as it was possible to paint it, and consequently
the simile would be here out of place. To let individuals, on the
very plane of their action, in the full storm of emotion, and in the
continuous strain of the busy world, speak much in the language of
metaphor or image is obviously, from the commonsense point of view,
an unnatural proceeding and injurious to the directness aimed at.
We are by the simile diverted from the immediate situation, and the
characters, whose actions and emotions are involved in it, to something
external and strange to it, which in short does not strictly belong to
it, as part of its own present; consequently the general course of the
dialogue must unavoidably appear to lag under the interruption thus
imposed. And for this reason it came about also in Germany when at
last our young bloods were all for freeing themselves from the fetters
of French rhetorical taste, that the Spaniards, Italians, and French
were regarded as artists who did nothing more than place their own
personal flights of fancy or witticism, their own conventional attitude
to society and elegance of speech in the mouth of their dramatic
characters in situations, too, when the very tempest of emotion cried
out for Nature's most direct expression to the exclusion of all other.
We find as a result of such an insistence on the principle of realism
that in many dramas, which hail from this time, the outcry of emotion,
with all the exclamatory signs and hyphens which may render its nudity
more visible, takes the place of a noble and dignified diction, rich
in image and simile. In much the same sense even English critics
have often charged Shakespeare with a superabundant and too varied
recourse to the simile, some of which he not unfrequently will attach
to characters in the full strain of personal bereavement, where the
stress of emotion least of all admits of the tranquillity necessary to
reflection, the attitude of mind which is indispensable to this type of
comparison. We may no doubt admit that now and again we meet with in
Shakespeare an exaggerated tendency to pile up image upon image, and
that his diction is thereby overweighted. At the same time we shall
see, if we examine the matter in all its bearings, that even in drama
the simile is entitled to a position essential to this form of poetry
and vital to its action.

In other words if the emotion makes a pause in similes for the reason
that it is absorbed in its object and is unable to free itself
therefrom, there is also on the plane of _active life_ a distinct
purpose subserved by it, namely, to indicate that the individual is
not thus so exclusively preoccupied with the particular situation or
state of the emotions then uppermost, but possesses a fine and noble
nature superior to such conditions and able to assert its independence.
In passion soul-life is restricted and fettered to its own seclusion,
narrowed down to the point of concentrated heat, either thereby a
mute, an ejaculation of monosyllables, or the rage that vents itself
at random. Greatness of soul and intellectual power alike refuse to
submit to such limitations: they are wings which carry the soul in
a fine tranquillity over and above the storm of pathos that moves
it. It is this deliverance of the soul, which the simile primarily
expresses by the very mode under which it is asserted. In other words
it is only a really profound composure and strength which is able to
make itself the object of its pain and suffering, to compare itself
with something else, and by doing so to view itself impartially[108]
in a strange material; or it may be in a mood of the most terrible
scorn to set forth in the external thing the confronting image of its
own annihilation, and still persist in the repose of its own obdurate
forces. In epical poetry, as we before observed, it was the poet's
undoubted function to transmit to his audience, by means of those halts
by the way which his picturesque similitudes offered, that sense of
tranquillity which is essential to fine art. In dramatic art, on the
contrary, the _dramatis personae_ appear as themselves the _poets_
and _artists._ Here it is the characters who objectify their own
soul-life in that which they are powerful enough to imagine and inform,
thereby further manifesting to us the nobility of their receptive
faculties and the inherent force of their emotional resources[109].
For this absorption into something else that is external is now[110]
the deliverance of the world within from a purely practical interest,
or at least is that which lifts the immediacy of emotion to the level
of forms the soul may contemplate in freedom; and for this reason
every comparison instituted simply for the comparison's sake in the
way we have already observed it under the first aspect of the simile
discussed, is vindicated now in a much profounder sense than was then
possible; it can now only appear as a victory over the exclusive
obsession of passion and the release from its masterdom. In following
up the course of this liberating process we will now emphasize several
important distinctions to illustrate which we shall borrow exclusively
from Shakespeare.

(_αα_) Now in the first place we would observe that when we have a soul
set before us about to meet with a grave misfortune, by which it will
be shaken to its depths, and the pain of this inevitable cataclysm
is at length actually entered upon, it would be nothing less than an
indication of a nature essentially commonplace if it were there and
then to break out into the cry of horror, pain, and desperation, and so
make a clean breast of it. A strong and noble spirit on the contrary
holds its lamentation as such in reserve, keeps a hand of iron upon its
pain, and by this means preserves a free power to embody in far-distant
material imaginatively presented the profound sense of its anguish,
and to express its own tragic state under the image of that which is
remote. Thus man rises superior to his suffering; he is not utterly
with all that is in him bondman to it; rather he is as wholly distinct
from it as he is one with it; and consequently he can still pause
before that which is outside and beyond him, which he relates to his
emotion as an independent force cognate with his own. This will explain
to us those words of the old Northumberland in Shakespeare's "Henry
IV," when he inquires of the messenger who comes to inform him of the
death of Percy, what news he brings him of his son and his brother,
and, on receiving no reply, gives utterance to the composure of the
most poignant grief as follows:

/$
     Thou tremblest; and the whiteness of thy cheek
     Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
     Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
     So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
     Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
     And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;
     But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,
     And I my Percy's death ere thou report'st it[111].
$/

This attitude of the soul, which spins about itself as it were
the garments of its pain, and yet retains the power throughout to
image itself under new modes of comparison, receives a particularly
striking illustration in the character of Richard II, where we find
him repentant over the youthful frivolity of his days of prosperity.
In fact there is no trait in this royal grief that is more touching
or suggestive of a child's simplicity than the fact that he always
expresses himself under the objective form of most pertinent images,
and in the play of this type of self-expression preserves his suffering
all the more profoundly. When, for example, Henry demands of him the
crown, he replies:

/$
     Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
     Here cousin;
     On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
     Now is this golden crown like a deep well
     That owes two buckets, filling one another,
     The emptier ever dancing in the air,
     The other down, unseen and full of water.
     That bucket down and full of tears am I,
     Drinking my griefs while you mount up on high[112].
$/


(_ββ_) The other aspect to which we would now draw attention is this,
namely, that a character which is already made one with its interests,
its sorrow, and its destiny, endeavours by means of the simile to
release itself from this immediate union, and makes this deliverance
obvious to us by the very fact that it shows itself still able to
deduce such similitudes. In "Henry VIII,"[113] for instance, the Queen
Katherine, on being forsaken by her royal consort, expresses the depth
of her desolation in the words:

/$
     I am the most unhappy woman living!
     Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?
     Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
     No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me;
     Almost no grave allow'd me: like the lily,
     That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd,
     I'll hang my head and perish.
$/

In a still more admirable manner in "Julius Caesar"[114] Brutus
exclaims to Cassius, to whose want of spirit he has vainly striven to
give the spur:

/$
     O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
     That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
     Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
     And straight is cool again.
$/

That Brutus in such a situation can find room for a simile is already
an excellent proof that he himself has thrust his scorn into the
background, and has begun to assert himself as master of it.

For the most part Shakespeare, by endowing his criminal characters
with greatness of soul in crime no less than in misfortune, exalts
them before he leaves them above their own evil passions: he will not
let them rest in the purely abstract assertion of crimes they are for
ever going to do, but never really commit, as is the French style, but
actually infuses them with the imaginative power, by means of which
they stand out before us as distinctly as any other personification
that is new to us. Macbeth, for instance, when his last hour has
struck[115], exclaims in the well-known words:

/$
                   Out, out, brief candle!
     Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
     That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
     And then is heard no more: it is a tale
     Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
     Signifying nothing.
$/

The same thing may be said of those last words of Cardinal Wolsey in
"Henry VIII,"[116] uttered at the close of his career when struck down
from the summit of his greatness:

/$
     Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness!
     This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
     The tender leaves of hopes: to-morrow blossoms,
     And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
     The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
     And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
     His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
     And then he falls, as I do.
$/

(_γγ_) In this impersonal relation of objective fact and its expression
of the comparative mode, the repose and substantial self-command of
character returns to itself; it is the means whereby the pain of a
great downfall is softened. So Cleopatra exclaims[117] to Charmian,
after she has already put the mortal aspic to her breast:

/$
                             Peace, peace!
     Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
     That sucks the nurse asleep?
     As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle--
$/

The bite of the serpent relaxes her members so gently that Death is
himself deceived and holds himself to be Sleep. And this image may well
pass as itself a counterfeit of the mild and allaying influence of such
similitudes.


C. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART

_Didactic_, _descriptive poetry and the ancient epigram._

The conception we have in general terms formed of the symbolic type
of art is such that within it significance and expression are unable
to unite sufficiently to appear in complete and reciprocal fusion.
In unconscious symbolism the _incompatibility_ of these two aspects
remained a fact throughout, if not actually _declared_ as such; in the
Sublime on the contrary this inadequacy was _explicitly_ asserted:
the absolute significance, God, no less than His external reality,
the world, are expressly represented in this excluding relation to
one another. On the other hand, however, in all these types that
further aspect of symbolism, namely, the _affinity_ which obtains
between the significance and the external form, in which it is visibly
manifested, still retained its importance. In the original type of
symbolism this was exclusively the case, a type which did not as yet
set forth the significance in contrast to its concrete existence.
But in the Sublime, too, it remained an _essential_ relation, a type
which, in order to express the Supreme Being, if here under a wholly
inadequate mode, required as its means the phenomena of Nature, and the
events and exploits of God's chosen people. And finally it reappears
in the comparative type of art a personal relation and one that is
consequently amenable to _caprice._ This element of caprice, however,
albeit it is an entirely present fact and particularly so in the case
of the metaphor, image, and simile, is notwithstanding still hidden
away behind the _affinity_ between the significance and the image
utilized to express it, in so far as it selects the comparison simply
out of a regard for their mutual resemblance, a fundamental aspect of
which is not so much the _external_ form as just this _relation_ set up
between them by the activity of the soul and consisting in subjective
emotions, points of view and ideas and their cognate modes of
configuration[118]. When, however, it is not the notion of the material
itself, but simply a capricious use of the judgment, which brings
together the content and its artistic form, both can only be conceived
as posited in an entirely external relation to one another; their
association is now a juxtaposition without essential relation, simply
a dressing up, that is to say, of the one side by the other. For this
reason we have here to treat these last-mentioned and subordinate types
of art by way of supplement. They arise from the absolute collapse of
the essential phases in all true art-production; they bring before us,
in short, by their independence of the principle of relativity the
suicide of the symbolic type.

If we view this stage generally as a whole we find on the one hand
already as wholly independent the elaborate but formless significance,
for the artistic shaping of which all that we can now supply is an
external ornament selected at caprice to set it off. On the other side
we have the external mode pure and simple. That is to say, instead of
being mediated in its identity with that on which it is imposed by the
fact that this is its own essentially cognate significance it can now
only be accepted and described in the aspect of its self-subsistence
over against this _centrum_ of significance, and consequently only
as mere externality. From the above contrasted aspects we may
differentiate in abstract terms _didactic_ from _descriptive_ poetry,
a distinction which so far at least as the didactic is concerned is
only to be made good under the poetic type for the reason that this
alone is able to bring before us the significance in its abstract
universality.

Inasmuch, however, as the notion of art does not consist in the
dissociation, but the identification of significance and form we find
even at this stage not only a complete separation, but also in line
with that, a relation asserted between the sides thus opposed. This
relation, however, now that the partition line of symbolism has already
been _crossed_, is no longer of a symbolic nature, and is therefore
an attempt to abolish the fundamental characteristics of that type,
namely, the incompatibility, and at the same time the self-subsistence
of form and content, a position that all the previous types were unable
to transcend. Owing, however, to the separation of the two sides,
which thus make for unity, being already presupposed by this type
this attempt can only be looked upon as a mere aspiration[119], to
completely satisfy which in all that it involves is reserved for a more
perfect type of art, namely, the classical.

We will now briefly glance at these supplementary forms, in order to
make our passage from them to the real type above mentioned more fully
intelligible.


1. THE DIDACTIC POEM

When a significance, which as such co-ordinates a homogeneous
_complexus_ of relations, is apprehended exclusively as significance,
yet does not receive the form strictly adequate to this content, but
is merely invested with the external ornamentation of art, then we
have before us the didactic poem. The didactic poem does not figure
among the genuine types of art. For in it we find on the one hand a
content already completely elaborated under a mode that is thereby
necessarily prosaic, while on the other we have the artistic form,
which is merely tacked to it in an external way, for this very reason
that it had already been accepted by the mind in a form stamped with
_prose_ throughout, and is merely exhibited to our common sense or
reflective faculties as instruction under this prosaic aspect, that is
to say, with an exclusive reference to the significance embodied in
its abstract and general terms. Consequently art, in this its external
relation to a content so essentially foreign to its real informing
process, can only recognize in the didactic poem its external aspects,
such as metre, exalted language, episodic matter, images, similes,
ebullitions of sentiment, points of acceleration and transition in
the march of ideas, aspects in short which do not give us the heart
of the content as such, but rather surround it as an incidental
accretion, with the object of alleviating and making more enjoyable the
serious and dry tone of the didactic material by means of their more
inspiriting atmosphere. That which is intrinsically, in the fundamental
conception of it, relegated to prose, cannot receive the poet's
mintage, though it may be the peg on which he may hang his mantle[120].
Just as we find, for example, that the art of gardening is in great
measure a purely external rearrangement of what is already presented us
by Nature, but not necessarily of that which is itself a truly lovely
locality; or as the art of building ameliorates by its ornament and
external decoration a locality which has been expressly devoted to
prosaic purposes and affairs.

In this way Greek Philosophy made a start under the mode of the
didactic poem. We may even adduce Hesiod as an example, albeit a
prosaic treatment of this kind in its strict sense is only fully
assured when the understanding is undisputed master of the subject
with its train of reflections, consequences, and classifications, and
instructs us from this standpoint alone in as pleasing and elegant a
way as it can. Lucretius, too, in his relations to the philosophy of
Epicurus, and Vergil, with the information he supplies on agriculture,
are in part examples of the same type. Despite all their artistic
adroitness they are unable to give their versification the genuine
spontaneity of the artistic form. In Germany the didactic poem is
new out of fashion; in France Delille, in addition to his previous
efforts entitled "Les jardins, ou l'art d'embellir les paysages," and
his "Homme des champs," has presented his compatriots with a further
example of the didactic poem, in which he has treated physical science
as compendiously through its forms of magnetism, electricity and the
rest.


2. DESCRIPTIVE POETRY

The _second_ type which we have to examine stands out in direct
contrast to the previous one. The point of departure here is not from a
significance already present before the mind in an independent form of
its own, but from external objects simply such as natural localities,
buildings, seasons of the year or periods of time, and the modes under
which they are presented to sense. But as we found in the didactic
poem the content persisted in formless _generality_ so far as its
essential character was concerned, so here, if in a converse manner,
the _external material_ is _independently_ set forth in the singularity
which pertains to it simply as phenomenon without being drawn within
the circle of the significances apparent to mind; and it is this
particularity which is depicted and described in its external aspect
precisely as it appears to the matter-of-fact consciousness. Such a
sensuous content has no relation to true art whatever, except under the
_one_ feature, namely, that of its external existence; and this can
only claim art's recognition in so far as it represents the natural
basis of _spiritual_ life and individuality, its actions and events,
the facts, that is to say, which constitute an environing world; as
merely external form separated by itself from all that pertains to such
life it has no such claim.


3. RELATION OF BOTH ASPECTS

On grounds deducible from the above, neither the instructive nor the
descriptive type is secured in the exclusive one-sidedness which would
obliterate every vestige of art, and we find in the one case that the
external reality is brought into appreciable relation with that which
is seized by mind as significance, just as conversely in the other the
abstract universal is related to its concrete mode of appearance.

(_a_) We have already explained how this is so in the case of the
didactic poem. Without depicting external conditions and particular
phenomena, without the episodical narration of mythological and other
illustrations we shall rarely find a genuine example of it. By means,
however, of a parallel series of this character in which the universal
for mind is thus laid alongside of the particular object of sense we
have merely a quite collateral relation set up instead of a union
carried out in every detail, a parallelogism, moreover, which does not
affect the entire content and its all-embracing artistic form, but
merely isolated aspects and traits.

(_b_) Such a modicum of true relation is particularly conspicuous in
the case of descriptive poetry, in so far as its delineations are
accompanied with such emotions as the sight of natural landscape, the
course of the days and seasons, a wooded hill, a lake, a babbling
brook, a church, a picturesquely situated village and the poor man's
peaceful cottage are likely to arouse. We find consequently in
descriptive poetry much as we do in the didactic poem episodes which,
although merely accessory, animate us, in particular through the
reflection of affecting emotions, such as a tender melancholy or little
touches of occasional experience taken from the more homely levels of
life. Such an association of spiritual feeling with the external facts
of Nature can still only too easily in this type of poetry remain
wholly external in its presentation. For the natural or local condition
is here assumed to be something which quite independently confronts
us. Man no doubt draws near to it; under its influence he entertains
this or that feeling, but there is nothing which essentially unites
moonlight, forests, valleys, landscape, and so on, with the emotions
of the soul they excite. I am not here either the interpreter or the
animating focus of Nature, but feel, as each happens to confront me,
a wholly indefinite kind of harmonious reciprocity establish itself
between the objects I face and the emotional life which they stimulate.
Most of all are we Germans devoted to this type of picturesque
description, and along with it to every variety of exquisite feeling
and heart effervescence such natural scenery can possibly evoke. It is
a public high-road over which all may march in line. Even some of the
odes of Klopstock are tuned to its key.

(_c_) But _thirdly_, if we inquire whether there is not a profounder
relation between these opposed aspects of the internal feeling and
external object, we shall find our nearest approach to an answer in the
ancient _epigram._

(_α_) The very name of the epigram already expresses the original gist
of it. It is an _inscription._

Unquestionably we find, also here on the one hand an object, and on
the other we have a definite statement propounded as to this object;
but in the most ancient epigrams, among which Hesiod has preserved a
few examples, we do not have the picture of an object accompanied by
any reaction of feeling, rather we find, the matter of fact put before
us in two distinct ways. In the one the external existence, and with
it the meaning thereof and explanation, is concentrated in its form
as epigram on the keenest and most forcible of its characteristics.
This original characterization of the epigram, however, even among the
Greeks, later examples have already lost; and we find an increasing
tendency both to secure and apply the passing conceits of fancy,
whether ingenious, witty, or merely entertaining, to particular
incidents, works of art, people and so on, ideas in short which do not
so much set forth the object itself, as illustrate the condition of
personal feeling in reference to the same.

(_β_) The main point to observe here is this that, just in proportion
as the object itself fails as such to become the predominant factor
in this type of presentment to that extent it becomes less complete.
In this connection we may also in passing mention a few more modern
examples of an analogous nature. The novels of Tieck, for instance,
not unfrequently have to deal with specific works of art or artists,
or a definite gallery of pictures, composition of music and so forth,
and they have then some nice little romance attached. These particular
pictures, however, which the reader has never seen, these compositions,
which he has never heard, the poet obviously can neither bring before
our eyes nor ears. From this point of view the entire expression of his
art, in so far as it depends on objects of this nature, must remain
subject to this defect. In the same way in yet more important romances
writers have sought to embody as the real content of their work entire
arts, and their finest productions as Heinse, for instance, did with
that of music in his _Hildegard von Hohenthal._ But in every case
where we find that a work of art throughout is unable to reproduce
with essential adequacy its fundamental subject-matter, we can
only conclude that the primary cause of this defect arises from the
inadequacy of the type of art selected.

(_γ_) To remove the defects above adverted to two things are clearly
essential; the objective fact and the explanation of it which is
offered to mind must not be suffered to fall into absolute _severation_
as was the case in the type last considered, nor must the union when
effected, an equally important point, assume a character _identical_
with either the symbolical, sublime or purely comparative types. A yet
more genuine form of presentment must be sought for under a condition
in which we find that the fact in question supplies an elucidation
of its ideal content by means of its external mode of appearance,
and actually in this mode, a condition under which that which is of
spirit unfolds itself completely in the form of its reality, and the
corporeal and external presence is simply the adequate explication of
the spiritual and ideal. In order, however, to follow up this problem
to its complete _fulfilment_ we must bid farewell to the symbolic types
of art. For the essential character of symbolism consisted precisely in
this that the union of the animating principle of the significance with
its spatial embodiment always _stopped short_ of such completeness.

[Footnote 76: In other words everything created being posited as
unsubstantial apart from the One necessitated the conclusion that
all the Goodness, etc., there divulged was referable to that Supreme
Source.]

[Footnote 77: _Bewussten_, that is a symbolism conscious of its typical
character. I have above used the expression "premeditated," but
"conscious" is perhaps sufficient.]

[Footnote 78: I understand _auf solche Weise,_ "under such a mode as
expressed either by Symbolism or the Sublime."]

[Footnote 79: It is prosaic because it has no absolute root in reality.]

[Footnote 80: Lit., "As consciousness lays hold of the same in the
clear light of ordinary reason" (_seiner verständigen Klarheit._)]

[Footnote 81: _Theoretische_, that is personal, contemplative rather
than practical.]

[Footnote 82: Lit., "and his freedom secludes itself with a prophetic
instinct (_ahndend_) in itself."]

[Footnote 83: _Wie die Faust auf das Auge passt._ A proverbial
expression unknown to me. We should rather say "a beam in our eyes."]

[Footnote 84: As contrasted, that is, with the fable.]

[Footnote 85: An Indian dancing girl.]

[Footnote 86: Hegel uses the term in the plural, _Die Verwandlungen_,
possibly with reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses.]

[Footnote 87: _Standpunkt, i.e._, the form viewed relatively to the
general type.]

[Footnote 88: _Beseelung._]

[Footnote 89: Plastic must be taken here in the very loose and pregnant
sense of any art that deals with external material.]

[Footnote 90: _Ein grammatisches Subject._ Hegel presumably means that
it is merely subject under the mode of literary expression without
possessing the true determination of personality.]

[Footnote 91: _Aushöhlen muss._ We should rather say that the
allegorist is forced to attenuate (lit. hollow out) the substance of
subjectivity, etc. But I have left the more literal rendering.]

[Footnote 92: In the German _fassen_, _begreifen._]

[Footnote 93: _Einer konkreten Anschauung._ That is, a quality or
feature that belongs to the phenomena of the concrete world of
perception.]

[Footnote 94: Of course this is not so in the English equivalent, where
the primary sense is still material.]

[Footnote 95: Lit., "Of expressions in the strict sense of the term."]

[Footnote 96: _Ihr ruhiger vollständig ausgestaltender Sinn._ The
meaning that declares itself completely through the form in classic
repose.]

[Footnote 97: _Ausführliche_, explicit in all its detail.]

[Footnote 98: _Das Für-sich-seyn._]

[Footnote 99: I give the literal translation. I presume a more
intelligible one would be "but actual existence in its self-defined
concreteness." The passage is not easy to follow.]

[Footnote 100:

/$
     Silent we pounded up carbon, saltpeter, and sulphur,
     Set the train going. Good friend! How did our cracker find _you?_

     Some as illuminate balls soared prodigious while others exploded,
     Many we flashed in our fun simply the eye to delight.
$/
]

[Footnote 101: I find this analysis of the image more than usually
difficult to follow, I have therefore made my translation very literal.
I must confess that this distinction between the image and the metaphor
appears to me rather an example of hyper-subtlety on Hegel's part, or
as some might say, an effort to make what is virtually only a verbal
distinction correspond to a more real difference of idea.]

[Footnote 102: That is the emphatically personal.]

[Footnote 103: _Die Schwelgerei._]

[Footnote 104: In the German the sentence is continuous. Our version
clearly gives another reading to the Hebrew.]

[Footnote 105: May be a misprint for "thy presence," _deine_ instead of
_die._]

[Footnote 106: Chapman's translation.]

[Footnote 107: Chapman's translation, somewhat an extension of the
Greek it must be admitted.]

[Footnote 108: _Theoretisch_, _i.e._, in contemplative repose.]

[Footnote 109: Such I take to be the contrast implied in the words _den
Adel ihrer Gesinnung_ and _die Macht ihrers Gemüths. Gesinnung_ is the
sense-perception. _Gemüth_ includes the creative fertility.]

[Footnote 110: _Hier_, _i.e._, as contrasted with the first stage of
the discussion.]

[Footnote 111: "Henry IV, Part II," act i, scene I.]

[Footnote 112: "King Richard II," act iv, sc. 1.]

[Footnote 113: "King Henry VIII," act iii, sc. 1.]

[Footnote 114: "Julius Caesar," act iv, sc. 3.]

[Footnote 115: "Macbeth," act v, sc. 5.]

[Footnote 116: "Henry VIII," act iii, sc. 2.]

[Footnote 117: "Antony and Cleopatra," act V, sc. 2.]

[Footnote 118: The meaning is that the selection is not made merely
with reference to external resemblance, but is also based on relations
only existing in the soul of the artist and therefore to that extent
capricious, however much they appear to be essential.]

[Footnote 119: _Ein blosses Sollen,_ lit., a mere "should," a mere
movement in a given direction.]

[Footnote 120: This is implied in the contrast of the verbs _umstalten_
and _überkleiden._]




SUBSECTION II

THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

THE CLASSIC TYPE IN GENERAL

Thr central point[121] of art's evolution is the union, in a
self-integrated totality, carried to the point of its freest
expression, of content and form wholly adequate thereto. This
realization, coinciding as it does with the entire notional concept
of the beautiful, towards which the symbolic form of art strove in
vain, first becomes apparent in _classical art._ We have already, in
our previous consideration of the Idea of the beautiful and of art,
outlined the general character of classic art. The _Ideal_ supplies a
content and form to classical art, which in this adequate mode in which
it is embodied reveals that which true art is according to its notion.

To perfect this result, however, all the various phases of art, whose
evolution is the subject-matter of our previous investigations, are
contributive. For classical beauty has for its ideal substance[122]
free and _independent_ significance, that is to say, not the
significance of any particular thing, but a significance which
_declares itself,_ and thereby points to its substance. This is the
_spiritual_ substance, which in general terms is that which makes of
itself an object. In this objectification _of itself_ it possesses the
form of externality, which, as identical with its ideal character, is
consequently also on its own part the significance of itself, and is
made conscious of itself by this self-knowledge. It is true that in
our consideration of the symbolical our point of departure was that of
the unity of the significance and its mode of envisagement in the art
product; but this unity was _purely immediate_, and for this reason
inadequate.

For the real content either remained essentially the natural according
to its _substance_ and abstract _universality_, and consequently the
_isolated_ thing in the objective world of Nature[123], although it
was regarded as the real determination of that universality, was not
able to present the same in a mode adequate to it, or that which is
purely ideal, and only to be apprehended by spirit, in so far as it
was received in the artistic content, carried with it in that which
was foreign to its essential nature, namely the immediate individual
and sensuous thing, the mode of its appearance that was in fact
incongruent with it. And generally here significance and form only
stood in the relation of mere affinity and suggestion; and however
much in certain respects they could be brought together homogeneously,
they as clearly fell apart again in other directions. This original
unity was therefore torn asunder; this simple and abstract inwardness
or ideality was imaged for the Hindoo conception of the world on the
one side in the manifold reality of Nature, and on the other in finite
human existence; and the imagination, in the unrest of its impetuous
motion, was carried from the one to the other by turns, without being
either able to deliver the ideal in its essentially pure and absolute
self-subsistency, or to thoroughly infuse it with the phenomenal matter
as it was presented and informed, and so reproduce it throughout that
material in undisturbed union. The disorder and grotesque appearance,
which arose in the commingling of elements opposed to one another,
no doubt again vanished, but only to make way for an enigmatical
condition equally unsatisfying, which, instead of solving the problem,
was only able to prevent the problem's solution. For here, too, still
was lacking the freedom and self-subsistency of content, which only
thereby is rendered explicit in that the Inward is presented to
consciousness as in itself a whole, and by this means as that which
overlaps the externality which in the first instance is other than
itself and foreign to itself. This essential self-subsistency, cognized
as free and absolute significance, is self-consciousness, which has for
its content the Absolute, and for its form the subjectivity of Spirit.
In contradistinction to this self-determining, thinking, willing power
everything else is self-subsistent in merely a relative and momentary
sense. The material phenomena of Nature such as the sun, the heavens,
stars, plants, animals, stones, streams and sea have only an abstract
relation to themselves, and are in the eternal process of Nature bound
up with other facts of natural existence, so that they can only pass
as self-subsistent for the finite perception. The real significance of
the Absolute is not presented in them. Nature is indeed under a mode
expressed[124], but only under the mode of what is outside itself; its
inwardness is not as such for itself, but poured forth into the varied
show of its appearances, and consequently devoid of self subsistency.
Only in Spirit as the concrete, free and, infinite self-relation,
is the true and absolute significance actually disclosed, and
self-subsistent under the mode of its determinate existence.

On the way to this emancipation of the Idea from the immediately
sensuous medium and to its self-establishment we are confronted by
the _Sublime_ and the consecration of the imagination. The absolute
significance is, that is to say, in the first instance the thinking,
absolute and senseless[125] One, which is self-related as the Absolute,
and in this relation affirms that which it creates; Nature and finitude
generally, as the negative, thing, that which is essentially in itself
devoid of stability. It is the explicit and essential Universal,
conceived as the objective power over collective existence, whether
it be that this One be brought now to consciousness and represented
in its expressly negative attitude to the created, thing, or in its
positively pantheistic inherence in the same. The twofold defect of
this point of view, so far as it is connected with art, consists first
in this that this One and Universal which constitutes the fundamental
significance has not yet in itself arrived at the closer determination
and distinction, and by this means just as little at the point of
real individuality and personality in which it could be apprehended
as Spirit, and could be set before the sensuous perception in a form
which would be applicable to its spiritual content, according to its
own notion, and duly conformable therewith. The concrete idea of Spirit
on the contrary requires, that it both defines and distinguishes itself
in itself, and by the very act of making itself an object discovers
through this reduplication an external phenomenon, which although
material and present, nevertheless is throughout permeated by Spirit,
and consequently taken by itself expresses nothing at all, simply
permitting Spirit to declare itself as its inner core, the expression
and reality of which it is. _Secondly_, from the point of view of the
objective world the defect is bound up with this abstraction of an
Absolute to which the principle of self-determination is lacking that
now also the real phenomenon, being that which is essentially without
substance, is unable to set forth under any true mode the Absolute in
concrete shape. In contrast to those songs of praise and glory, those
celebrations of the abstract and universal majesty of God, we have
now in the passage we are making to a higher form of art to recall
to our minds that phase of negativity, change, pain, and progress
through life and death, which we discovered among other matter in the
conceptions of the East. We have here set before us the principle of
_self-distinction_ in its essential character under a mode which is
unable to unite with its conception the unity and self-subsistency of
that subjective principle. Both aspects, however, both the essential
and self-substantive unity, and the differentiation of that unity by
virtue of a self-defined content, are equally necessary to unfold a
true and free self-subsistency in its concrete and mediate totality.

In this connection we may incidentally, together with this reference
to the Sublime, mention that further conception which at the same
time entered on its process of explication in the East. It is that
apprehension, in opposition to the substantiality of the one God,
of internal freedom, self-subsistency and innate independence of the
individual, so far as the elaboration of this impulse was permitted
to Eastern nations. The main source of this attitude we must seek for
among the Arabs, who in their deserts, upon the infinite sea of these
expanses, with the clear heavens over their heads, in a nature such as
this have emphasized their own courage and the bravery of their hand,
as also the means of their self-preservation, whether it be camel,
horse, lance, or sword. Here we find the more stubborn independence
of personal character asserting itself in its contrast to the Hindoo
softness and lack of individuality, as also to the more recent
pantheism of Mohammedan poetry, and opposing also to the objective
world its circumscribed, securely defined and immediate reality. With
this incipient stage of the independence of the individual we must also
associate free friendship, hospitality, and august nobility, but at
the same time an insatiable lust of revenge and the inextinguishable
memory of a hate, which is insistent and will have satisfaction with
an unsparing passion and an absolutely remorseless cruelty. None
the less all that happens on this soil is wholly within the circle
of humanity. We have here deeds of revenge, conditions of love,
traits of self-sacrificing nobility from which the fantastic and the
wonderful have vanished; everything is carried forward in the secure
and determinate shape which the causative connection of the facts
necessitate. A similar conception of real objects which are referred
to their determinate basis of actuality[126], and are made visible
in their free power, not merely in that which conserves an exterior
purpose[127], we discovered in an earlier stage of our investigations
among the Hebrews. The more assured independence of character, the
savagery of revenge and hate lie, too, at the root of the original
Jewish nationality. But the difference is at once pronounced, that in
this case even the most powerful images of Nature are depicted less
for their own sake than for that of the glory of God, as related to
which they at once again lose their self-subsistency; and furthermore
even hate and persecution are not merely a personal matter affecting
persons, but are embraced in the service of God as national vengeance
against whole peoples. As, for example, the later Psalms and yet more
the prophets frequently only are able to desire and plead for the
misfortune and overthrow of other nations, and not unfrequently find
the main strength of their utterance in curses and imprecations.

No doubt the elements of true beauty and art are presented to each of
these points of view above noticed; but they are in the first instance
brought together in haphazard and confused fashion, and are set in a
false relation to each other, instead of being referred to a genuine
principle of identity. For this reason the purely ideal and abstract
unity of the Divine is unable to bring forth any entirely adequate
art-product in the form that is characterized by real individuality;
and at the same time Nature and human individuality either are
manifestly not, whether we consider their inward principle, or their
external mode of appearance, permeated by the Absolute, or at least
not positively pervaded by it. This _externality_ of significance,
which is thus made the essential content, and the determinate mode of
appearance under which it is generally reproduced is finally and in the
_third_ place exemplified in the _comparative activity_ of art[128].
In this type both sides have become wholly independent, and the unity
that binds them together is merely the invisible subjectivity which
compares. For this very reason that which is defective in such an
external presentment returned in ever more emphatic degree and betrayed
itself as that which was for the genuine art representation merely
negative or, rather, entirely subversive. And when this dissolution is
really effected the significance can no longer remain the inherently
_abstract_ ideal, but the inherently determinate and self-defined
ideal principle, which in this its concrete totality possesses quite
as essentially the other aspect thereof, that is, the form of an
inherently exclusive and determinate appearance; and consequently in
its external existence, as that which is its very own, merely expresses
and signifies itself.

1. This essentially free totality which remains constant to itself
throughout each successive self-determination in something other than
itself, this ideal principle, which in its objectivity is self-related
is the essentially true, free, and self-subsistent, which in its
determinate existence unfolds nothing other than itself. In the realm
of art, however, this form is not present in its form of infinitude,
is not, that is, the _thinking_ of itself, as the essential, absolute,
which is made an object for itself in the form of ideal universality,
and makes itself, wholly explicit, but is still in immediate natural
and sensuous existence. In so far, however, as significance is
self-substantive, it must in art borrow its form from its own resources
and inherently possess the principle of its externality. It must
consequently, it is true, repair to Nature, but as predominant over
that which is external, which, in so far as it is itself an aspect of
the totality of this ideal realm, no longer exists as purely natural
objectivity, but being without its own self-subsistence, simply serves
as the expression of Spirit. In this interpenetration consequently the
natural form and externality, which is modified by Spirit contains out
and out on its part, as immediately given, its significance in itself,
and no longer points to this as to something separate and different
from the corporeal appearance. And this is that identification of
the spiritual and natural which is appropriate to the notion of
Spirit, which, that is, does not merely proceed no further than the
neutralization of the two opposed aspects, but raises that which is
spiritual into the higher totality, in which it is able to preserve
itself in its own Other, to bring the natural within its own ideal
range and to express itself in and relatively to the natural. It is on
this type of unity that the notion of classical art is based.

(_a_) This identity of significance and bodily form may be approached
yet more closely under the view of it that no separation of these
opposed aspects[129] takes place within their consummated union;
and consequently the ideal principle does not, as _purely inward
spirituality_, return upon itself from out of the corporeal and
concrete reality, under a process which would give us once more the
distinction of these aspects in opposition. And inasmuch as the
objective and external, in which Spirit is made visible as an object
of sense, according to the very notion of it, is at once throughout
_defined_ and _separate_, mind which is free, and which it is the
function of art to elaborate in the form of reality truly commensurate
with it, can only be that spiritual individuality which is not merely
_defined_ but essentially _self-consistent_ in its natural form.
For this reason it is the _human_ which constitutes the centre and
content of true beauty and art; but as content of art--we have already
developed the subject in discussing the notion of the Ideal--it is
brought under the essential determination of concrete individuality and
the external appearance adequate thereto, which in its objectivization
has been thus purified from the imperfection of the finite condition.

(_b_) Under such a consideration of the matter it is at once obvious
that the classical mode of representation, if we take it for what
it _essentially_ is, can no longer be of the _symbolic_ type in the
strict sense of the term, however much now and again we may find along
with it the play of that which belongs to symbolism. Greek mythology,
for example, which, in so far as art asserts its mastery over it,
belongs to the classical Ideal, is, if we grasp it in its fundamental
character, not of a beauty which is symbolical, but unfolded under
the genuine character of the Art-ideal, albeit there may be certain
remnants of symbolism which adhere to it, as we shall shortly see.

If we now proceed to ask ourselves what, then, is the nature of the
determinate form, which can thus enter into this unity with Spirit
without offering merely the suggestion of its content, we shall find it
determined for us in the conception that in classical art both content
and form must be adequate, must, that is, in the aspect of form meet
the demands of totality and essential self-subsistency. For it is a
prime condition of the free self-subsistence[130] of the whole, which
constitutes the fundamental determination of classical art, that either
of these aspects, the ideal form no less than its external embodiment,
should be essentially a totality which goes to make the notion of the
whole. Only by this means is either side _essentially_ identical with
the other, and consequently their difference reduced to the purely
formal differences of one and the same, through which also the totality
appears now as free, the adequacy of both of its aspects being now
fully displayed, inasmuch as it declares itself in either of them and
is one and the same in both.

The lack of this free reduplication of itself within the same unity
carried with it in the symbolic type precisely this absence of freedom
in the content and with it also in the form. Spirit was here not
clear to itself, and for this reason declared its external reality
not as that which belonged to itself, set forth in its explicit
significance through and in it. Conversely the form had no doubt to
be significant, but its significance only lay partly and on one side
in it. The external existence gave here primarily to what passed for
its ideal aspect, though still under a mode that was external, merely
_itself_ instead of a significance which declared an ideal content;
and in attempting to show that there was something further which it
suggested its power was necessarily put under a constraint. In this
distortion it neither remained true to itself, nor was it the Other,
that is significance, but declared nothing save that which was a
problematical connection and confusion between incompatible things, or
tended to be the purely co-adjutant attire and external adornment of
what was simply the glorification of the one absolute significance of
all things whatever, until it was finally obliged to surrender itself
to the purely subjective caprice of comparison with a significance
which was far removed from it and indifferent to it. If this relation
of unfreedom is to find a release the form must already inherently
possess its significance, or, to speak more definitely, must possess
the significance of mind or Spirit itself. This form is essentially
the _human_ form because the externality of this form is alone capable
of revealing the spiritual in sensuous guise. Human expression in
countenance, eye, pose, and carriage is, it is true, material and
therein not that which the spirit is; but within this corporeal frame
itself the human exterior is not merely alive and a part of Nature as
the animal is, but it is the bodily presence which reflects Spirit
to itself. Through the human eye we look into the soul of a man just
as through the entire presentment of him his spiritual character is
expressed. When consequently the body belongs to Spirit, as _its_
determinate presence, Spirit is also that ideal principle which is
appropriate to the body, and is no form of ideality which is foreign
to the external form in the sense that materiality still inherently
possesses a significance other than that to which it testifies or
suggests. It is quite true that the human form still carries within
it much of the universal animal type, but the fundamental distinction
between the human and the animal body consists simply in this, that
the human is obviously, by virtue of its entire conformation, declared
as the dwelling, nay, we may add the only possible dwelling-place of
Spirit. And for this reason also it is only in the body that Spirit
is immediately present to others. This is, however, not the place
to discuss the necessity[131] of this association and the peculiar
reciprocity of soul and body. We must here assume this necessity. We
have, of course, many indications on the human figure of death and
ugliness, that is, of other influences and defects which are traceable
to their source. When we find this to be the case it is the function
of art to expunge the divergence between the purely natural and the
spiritual, to exalt the external bodily appearance to a form of beauty,
that is, a form throughout dominated and suffused with the animation of
Spirit.

We have seen, then, that in this type of representation symbolism is
no longer presented by the external relation, and everything that
partook of effort, strain, distortion, and perversion is eliminated.
For when Spirit has grasped itself as Spirit it is at once explicit
and clear; and on the same ground is also its association with the
form adequate to it from the side of externality, something which is
essentially ready to the hand and a free gift, which does not require,
as a means for its declaration, a bond of connection introduced by the
imagination, and contrasting with that which is immediately presented.
Just as little is the classical form of art exhibited as a purely
material and superficial personification. It is Spirit in its entirety,
in so far as it is intended to make it the content of the art-product,
which passes into that bodily shape, and is able to identify itself
completely with it. From this point of view we may considerer
the conception that art has followed the human figure by means of
imitation. According to the common view, however, this acceptance of
the human figure as the model of imitation appears as a matter of
accident, whereas we should rather maintain the art which has arrived
at its maturity is obliged to reveal its substance by a necessary
law in the form of man as he appears to sense perception, because
Spirit alone obtains in it the existence fitting to it in the sensuous
material of Nature.

All that we have here observed relatively to the human body and
its expression applies also to human emotions, impulses, actions,
experiences, and occupations. The externalization of these is also, in
classical art, not merely characterized as a part of Nature's life,
but as that of Spirit; and this ideal aspect is brought into full and
adequate identity with that which is external appearance.

(_c_) Inasmuch, then, as classical art comprehends free spirituality
as determinate individuality, and immediately envisages the same in
its bodily presentment, it frequently falls under the reproach of
anthropomorphism. Even among the Greeks, to take an example, Xenophanes
ridiculed the presentation of Gods by means of the sensuous image in
his famous remark, that if lions had been sculptors they would have
given their gods the external shape of lions. Of a similar tendency
is that piece of French wit: God made men according to His image,
but man has returned Him the compliment by creating God in the image
of man. If we consider the matter relatively to the form of art that
follows, the romantic, we may in this respect observe that the content
of the classical form of beauty is no doubt defective precisely as
the religion of art is so; but so little does the defect consist in
anthropomorphism as such, that we may rather maintain, on the contrary,
that though classical art is certainly sufficiently anthropomorphic for
art, for the higher form of religion it is not enough so. Christianity
has carried anthropomorphism to far greater lengths; for, according
to Christian doctrine, God is not merely individuality in a human
form, but a real and singular individual entirely God, and entirely
a real man who has entered into all conditions of existence, and is
no mere Ideal of beauty and art created by man. If our conception of
the Absolute is limited to an abstract Being essentially without any
characterization then, no doubt, every kind of representation vanishes,
but if God is Spirit he must appear as man, as individual subject,
not as ideal human being, but as actual participator in the entire
externality of temporal conditions[132] which pertain to immediate
and natural existence. In other words, from the Christian point of
view, the infinite movement is carried to the extremest verge of
opposition, and only returns to the absolute unity as the resolution of
this separation. The man-becoming of God is incident to this phase or
significant moment of separation; as real and individual subjectivity
it is involved in the difference between unity and substance in its
bare extension, and in this common sphere of temporal and spatial
condition creates the consciousness in and pain of division in order
through the ultimate resolution of such contradiction by the same
means to arrive at eternal reconciliation. And this essential point
of passage in the process, according to the Christian conception, is
inherent in the nature of God Himself. As a matter of fact, God is here
apprehended as absolute and free Spirit, in which Nature and immediate
singularity is indeed proferred us as a phasal moment of a process,
but, at the same time, as one which is necessarily transcended[133]. In
classical art, on the contrary, the material medium is neither killed
nor suffers death, but for this reason also we cannot wholly find in it
the resurrection of Spirit. Classical art and its religion of beauty
does not consequently wholly satisfy the depths of Spirit. However
essentially concrete it may be, it still remains abstract for humanity
because, instead of movement and reconciliation obtained by the
contradiction we have adverted to of that infinite subjective process,
it merely possesses as its life that undisturbed harmony of the free
individuality determined in its adequate existence, this repose in its
reality, this happiness, this content and greatness in itself, this
eternal blitheness and bliss which even in unhappiness and pain does
not lose its secure reliance on itself. Classical art has not worked
its way to the full contradiction which is fundamentally involved in
the notion of the Absolute and overcome that contradiction. For this
reason it does not recognize the aspect which is in close relation
to this contradiction, that is the essential obduracy of the subject
as opposed to that which is ethical and of absolute significance,
namely, sin and evil, no less than the waste of individual life in its
own subjective aims, the dissolution and incontinence of that world
which we may summarily describe as that of the entire sphere of its
divisions, which is productive on the side both of sense and spirit of
distortion, ugliness, and the repulsive. Classical art fails to cross
the pure territory of the genuine Ideal.

2. In so far as the _historical_ realization of classical art is
concerned, it is hardly necessary to observe that we must seek for
that among the Greeks. Classical beauty, with its infinite range of
content, material and form, is the gift bestowed on the Greek people;
and this folk is entitled to our respect on the ground that it has
produced art in its highest form of vitality. The Greeks, if we regard
the form of their realized life immediately presented us, lived in
that happy middle sphere of self-conscious and subjective freedom and
substantive ethical life. They did not persist, on the one hand, in the
unfree Oriental unity, which is necessarily bound up with a religious
and political despotism for the reason that the individuality of the
subject is overwhelmed in a universal substance, or, in some particular
aspect of the same, because it has essentially as personality no
right, and consequently no ground to stand on; neither, on the other,
did they pass beyond to that subjective penetration, in which the
particular subject separates itself from the whole and the universal,
in order to make itself more explicit in its ideality; and only through
a higher return to the ideal totality of a purely spiritual world,
succeeds in its final purification of the substantive and essential.
On the contrary, in the ethical life of Greece, the individual was
self-substantive and essentially free, without disengaging himself
from the general interests of the realized State immediately visible
to him and the positive immanence of spiritual freedom in the temporal
condition. The universal of morality and the abstract freedom of
personality, both in its ideal and external aspect, remains in
accordance with the principle of Greek life in undisturbed harmony,
and during the time in which, even in real existence, this principle
asserted itself in still unimpaired purity, the self-substantiality of
the citizen did not stand forth in relief in contrast to a morality
which was to be distinguished from it: the substance of political life
was so far merged in the individual, as he on his part sought his own
liberty absolutely in the universal ends of the entire civic life.
The feeling for beauty, the significance and spirit of this joyous
harmony interpenetrates all productions, in which the freedom of Greece
is self-conscious, and in which she has made visible to herself her
being. Consequently her view of the world is just the midway ground
on which beauty commences its true life and breaks open its serene
dominion; the intermediate realm, that is, of free vitality, which is
not merely a fact at once immediate and natural, but one which is the
creation of a spiritual point of view revealed by art, the realm, that
is, of a culture of reflection, and at the same time of an absence of
reflection, which neither isolates the individual nor on the other
hand is competent to bring back again its negativity, pain, and
unhappiness to a positive unity and reconciliation--a realm, however,
which, just as in the case of Life itself, is at the same time only
a point of passage, however true it be that it scales at this point
the summit of beauty, and in the form of its plastic individuality is
so spiritually concrete and rich, that all tones have their interplay
within it, and also, too, that which is for its own standpoint what
lies behind it, albeit it is no longer present as an absolute and
unqualified principle, is nevertheless felt as that which accompanies
it--a kind of background to it. In this sense the Greek nation has
also, in the representation of its gods, made its spirit visible to the
perceptions and the imaginative consciousness, and bestowed on them,
by means of art a determinate existence, which is entirely conformable
with their true content. By virtue of this homogeneous form, which
is alike consistent with the fundamental notion of Greek art and
Greek mythology, art became in Greece the highest expression for the
Absolute, and Greek religion is the religion of art itself, whereas
romantic art, which appeared later, although it is undoubtedly art,
suggests a more exalted form of consciousness than art is in a position
to supply.

3. In establishing the position, as we have just done, on the one
hand, that essentially free individuality is the content of classical
art, and, on the other, that a like freedom is the equally requisite
determinant of the form, we have already assumed that the entire
blending of both together, however much it may be presented in the
immediate form, is nevertheless no original unity such as Nature's,
but is necessarily an _artificial_ association made possible by the
subjective spirit. Classical art, in so far as its content and its
form is spontaneity[134], originates in the freedom of the Spirit
that is clear to itself. And for this reason also we may say that in
the _third_ place the artist occupies a position different from that
of his predecessors. That is to say his production declares itself
as the spontaneous _product_ of a man in the full possession of his
senses[135], who as truly _knows_ what he wills as he is _able_ to
accomplish such a purpose; who is consequently obscure to himself
neither in respect to the significance and substantive content of that
which he has resolved to make visible in the form of art, nor finds
himself hindered by any defects of technique from executing the result
aimed after.

(_a_) If we look more closely at this change in the position of the
artist we shall in the first place find this freedom announced to
us relatively to the _content_ in this way, that he does not feel
compelled to seek for it with the restless process of symbolical
fermentation. Symbolic art remains the captive of its travail to
bring to birth and make clear its form to its own vision, and this
embodiment is itself only the original form[136], that is, on the
one side Being in the immediate guise of Nature, and on the other
the ideal abstraction of the universal, unity, conversion, change,
becoming, origination, and passing away. In this original form of
the artistic process, however, art does not come to its rightful
possessions. Consequently, these representations of symbolic art, which
should be expositions of content, remain still themselves riddles and
problems, and merely testify to the struggle after clarity and the
effort of Spirit, which on and on seeks to discover without obtaining
the rest and repose of discovery. In contrast to this troublous
search the content must for the classic artist be presented him as
something _already there_ in the sense that as a thing essentially
positive, as belief, popular opinion, or as an actual event either
of myth or tradition, it is determined for his imagination in all
its essential character. Relatively to this objectively determined
material the artist is placed in the freer relation that he does not
himself undertake the process of production and fermentation, and
pass no further than the impulse after the real significances of
his art, but rather that for him a completely explicit and unfolded
content lies before him which he accepts and freely reproduces from
himself. The Greek artists received their material from the popular
religion in which already that which had been brought over to Greece
from the Orient had begun to receive a form of its own. Pheidias
borrowed his Zeus from Homer, and other tragedians also did not create
the fundamental groundwork of that they represented. In the same way
the artists of Christianity, Dante and Raphael, have only reclothed
what was already to hand in the doctrines of their faith and their
religious conceptions. This is also, it is true, from a certain point
of view in like manner the case in the art of the Sublime, but with
this difference, that here the relation to the content, as the _one_
substance, does not permit subjectivity to come by its just claims, and
allows to it no self-substantive finality. The comparative form of art,
on the other hand, no doubt starts with the selection of significances
as images which it makes use of, but this initiative of selection
remains at the disposition of _subjective_ caprice, and on its part
dispenses with all substantive individuality, which constitutes the
notion of classical art, and for this reason must rest with the
personality which creates it.

(_b_) The more, however, an explicitly unfolded content is present
for the artist in popular beliefs, myth, and other actual facts, the
more his energy is concentrated upon the object of endowing such a
content with the _external embodiment_ of art fitting to it. While
in this respect symbolic art dissipates its resources in a thousand
forms, and with unbridled imaginative power lays about it for material
that it fails either to measure or define in order to adapt forms that
are never really conformable to the significance it is seeking after,
the classical artist in this respect is possessed of an aim that is
at once resolute and definite. That is to say, the free form is with
the content itself defined through that content, and is essentially
pertinent to such content, so that the artist only appears to execute
what is already accordant with the fundamental conception of what is
presented him. While, therefore, the symbolic artist strives in his
imagination, to suit the form to significance or _vice versa_, the
classic artist _adapts_ significance to plastic shape by means of the
process of freeing the external phenomena which are already presented
from that part of them which is merely an incidental product. In this
activity, however, although all that is purely his caprice is excluded,
his productive power not merely follows or is not merely limited to a
bare type, but is at the same time _creative_ throughout the whole.
Art which, to start with, is forced to seek out and discover its true
form neglects for that reason the very aspect of form; but where, on
the contrary, the building up of form is made the essential interest
and the main task there we find the content also receives its plastic
shape by imperceptible degrees through the process of the reproduction,
precisely as we have hitherto found in a general way that form and
content proceed hand in hand during the process, wherein they are
completed. In this respect the classic artist elaborates the result
also where it is a religious world that is presented him; he throughout
develops in the free and buoyant medium of his art the material and
mythological ideas which he receives.

(_c_) The same applies to the technique of art. In the case of the
classic artist the ingredients must be already to hand; the sensuous
material through which the artist labours must already be disengaged
from all brittleness and extreme stubbornness, and yield directly to
the aims of the artist, in order that the content, conformably to
the notion of the classic type, may make its free and unfettered way
through this external medium. To classical art, consequently, belongs
from the first a high level of technical ability, which has subjected
the sensuous material to an apt subservience. Such a technical
perfection, if it is really to carry out all that is required of Spirit
and its conceptions, is presupposed by the complete elaboration of all
that pertains to craftsmanship in art, that is, in especial degree
of that which makes itself visible within the plastic forms of the
religion to which we now refer. The religious view of things, such
as the Egyptian, for example, discovers, that is, definite external
forms, idols, colossal constructions whose type remains fixed, and,
further, in the usual similarity of forms and shapes, supplies a
considerable field for elaboration in the treatment of it by the
steadily progressive executive powers. This adaptability to the talents
of the craftsman must already have been presented in that which is of
an inferior and distorted type before the genius of classical beauty
can associate these powers of mechanical facility with the forms
of technical perfection. Then, at last, when that which is purely
mechanical work is confronted with no further insuperable difficulty,
is art enabled to proceed in the elaboration of a form, the practice in
working out which is at the same time an elaboration which is in the
closest relationship to the progressive advance of both content and
form.

So far as the _division_ of classical art is concerned it is usual
in the more general sense of the term to call every complete work
of art classic, whatever the particular character it may otherwise
carry, whether symbolic or romantic. We have no doubt thus accepted
it in the particular sense of art perfection, but with this important
qualification, that this perfection must be based on the thorough
interpenetration of ideal and free individuality and external
definition. We consequently differentiate the classic form expressly
from the symbolic and romantic, whose beauty in content and form is
entirely of another kind. And along with the classic, regarded in its
usual and more indefinite significance, we have as little to do here at
this early stage with the particular arts in which the classical ideal
is represented, as, for example, sculpture, the Epic, definite forms
of lyrical poetry and specific types of tragedy and comedy. These
particular types of art, although classic art is imprinted upon them,
will be first discussed in the third portion of the division of our
subject in the explication of the several arts and their grades[137].
What we approach more immediately now is the classic in the sense we
have secured for the term, and as bases of our subdivision we can only
therefore seek out the grades of evolution, which proceed from this
notion of the classical ideal itself. The essential phases of this
development are as follows.

The _first_ point to which we would direct our attention is this, that
the classical type of art is not to be apprehended as was the case with
the symbolic type as immediately primary, as art's _commencement_, but,
on the contrary, as its _result._ We have evolved it, consequently,
in the first instance from the course of the symbolic modes of
representation, which it presupposes. The essential feature on which
this process turned was the concentration of content in the elucidation
of an essentially self-conscious individuality, which can neither
employ for its expression the mere natural form, whether it be that of
the elements or animals, nor the defective and confused personification
of the human figure with it, but receives its expression in the
animation of the human body permeated throughout with the breath of
Spirit. Inasmuch, then, as the essence of freedom consists in this,
to be that which it is through its own resources, that which in the
first place appeared purely as the presupposition and condition of its
origin outside the sphere of classical art must take its place within
the circle peculiar to the same in order to make really visible the
true content and the genuine form by means of the subjection of what
is unconformable to and the negation of the Ideal. This process of
conformation through negation, this process by means of which, whether
we view it relatively to content or form, the genuine type of classical
beauty begets itself from its own substance is consequently our point
of departure, and we shall treat of that in our _first_ chapter.

In the _second_ chapter, on the other hand, we have reached by means of
this process the true Ideal of the classical type of art. We find here
as the central fact the fair and novel world of the gods of Greece,
which it will be incumbent on us to develop exhaustively from within,
both in its aspects of spiritual individualization, and those which are
related to the bodily form with which such individuality is immediately
associated.

In the _third_ place, however, the notion of classical art implies
conversely, along with this becoming of the beauty which springs from
itself, also the dissolution of that creation, which will carry us into
a further sphere, namely, that of the romantic type of art. The gods
and human individuals of classic beauty just as they rise so, too, pass
away once more from the art-consciousness, which in part turns round
in opposition to the aspect of Nature that still persists, in which
Greek art, in fact, had elaborated itself in the full perfection of
beauty, in part transcends an undeific[138], defective, and vulgar mode
of reality in order to reveal that which is false and purely negative
therein. In this dissolution, whose artistic activity we shall take as
the material of our third chapter, the specific phases in the process,
which created the truly classical type in that harmony presented by
the perfect fusion of immediate beauty, fall apart. The ideal essence
is made explicit on the one side in its independence of the external
mode of its existence on the other. Subjectivity withdraws into itself,
for the reason that it fails now to find an adequate realization in
the forms hitherto employed, and is constrained to enlarge itself with
the fuller content of a new spiritual world of absolute freedom and
infinity, looking about for novel means of expressing this profounder
grasp of its substance.

[Footnote 121: The central point, that is, in the entire evolution of
the types of art, classical art being intermediate between symbolic and
romantic art and in a certain sense marking a point of culmination.]

[Footnote 122: _Zu ihrem Inneren_, _i. e._, that which unites it as a
whole rather than is the purely external form. The Inward of man is the
notion of man, not the mere fact that he has a head and arms, etc.]

[Footnote 123: The "Nature-existence," as Hegel calls it.]

[Footnote 124: _Die Natur ist freilich heraus._ Nature is there
explicitly before us, but not all that is implied in Nature is made
explicit in the material world.]

[Footnote 125: _Sinnlichkeitslos_, "senseless" as devoid of or
abstracted from all sense.]

[Footnote 126: _Auf ihr festes Maas zurückgeführt._ To their own proper
standard or measure that strictly applies to them.]

[Footnote 127: I think this must be the meaning of _nützlich_ here. But
the passage is not an easy one.]

[Footnote 128: That is, the comparative type of art discussed at the
conclusion of the preceding section.]

[Footnote 129: That is, the Inward or ideal principle and the natural
externality.]

[Footnote 130: _Selbstständigkeit._ Self-consistency or independence
are perhaps better words here.]

[Footnote 131: That is, I suppose, the causal necessity as part of
natural evolution.]

[Footnote 132: _Bis zur zeitlichen gänzlichen Äußerlichkeit._]

[Footnote 133: These words contain no doubt the epitome of Hegel's
"Philosophy of Religion" and are involved in its difficulties.
The reference to the historical facts of Christianity under ideal
conceptions is obvious. I have translated the words _das Moment des
Natürlichen_ ... _zwar vorhanden seyn_ as a phasal moment of "a
process," but I am well aware that no mere amplification of this sort
can in itself make the words clear.]

[Footnote 134: _Das Freie._]

[Footnote 135: _Des besonnenen Menschen_, _i.e._, the man of clear
intelligence, sound sense, as we say.]

[Footnote 136: The words _dieser Gehalt ist selber nur der Erste_ would
seem to refer back to the expressions _Keine Erste und somit natürliche
Einheit._ But the sense is not very clear.]

[Footnote 137: _Deren Gattungen,_ their specific types.]

[Footnote 138: _Entgöttert_--a mode from which the Divine is removed.]




CHAPTER I

THE COMING INTO BEING OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL

In the notion of free Spirit is contained immediately that aspect of
the process of intelligence we may describe as self-introspection,
return upon the self, of being explicit as an object existing for the
self and in a determinate place, although this penetration into the
realm of subjectivity, as we have already observed, does not either
necessarily proceed to the length of making the subject essentially
self-substantive in its negative aspect as against all that is
concrete in Spirit and presented us as the stability of Nature, nor
to that absolute reconciliation which constitutes, the freedom of the
infinite subjectivity in truth. With the freedom of Spirit, however, in
whatever form it may appear, is generally associated the elimination
of that which is purely natural, regarded as that which is the Other
in contrast to Spirit. Spirit must in the first instance essentially
withdraw itself from Nature, uplift itself over, her boundaries and
overcome them, ere it can prevail with unfettered movement within those
bounds as within an element that is opposed to it, and can build itself
up in a positive mode of existence truly indicative of its own freedom.
If we further ask for a closer definition of the object through the
transcendence of which Spirit attains to its self-substantive form
in classical art we shall find this object is not Nature merely as
such, but rather a Nature that is already throughout suffused with
the significations of Spirit, in other words the symbolic type of
art, which made use of the immediately natural form as a means of
expressing the Absolute, its artistic consciousness either seeing in
animals and so forth the presence of gods, or striving vainly under
false modes toward the true unity of the spiritual and the natural. It
is through the removal and reformation of this defective association
that the Ideal for the first time presents itself as the Ideal, and
is forced to develop consequently this process of transcendence within
its own sphere as a phase of its own necessary evolution. Such a
consideration at once enables us to dispose of the question whether the
Greeks received this religion from extraneous sources or no. We have
already seen that subordinate conceptions are necessarily presupposed
in the very notion of classical art. These, in so far as they in truth
appear and are presented as factors of human history, are, as opposed
to the higher form, which strives to pass beyond them, the actual
starting-point of the new self-evolving art. And this is so, though
in the particular case of Greek mythology there is not throughout
historical evidence for these preliminary data. The relation, however,
of the Greek spirit to these presupposed data is essentially a relation
of construction and in the first instance of transformation. If this
were not so the conceptions and forms of the same had remained as they
were. It is true that Herodotus says, in a passage already cited, of
Homer and Hesiod, that they had created their gods for the Greeks,
but he also speaks expressly of particular gods, how this or that
one was Egyptian or some other form: the poetic activity does not
therefore exclude the reception of material from other sources, but
merely suggests an essential transformation. For the Greeks possessed
mythological conceptions before the time in which Herodotus places
those original poets.

If we inquire further into the more obvious aspects of this necessary
transformation of that which is undoubtedly involved with, but at first
still alien from, the Ideal, we find it set before us in naïve form as
content of mythology itself. The main fact of Greek theology is this,
that it creates itself and constitutes itself from that which has gone
before, which takes its place in the origins and process of its own
generic history. Incidental to this origination, in so far as the gods
are taken to be spiritual individualities in determinate bodily shape,
we find, on the one hand, that Spirit, instead of giving visibility
to its essence in that which is purely vital and animal, regards life
rather as an attribute which is insufficient[139], as its unhappiness
and death, and, on the other, that it is in the living thing that it
triumphs over the elements of Nature and its confused reproduction.
Conversely, however, it is equally necessary for the Ideal of the
classic gods, not merely to stand over against Nature and its elemental
powers as individual spirit in its finite and abstract seclusion, but
to possess itself the elements of the universal natural life notionally
as a phasal moment in the vital constitution of Spirit. As the essence
of the gods is essentially _universal_, and in this very universality
they are defined as individuals, it follows also that the aspect of
their bodily presence must essentially include at the same time the
natural as the essential and wide-reaching power of Nature, and as
vital activity intertwined with spirituality itself.

In this respect we may differentiate the process of embodiment followed
by the classical art-form under the following points of view.

The _first_ concerns the degradation of that which is purely animal,
and the removal of the same from the sphere of free and pure Beauty.

The _second_ more important aspect is related to the elemental itself,
in the first instance conceived as gods put before us as powers of
Nature, through whose conquest alone the genuine race of gods can
attain to undisputed mastery, that is in the war between the ancient
and new gods. But this negative tendency becomes, then, in the _third_
place, after Spirit has secured its free right, to the same extent
once again an affirmative force, and elemental Nature constitutes an
aspect of godhead permeated with individualized spirituality in order
to re-establish even the animal organism, though here only of an
attributive and external sign. Following the above points of view we
will now, if still at no great length, endeavour to emphasize the more
definite traits, which here come under consideration.


1. THE DEGRADATION OF ANIMALISM[140]

Among the Indians and Egyptians, among Asiatics generally we find
animalism, or at any rate specific kinds of animals regarded as
sacred and worshipped, because in them the Divine itself is taken
to be visible to sense. The animal form is consequently also a main
feature of their artistic representations, albeit they are in addition
merely used as symbolic and in association with human forms, in the
stage previous to that where we find the human, and only the human,
apprehended by consciousness as that which is alone true. It is only
in virtue of the self-consciousness of the spiritual that the respect
for the obscure and gloomy ideality of animal life disappears. This
has already taken place among the ancient Hebrews who regard, as we
have already observed, the whole of Nature neither as symbol nor as the
presence of God, and attach to external objects merely the powers and
vitality which in fact dwell within them. At the same time there still
remains even among them, if in accidental fashion, at least a vestige
of reverence for the living thing as such. We may illustrate this with
the fact that Moses forbids the use of animal blood as food for the
reason that life is centred in the blood. Man, however, is really under
a necessity to eat that which is his natural food. The next step which
we must draw attention to in this passage to classical art consists in
lowering the high worth and position of what is animal, and making this
degradation itself the content of religious conceptions and artistic
productions. And illustrative of this we find abundant examples from
which I shall merely offer the following selections.

(_a_) We find that among the Greeks certain animals appear conspicuous
among others, as the snake, for example, is presented us in the
sacrifices of Homer as an exceptionally beloved genius[141], and before
all others it is this species which is offered to one god, while
others are appropriated to some other. We find, further that the hare,
which runs across the way, birds observed in their flight to right
hand or left, and entrails are investigated as fruitful in prophetic
significance. All this, it is true, indicates a real reverence for the
animal type, since the gods communicate through them and speak to men
by means of omens. If we look at the heart of the matter, however,
we shall find these to be merely isolated revelations, suggestive of
superstition no doubt, but merely momentary hints of the Divine. On
the other hand, it is an important fact that animals are sacrificed
and the sacrificial flesh eaten. Among the Indians sacred animals are
on the contrary preserved alive as such, and taken care of, and among
the Egyptians they are even preserved after their death. For the Greek
it is the sacrifice which is sacred. In the sacrifice man demonstrates
that he is willing to give up a consecrated thing to his gods, and to
deprive himself wholly of the use of the same. And in this connection
we may observe a characteristic trait in the Greek rite, among which
people the sacrifice was observed as at the same time a hospitable
feast[142], only a part of the same being dedicate to the gods, that
is, the portion which it was assumed they alone could enjoy, while
the Greek himself retained and feasted upon the flesh. Out of this
circumstance originated a mythical tale in Greece. The ancient Greeks,
it is said, sacrificed with the greatest solemnity to the gods, and
suffered the entirety of the sacrificial animal to be consumed in the
flames. Not even the poorer suppliants dared contest this great waste.
So Prometheus endeavoured to obtain by request from Zeus, that they
were merely under an obligation to sacrifice a portion, and could
devote the remainder to their own uses. He slew two oxen, burnt the
liver of both, converted, however, all the bones into one, the flesh
into the remaining hide of the animals, and presented Zeus the choice.
Zeus, deceived by appearances, selected the bones because they were a
larger portion and left the flesh in this way for human consumption.
For this reason, when the flesh of sacrificial animals was consumed,
the remaining portions, which were devoted to the gods, were burnt up
in the same fire. Zeus, however, took away fire from men because by so
doing he made it impossible for them to celebrate their feast. Little
help the ruse gave him. Prometheus robbed him of the fire and in the
excess of his joy flew back faster than he sped thither; for which
cause, so the tale goes, the bringer of good news invariably brings
"speed" with him. In this way the Greeks have directed attention to
this progress in human culture and preserved and reclothed the same in
myth for the mind.

(_b_) We may connect with the above as a similar example of a yet
further degradation of animalism the traditions of famous _huntings_,
such as we find ascribed to heroes, and handed down as sacred to
grateful memory. In these the slaying of animals which appear as
injurious foes, such as the strangling of the Numean lion by Heracles,
the slaying of the Lernean hydra, the hunting of the Caledonian boar
are set forth as something famous, by means of which the heroes
contended for godlike rank, whereas the Hindoos punished with death
as a crime the slaughter of certain animals. Unquestionably there is
a further interplay of symbolism in deeds of this kind or they lie at
the base of them. In the case of Hercules there is the fact of the
sun and its course, so that such heroic actions supply an essential
aspect of symbolical interpretation. These myths are, however, at the
same time accepted in their express significance as beneficial hunts
and were consciously recognized as such by the Greeks. We must here
again in a similar relation recall certain fables of Aesop, especially
those already referred to of the dung beetle. The dung beetle, that
primitive Egyptian symbol, in whose balls of dung the Egyptians or the
interpreters of their religious conceptions saw the world balls, comes
in Aesop again before Jupiter, and with the important change that the
eagle does not respect his protector the hare. Aristophanes, on the
other hand, has wholly made fun of him.

(_c_) _Thirdly_, the degradation of the animal is directly indicated
in many of the tales of metamorphosis as Ovid has delineated them
for us in detail with grace and talent and fine traits of feeling
and intuition, but also composed in a rambling way without their
great and commanding ideal significance, treating them merely as the
sport of mythos and external fact and failing to recognize a deeper
significance. Such a deeper significance is, however, there, and we
will consequently, now we mention the subject, make further allusion to
it. For the most part the particular narratives are if we look at this
material, quaint and primitive, not so much on account of the depraved
condition of the culture, but rather, as in the Nibelungenlied,
on account of the condition of a still raw nature. As far as the
thirteenth book, according to their content, they are older than
the Homeric tales; add to this they are a medley of cosmogony and
heterogeneous elements of Phoenician, Phrygian, Egyptian symbolism,
treated no doubt in a human way, but in such wise that the uncouth
stock still remains, whereas the metamorphoses which enumerate tales of
a later period subsequent to the Trojan war, although their material is
also borrowed from fabulous times, clash awkwardly with the names of
Ajax and Aeneas.

(_α_) Generally speaking, we may regard the metamorphoses as a contrast
to the conception and worship implied in animalism. Looked at from
the ethical side of Spirit they include essentially the negative
attitude toward Nature, making the animal and other inorganic forms a
phase of human degradation. Consequently, if among the Egyptians the
gods of Nature's elements are exalted and made vital in animals, here
conversely, as we have already intimated, the natural form appears
before us as an easier or difficult lapse and a monstrous crime, as the
existence of an ungod-like, unfortunate thing, and as the embodiment of
pain, in which the human is no longer able to remain self-contained.
For this reason they have not the significance of the migration of
souls in the Egyptian sense of that expression; this is a migration
which does not imply guilt, but rather is on the contrary, if we take
the case of the passage of the human soul into the animal, regarded as
an exaltation.

As a whole, however, this is no severely exclusive circle of myths,
however different the objects of Nature may be, into which that which
is spiritual is banished. A few examples will sufficiently elucidate
the point.

Among the Egyptians the wolf plays a part of great importance, as,
for example, in the case where Osiris appears as beneficent protector
of his son Horus in the latter's conflict with Typhon, and in a whole
series of Egyptian coins is represented as the assister of Horus. And
speaking generally the association of the wolf and the sun-god is a
primitive one. In the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, on the other hand,
the conversion of Lycaon into the form of a wolf is presented us as
a punishment for his impiety. After the subjugation of the giants,
we are told[143], and after the annihilation of their bodily shapes
the Earth, warmed by the blood of its sons which had been scattered
in all directions, revitalized the warm blood, and, in order that no
vestige of the former wild stock should remain, brought into being a
race of men. Yet for all that was this after-birth contemptuous of the
gods, eager for savage deeds and murder. Then Jupiter called the gods
into conclave with a view to destroy this mortal race. He informed
them how Lycaon had cunningly formed stratagems against himself, the
wielder of the lightning and their sovereign lord. When, such is
the story, the worthlessness of the times was apparent to him, he
descended from Olympus, and came to Arcadia. "I furnished signs," the
narration continues, "that a god had drawn nigh and the people began to
supplicate." First, to make merry over these pious prayers was Lycaon,
who forthwith cried out: "I will make experiment whether this indeed
be a god or mortality, and the truth shall not remain in doubt." "He
made preparation," continued Jupiter, "to slay me when oppressed with
slumber; he was possessed with the passion for discovering the truth.
And not contented with this, he made an incision with his sword in the
throat of a goat of Molassian pedigree and boiled as to one part the
only partially dead members; and as to the rest baked them on the fire,
and placed both portions before me to eat. Wherefore I, with avenging
flame, have laid his homestead in ashes. Affrighted he fled forth from
thence, and when he reached the silent field he broke forth: in howls
and strove in vain to utter speech. With rage in his jaws and in the
eagerness of his animal lust for murder he turned against the cattle,
and rejoices even now in their blood; his garments have become the
hairy hide, and his arms have turned into thighs. He is a wolf, and
preserves the signs of the primitive shape."

The tale of Procne, who was changed into a swallow, sets before us the
gravity of the committed abomination with a like emphasis. When, so the
tale runs[144], Procne begs of her husband, Tereus--she happened at the
time to stand in his favour--that he will, forthwith let her go to see
her sister or suffer her sister to visit her, Tereus hastens to launch
his vessel on the sea and quickly reaches the harbour of Piraeus with
his seamanship. He, however, barely catches sight of Philomela before
he is violently enamoured of her. At his departure Pandion, the father,
binds him on oath to protect her with the love of a father, and to send
back as soon as possible the alleviation of his old age. The voyage,
however, is hardly over when the barbarous man deprives her--pale,
trembling, already fearful of the worst, and beseeching with tears to
know where her sister is--of liberty, and as twin-consort forces her
to be his concubine along with her sister. Overcome with anger and
thrusting all sense of shame on one side, Philomela threatens of her
own accord to betray the deed. Tereus on this draws his sword, seizes
and binds her and cuts off her tongue, informs, however, his wife by
way of evasion of the death of her sister. Thereupon the sorrowing
Procne tears off the fine linen from her shoulders and puts on mourning
apparel; she raises an empty tomb and in a mode somewhat out of place,
as it happens, laments the lamentable fate of her sister. How then does
Philomela meet this? A prisoner, robbed of all speech, of her voice,
she bethinks her of craft. With threads of purple she works the news
of the crime upon a white texture, and sends the raiment secretly to
Procne. The wife reads the heartrending news of her sister; she neither
speaks nor weeps; she lives wholly in the image of revenge. It was the
time of the festival of Bacchus. Driven forth by the furies of her
passionate grief she forces her way to her sister; she tears her from
her chamber and carries her off with her away. Then in her own house,
while she still is in doubt what terrible act of vengeance she shall
exact on Tereus, Itys appears before his mother. She stares upon him
with eyes of wildness. How like he is to his father! No further word
she utters, but consummates at once the doleful deed. They slay the
boy and serve him on his father's table, who partakes eagerly of his
own flesh and blood. He then calls for his son, and Procne exclaims
that he carries within him that which he calls for; and, as he still
looks about him and seeks after him and again asks and calls for him,
Philomela sets before his face the bloody head. Then he breaks away
from table with an awful cry of anguish, and weeps and calls himself
his son's sepulchre, and forthwith makes after the daughters of Pandion
with the naked steel. But now supplied with wings they float away from
thence, the one into the forest, the other into the roof; and Tereus
also, despite all the energy of his sorrow and desire of revenge, is
changed into the bird which rears on its crest the comb of feathers,
and carries a beak of immoderate projection. The name of the bird is
the hoopoe.

On the other hand, we have changes which proceed from a guilt of less
significance. As examples, there is Cygnus who became a swan, and
Daphne, the first love of Apollo[145], who was changed into the laurel,
Clyde into the heliotrope, Narcissus, who despised in his vanity
maidens, and sees himself in the watery mirror, and Biblis[146], who
was enamoured of her brother, and is, when he scorns her, changed into
the spring which even now bears her name and flows beneath the shading
oak.

However, we must not lose ourselves in further digression through
particular examples, and I will merely, by way of passage, and the
one further reference to the change of the Pierides, who, according
to Ovid[147], were the daughters of Pieros and challenged the Muses
to a match of rivalry. For ourselves the distinction of importance
is the nature of the songs which the combatants sang respectively.
The Pierides celebrate the battles of the gods[148] and honour the
giants unduly while they depreciate the deeds of the great gods.
Rising up from the depths of Earth, Typhoeus filled heaven with fear;
in a body the gods take flight from thence until, wearied out, they
rest on Egyptian soil. But here, too, so sang the Pierides, Typhoeus
arrives, and the high gods are fain to hide themselves in illusive
shapes. Jupiter was leader of the army, and for this reason, so ran
their refrain, the Lybian Ammon to this day is figured with crooked
horns; and in like manner the scion of Semele is changed into a ram,
the sister of Phoebus into a cat, Juno into a snow-white cow, Venus is
concealed in a fish, Mercury in the feathers of Ibis.

Here we find therefore the gods suffer reproach in their change
to animal form. Although their translation is not presented as a
punishment for a wrong or a crime, it is their cowardice which is held
forth to us as the reason of this self-imposed metamorphosis. Calliope,
on the other hand, exalts in song the good deeds and history of Ceres.
Ceres was the first, so ran the strain, to scour through the fields
with the crook-backed ploughshare; first was she to give fruits and
fruitful means of nourishment to the ploughed fields. First was she to
lay down laws for our guidance; we are collectively but a gift of her
wisdom. "Ah," she exclaims, "my task is to celebrate her, and yet how
shall I tune my strain worthy of such a goddess! Assuredly the goddess
is worthy of the singer's best." When she has finished, the Pierides
adjudge themselves victors in the contest: but even as they endeavour
to speak, and with loud cries, so Ovid informs us (v. 670), are
flourishing about with their hands, they perceive their nails passing
away into feathers, their arms become covered with down, while each is
aware that the mouth of the other is closing up into the stiff bill
of a bird: and while they are all for deploring their lot, they are
carried up on the waves of their wings, they float away, the screamers
of the woods, and as waifs of the air. And even unto this day, adds
our poet, they still retain their own glibness of tongue and excited
chatter, and infinite desire to gossip. In this way we find again also
here that metamorphosis is presented us as punishment, and, what is
more, is presented, as is so frequently the case with such stories, as
punishment due to religious impiety.

(_β_) If we consider further examples of still well recognized
metamorphoses of men and gods into animals, we shall find that,
although they do not directly imply any transgression as the cause
of such a change, as, for example, in the case where Circe possessed
the power to change men into animals, yet, for all that, the animal
condition is at least indicative of a misfortune and a humiliation,
such as brings no honour even to the person who makes such a change
subservient to private ends. Circe was quite a subordinate, obscure
type of goddess, and her power appears as mere witchery, and Mercury
assists Odysseus, when the latter contrives to free his comrades from
the spell. Of much the same kind are the many shapes which Zeus takes
upon himself, as, for example, when he is changed into a bull in his
quest of Europa, or when he approaches Leda in the form of a swan, or
fructifies the Danae in a shower of gold. In all these cases the object
is one of deception, directed by purposes of an inferior, that is to
say, not spiritual, but purely natural quality, purposes which the
ever constant jealousy of Juno render unavoidable. The conception of a
universal procreative life of Nature, which in many of the more ancient
mythologies constituted the leading motive, is imaginatively reproduced
in separate poetical tales about the easily enamoured disposition of
the father of gods and men, exploits, however, which he does not carry
through in his own or, for the most part, in human shape, but expressly
either in the shape of animals, or some other embodiment of Nature.

(_γ_) And, lastly, we may add to our list those hybrid forms, combining
both humanity and animalism, which are also not excluded from Greek
art, though the animality is here accepted as something that degrades,
is unspiritual. Among the Egyptians, for example, the he-goat, Mendes,
was revered[149], and, according to the opinion of Jablouski[150], in
the sense of the procreative power of Nature, generally speaking, as
that of the sun, and to such an outrageous excess that, according to
Pindar, even women sacrificed themselves to these creatures. Among the
Greeks, Pan, on the contrary, personifies the mysterious sense of the
divine presence, and later in the shape of fauns, satyrs, and Pan-like
figures, the goat shape only appeared in a subordinate way, such as
in the feet, and in the most beautiful representations was perhaps
limited to the pointed ears and little horns. The rest of the figure
is shaped in human guise, and the animal suggestion thrust back upon
the barest detail. Yet, for all that, fauns were not recognized among
the Greeks as gods of any important rank or spiritual forces; their
fundamental characteristic remained that of a sensuous, uncontrolled
joviality. It is true that they are also artistically represented with
an expression of profounder significance, as, for instance, that fine
example of one in Munich, which holds the youthful Bacchus in his arms,
and gazes down on him with a smile which is brimming over with love and
tenderness. He is not to be taken as the father of Bacchus, but merely
the foster-parent, and we find given him here the beautiful feeling of
joy in the innocence of the child, such as that which, in the maternal
devotion of Mary for the Christ babe, is exalted in romantic art to so
lofty a level of contemplation. Among the Greeks, however, this most
charming love still belongs to the subordinate sphere of fauns in order
to indicate that its origin is traceable from animal, that is natural,
life, and consequently is entitled to rank with such a sphere[151].

Mediate shapes of a similar kind are the centaurs, in which we may
also observe that the Nature-aspect of sensuality and desire is also
supremely prominent to the suppression of the spiritual side. Cheiron,
no doubt, is of a more noble type, a clever physician, and the tutor of
Achilles; but this instructive _rôle_, as the teacher of a child, is
not appropriate to godhead strictly, but is to be related with human
ability and cleverness.

In this manner the relation of the animal shape receives a modification
in classical art from whatever point of view we regard it. Its
prevailing employment is to indicate that which is evil, bad, inferior,
merely natural and unspiritual, whereas, outside Greece it was the
expression of the positive and absolute.


2. THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN DIVINITIES

The second grade of more elevated rank we may contrast with the
degradation of the animal condition consists in this, that the genuine
gods of classical art, inasmuch as they possess for their content a
free self-consciousness, which we may define as the power of spiritual
individuality reposing on its own resources, are also able to be
represented as subjects of knowledge and volition, that is as spiritual
potences. For this reason the _humanity_, in the bodily form of which
they are presented us, is not, as one may say, a mere form, which is
girt about this content by virtue of the imagination under a mode of
purely external validity, but is rooted in the significance, content,
and ideal substance itself. The divine, however, generally speaking, is
essentially to be apprehended us unity of the natural and spiritual;
both sides are involved in the conception of the Absolute; and it is
merely the different mode, under which this harmony is conceived, which
constitutes from our present point of view the respective grades of
the various forms of art and historic religions. According to our own
Christian way of looking at it, God is the creator and lord of Nature
and the spiritual world, and therewith, no doubt, exempted from the
immediate and determinate existence of Nature, for the reason that,
before all else, he is very God as the taking back into Himself of his
own fulness, that is as absolute and self-dependent Spirit; it is only
the finite and human spirit which stands in opposition to Nature as
a limit and a bound, a limitation which such only thereby overcomes
in his determinate existence, and exalts himself intrinsically to
the grade of infinity in so far as he grasps Nature contemplatively
in thought, and in the actual world[152] consummates the harmony
between spiritual idea, reason, the Good and Nature. This infinite
actualization is, however, God, in so far as the lordship over Nature
is strictly due to Him, and He Himself is conceived as explicit in this
infinite activity, and the knowledge and volition of such realization.

In the religions of strictly symbolic art, on the contrary, as we
have traced already, the union of the Inward and Ideal with Nature
was an immediate association, which consequently made use of Nature
both as regards its substance and form as its fundamental mode of
determination. In this sense the sun, the Nile, the sea, the Earth,
the natural processes of birth, death, procreation, and reproduction,
in short, all the varied changes of the universal life of Nature were
revered as divine existence and life. These Nature-forces, however,
were even in symbolic art personified, and consequently set up in
contrast to the spiritual. If, however, and nothing less than this
is the requirement of classical art, the gods are to be spiritual
individualities in harmony with Nature, mere personification is a
conception insufficient for this result. For personification, in
the case that its content is a purely universal force and activity
of Nature, persists as a mere form, unable to penetrate to the
constituting substance, and can neither give existence to the spiritual
content in the same, nor its individuality. We find therefore
necessarily in classical art a change of front[153], to the effect
that, in conformity with the degradation of the animal aspect we have
just been considering, the universal power of Nature also in one aspect
of it suffers humiliation, and the spiritual is proportionally exalted
in contrast to it. And by this means we find that it is the principle
of _subjectivity_, rather than mere personification, which becomes
the main mode of definition. From another point of view, however,
the gods of classical art do not cease to be potences of Nature,
because God here has not yet come to be represented as essentially
absolute and free spirituality. In the relation of a merely created
and ministrant creature to a lord and creator separated from it,
Nature stands, however, albeit deified, either as we have it in the
art of the Sublime--conceived as an essentially abstract, that is
purely ideal masterdom of one supreme substance, or--as in the case of
Christianity--exalted as concrete Spirit to absolute freedom within the
pure element of spiritual existence and personal actuality. Neither of
these examples falls in with the point of view of classical art. God
here is not as _yet_ lord of Nature, for the reason that he does not
as yet possess absolute spirituality either if regarded relatively to
what is contained in Him, or to the mode under which He is apprehended.
He is no longer lord of Nature, because the sublime relation of the
deified natural thing and human individuality has ceased, and taken
upon itself the limitations of beauty, in which their just due must
be rendered for art's representation without any tittle of loss to
both aspects, the universal and the individual, the spiritual and the
natural. Consequently in the god of classical art the nature-potency is
preserved, but is conceived as such not in the sense of the universal
and all-embracing Nature, but as the definable, and consequently
limited activity of the sun, sea, and so on, generally speaking, as
a particular natural potency, which is made visible as spiritual
individuality, and possesses this spiritual individuality as its
essential being.

For the reason, then, as we have already made clear, that the classical
Ideal is not immediately present, but first makes its appearance
through the process in which that which is negative to the formative
content of spirit is resolved, this transformation and building up
into new forms of that which is raw, unbeautiful, wild, grotesque,
purely natural, or fantastic, which originated in earlier religious
conceptions and views of art, will be a leading interest in Greek
mythology, and consequently will necessarily reproduce a readily
defined sphere[154] of particular significances.

In proceeding further to examine this fundamental aspect of our present
subject I must at once give utterance to the preliminary caution that
the historic investigation of the varied and multifold conceptions of
Greek mythology lies outside our present task. All we are concerned to
inquire into here are the essential phasal steps of this process of
reconstruction, in so far as the same notify themselves as phases of
universal import in the new artistic configuration and its content.
As for that infinite mass of particular myths, narrations, histories,
things referable to a local origin and symbolism, which collectively
still assert their predominance in the world of later gods, and
incidentally appear in artistic production, but for all that do not
belong to the vital point of interest to which our own effort is
directed--we must necessarily leave all this broad field of material
on one side, and can merely refer to an example or two by way of
illustration. Speaking generally we may compare this road, on which
we now move forwards, to the course of the history of sculpture. For
inasmuch as sculpture places before the observation of sense the gods
in their real form it constitutes the peculiar _centrum_ of classical
art, albeit also the better to make it wholly understood poetry
expresses itself upon gods and mankind, or passes in review the worlds
of gods and men in their activity and movement in direct contrast to
that objectivity self-contained in repose. Just as, then, in sculpture
the moment of all importance in the beginning is the transformation of
the formless, the stone or block of wood that has fallen from heaven
(διoπετὴς)--as the the great goddess of Pessinus in Asia Minor actually
was, which the Romans directed by means of a solemn embassy to be
transferred to Rome--into the human form and so makes the statue, so
too we have here to make a beginning from the formless, uncouth powers
of Nature, and while doing so merely to indicate the stages, in their
passage through which they are exalted into spiritual individuality and
are finally concentrated in shapes of fixity.

We may in this connection distinguish three separable aspects as of
most importance.

The _first_, which arrests our attention, are the _oracles_ in which
the knowledge and volition of gods, still under a formless mode, gives
witness to their presence through natural existences.

The _second_ point of view to be noted is concerned with the universal
forms of Nature, no less than the abstractions of Right and so forth,
which lie at the root of the genuine spiritual and individual deities,
which are, so to speak, their birth-cradles and furnish us with the
necessary conditions of their origin and activity: they are the old
gods in contradistinction to the new.

_Thirdly_, and finally, we are made aware of the essentially necessary
progress to the Ideal in the fact that the primarily superficial
personifications of the activities of Nature and the most abstract
spiritual conditions are contested and thrust from their prominence
as something essentially subordinate and negative and, by virtue of
this debasement the self-sufficient spiritual individuality and its
human form and action, is suffered to attain an unchallenged masterdom.
This revolution, which constitutes the real central position in the
historical origins of the classic gods, is in Greek mythology placed
before our imagination in the conflict--a mode of presentation as naïve
as it is astonishingly direct--between the old and new gods, in the
headlong fall of the Titans, and in the victory which the divine race
of Zeus secures.

(_a_) To take, then, first in order the _oracles_, it will not be
necessary for us now to dilate on them to any considerable extent. The
essential point which concerns us here is merely due to this fact,
that in classical art the phenomena of Nature are no longer revered
as such--in the way that the Parsees, for example, pray to naphthetic
regions or fire, or as among the Egyptians, gods remain inscrutable,
mysterious, and mute riddles--but that the gods, being themselves
subjects of knowledge and volition, do verily give to man by means
of natural phenomena indications of their wisdom. In this sense the
ancient Hellenes made inquiry at the oracle of Dodona[155], whether
they should accept the names of gods, which have come to them from
barbarians, and the oracle replied: "Use them."

(_α_) The signs by means of which the gods thus made their revelations
are for the most part of the simplest description. At Dodona such
were the rustle and whisper of the sacred oak, the murmur of the
spring, the tones of the brazen vessel, which the wind made thus to
reverberate. In like manner at Delos it was the laurel which rustled
and at Delphi, too, the sound of the wind on the brazen tripod was full
of significance[156]. Over and above, however, such immediately natural
sounds man is also the voice-piece of the oracle in so far as he is
rendered deaf to and whirled away from the alert commonsense of his
ordinary mind to a natural condition of enthusiasm; as, for example,
the Pythia at Delphi was wont, stupefied by exhalations, to deliver
the oracular words, or in the cave of Trophonius the inquirer of the
oracle met with faces, from the interpretation of which an answer was
delivered him.

(_β_) There is, however, another aspect which we should set alongside
of the purely external sign. For in the oracles God is, it is true,
accepted as He who _knows_, and the oracle of most famed repute is
dedicate to Apollo, the god of wisdom. The form, however, in which he
reveals his will, remains the wholly indefinite voice of Nature, either
a natural sound, that is, or the unconnected tones of words. In this
obscurity of form the spiritual content is itself equally obscure and
requires _interpretation_ and explanation.

(_γ_) This explanation, albeit it brings under a mode of spiritual life
the deliverance of the god which in the first instance is presented
purely in the form of Nature's own voice, remains despite this fact
obscure and equivocal. For the god is in his knowledge and volition
concrete universality. And of the same type also must the advice or
command unavoidably be which the oracle declares. The universal,
however, is not one-sided and abstract, but as concrete universal
contains the one side no less than the other. Inasmuch, then, as
man stands over against the knowing god as one unknowing he accepts
the oracular word itself in ignorance. In other words, the concrete
universality of the same is not open to his intelligence, and he can
merely select from the equivocal word of the god, assuming that he
decides to act upon it, _one_ aspect thereof, for the reason that
every action under particular circumstances is unavoidably _definite_,
only, that is to say, giving a decisive impulse in _one_ direction
and shutting off another. His action is barely accomplished, and the
deed--which consequently has become his own and for which he must
now be answerable--really carried through when he finds a collision
confronting him. All in a moment he is aware that the other side, which
lay already folded in the oracular sentence, is turned against himself
and the fatality of his deed, his knowledge and will notwithstanding,
has him in the toils; a fatality which he may not know, but of which
we must suppose the gods are aware. Conversely again the gods are
determinate potencies and their expressed will, when it carries this
character of essential determinacy, as, for example, the bidding of
Apollo, which drives Orestes forward to his revenge, brings about a
collision of forces in the selfsame way. For the reason, then, that in
one aspect of it the form, which the spiritual knowledge of the god
assumes in the oracle, is the wholly undefined external expression
or the abstract ideality of the word, and the form itself through
the equivocal sense it contains includes the possibility of discord,
we find that in classical art it is not sculpture, but poetry, and
pre-eminently dramatic poetry, in which oracles contribute their share
of the content and are of importance. In _classical_ art, however, they
do essentially maintain a place, because in it human individuality has
not forced its way to the full height of spiritual attainment, where
the subject draws the determination of his actions without infringement
from his own resources. What we in our modern sense of the term call
conscience, has not as here secured its rightful place. The Greek acts
often, it is true, at the beck of his passion, bad no less than good;
the genuine pathos, however, which is here held to quicken him, and
does in fact so quicken him, proceeds from the gods, whose content
and might is the universal of such a pathos; and the heroes are either
immediately instinct with the same, or they interrogate oracles for
advice, when the gods do not present themselves openly to their vision,
by way of quickening the deed to be done.

(_b_) Moreover, as in the oracle the _content_ is to be found in
the gods that _know_ and _willy_ while the form of the external
phenomenon is the external which is abstract and a part of _Nature_,
from the other point of view that which is _natural_, if we look at
it relatively to its universal forces and the activities which belong
to these, becomes the _content_, from out of which the independent
individuality has first to force its way up, and receives as its
original form merely the formal and superficial personification. The
thrusting back of these purely natural forces, the opposition and
contention through which they are overcome is just the significant
centre, for which we are indebted primarily to classical art, and which
we must consequently submit to a closer examination.

(_α_) The first thing we would remark in this connection is
attributable to the circumstance that we are not here concerned--as in
that view of the world which belongs to the Sublime, or in part even
that appropriate to Hindoo doctrines--with God already essentially
devoid of any relation to sense, when regarded as the starting point of
all creation, but rather with that in which Nature's gods, and we may
add in the first instance the more universal forces of Nature such as
Chaos, Tartarus, Erebus, the entire savage and subterranean substance,
and, furthermore, Uranos, Gaia, the Titan Eros, Kronos, and the rest,
supply the beginning[157]. It is from out of these, then, that the
better defined powers, such as Helios, Oceanos, and others like them
first have their being; while they, in their turn, become the natural
cradle for the later spiritual and individualized divinities. We find,
therefore, again here another theogony and cosmogony which is the work
of the imagination, whose earliest gods, however, still remain for the
observer under one aspect of an undefined character, or vaguely extend
beyond all reasonable limit; and, if viewed from another standpoint,
still carry with them much that is essentially symbolical.

(_β_) The more detailed distinctions among these Titan potencies may be
thus indicated:

(_αα_) First, we have those powers of the Earth and the stars, without
spiritual and ethical content, consequently dissolute, a raw, savage
race, gigantic and formless, as though they were scions of Hindoo or
Egyptian imagination. They are to be classed with other individualities
of Nature such as Brontes, Steropes, and again with the hundred-handed
Kottos, Briareus, and Gyges, the giants and the rest standing in the
first instance beneath the lordship of Uranos, then of Kronos, that
chief of the Titans, who obviously is a kind of personified _Time_,
devouring all his children, just as Time eventually annihilates
everything that it has brought to birth. This myth is not without a
symbolical significance. For the life of Nature is, in fact, subjugate
to Time, and brings only the Past into existence, just as in the same
way the prehistoric times of some people, which is only one nation,
one stock, yet constitutes no genuine State, and pursues no definite
objects essentially made clear to itself, becomes the sport of the
power of a Time, which is destitute of history. We touch solid ground
for the first time when we come to law, morality, and the State,
something permanent which remains though races pass away, as it is said
that the Muses give permanence and a defence to everything, which, as
the life of Nature and present action, had only vanished swept away
with Time.

(_ββ_) But, further, it is not only that the forces of Nature belong
to this sphere of the old gods, but also the forces noted as earliest
over the elements. In particular the first active agency upon metal
through the force of what is still raw, and elementary Nature, that
is air, water, fire, is of importance. We may mention in illustration
the Corybantes, the Telchines, demons of both beneficent and evil
influence, the Pataeci, pygmies, dwarfs, cunning in the woodman's
craft, small, with big paunches.[158]

More prominent notice should be taken of Prometheus, as illustrating
in the chief place a fundamental point of new departure. Prometheus
is a Titan of exceptional type and deserves exceptional attention.
Together with his brother Epimetheus he appears in the first instance
as favourable to the young gods; then he stands out as the benefactor
of men, who in other respects have no defined relation with the new
gods or the Titans. He brings fire to man, and thereby supplies them
with the means of satisfying their needs and working the technical
arts, which are no longer, however, regarded as natural products, and
consequently it would appear do not stand in any closer association
with Titan workmanship. For this interference Zeus punishes Prometheus
until Hercules finally releases him from suffering. At the first
glance there would appear to be nothing strictly Titanesque in these
main features of the story; nay, it would not be difficult to point
out an inconsequence in the fact that Prometheus, just as Ceres, is
a benefactor of mankind, and is none the less numbered among the old
Titanic potencies. If we look at the matter more closely, however,
this inconsequence will at once disappear. In this connection several
passages from Plato's works will help us sufficiently to clear the
difficulty. There is the myth in which the guest-friend recites to
the younger Socrates that in the time of Kronos men originated from
the Earth, while the god, on his part, devoted his attention to the
whole[159]. After this step a movement of opposite tendency sprang up,
and the Earth was left to itself[160], so that now the beasts became
savage, and mankind, whose means of nourishment and all their other
needs had hitherto passed immediately into their hands, were left alone
without advice or assistance. Well, according to this myth, it was in
such a condition[161] that fire was brought to mankind by Prometheus,
all other accessories of craftsmanship being communicated by Hephaestos
and his companion in craftsmanship, Athene.

Here we have notified expressly a distinction between fire and the
thing which artistic ability produces by working on the raw material;
and only the gift of fire is ascribed to Prometheus. Plato narrates
the myth of Prometheus at greater length in the "Protagoras." There we
read[162]: "There was once a time when gods indeed existed, but mortal
beings had not appeared. When the foreordained time of their birth
also had come, the gods created them in the inward parts of the Earth,
composing their substance of Earth and fire and that which is the union
of both these elements. When the gods were desirous of bringing them
into the light, they handed them over to Prometheus and Epimetheus
to apportion and arrange the energies of each singly as was right.
Epimetheus, however, requested of Prometheus that the apportionment
might be left to him. After I have done this, quoth he, you may mark
and express an opinion. Epimetheus, however, by a blunder apportioned
everything worth having to the animal world, so that there was nothing
left over for mankind; and when Prometheus made his inspection he found
that though all other living things were wisely provided with all their
needs mankind remained naked, unprotected, without covering or weapons.
But already the appointed day had appeared in which it was necessary
that man should pass from the bowels of the Earth into the light. In
the embarrassment in which he was placed to procure some assistance
for mankind Prometheus stole the wisdom that is shared by Hephaestos
and Athene by taking fire--for without fire it would be impossible to
possess it or make it of use--and made a present of this to men. Man
now, it is true, possessed the wisdom necessary for the support of his
life, but he was still _without political wisdom_, for this was still
lodged with Zeus. Entry, however, to the stronghold of Zeus was no
longer permitted Prometheus, and apart from this the awful watchers
of Zeus barred the way. He passed, however, secretly into the chamber
which Hephaestos and Athene shared in the practice of their art, and
having secured the forging-art of Hephaestos he pilfered that other art
(the art of weaving) which was possessed by Athene and presented this
to mankind. Out of these possessions the means of satisfying the needs
of Life is provided for man (ἐυπoρία τoῦ βίoυ)." Prometheus receives,
however, as already narrated, punishment for the thefts he commits
owing to the blunders of Epimetheus.

Plato further tells us in a passage which immediately follows the
above that mankind was still destitute of the art of war for their
protection against the animal world, which was merely a part of the
art of politics, and consequently were collected into cities, and would
have so outraged each other and finally broken up such asylums for the
reason that they were without all political organization, that Zeus
found it necessary to send down to them under the escort of Hermes
Shame and Right.

In these passages the distinction between the immediate objects of
life, which are related to physical comfort, that is, the provision
for the satisfaction of the most primary necessaries and political
organization, such as sets before itself as its object what is
spiritual, custom, law, right of property, freedom, and communal
existence is expressly emphasized. This principle of ethical life and
right[163], Prometheus did not give to men, he merely taught them the
cunning by means of which they might overcome natural objects and make
them serviceable to their needs. Fire and the craftsmanship which makes
use of fire have nothing ethical about them in themselves; and it is
just the same with the art of weaving; in the first instance they are
devoted to the exclusive service of private individuals, without coming
into any relation with that which is shared in human existence or with
Life in its public character. For the reason, then, that Prometheus was
unable to furnish mankind with anything more spiritual or ethical, he
also does not belong to the race of new gods, but to the Titans[164].
Hephaestos, it is true, also possessed fire and the particular crafts
to which it is essential as an instrument for his field of activity,
and is none the less accredited as a new god: but Zeus cast him from
Olympus, and he continued to limp ever after. Just as little is it,
therefore, an inconsequence when we find Ceres placed among the younger
gods, who proved herself a benefactor of mankind just as Prometheus
did. For that which Ceres taught was agriculture, with which at the
same time property, and yet more, marriage, social custom, and law
stand in close association.

(_γγ_) A third class of the ancient gods contains, it is true, neither
personified potencies of Nature, as such, nor the might which next
follows as lord over the particular elements of Nature in the service
of the more subordinate human necessities, but is already contestant
with that which is essentially in itself ideal, universal, and
spiritual. What, however, is none the less lacking in the powers we
have here to reckon with is spiritual individuality and its appropriate
form and manifestation, so that they also more or less relatively to
their operations keep a position which is more nearly akin to the
necessity and essential being of Nature. In illustration of this type
we may recall the conception of Nemesis, Dike, the Erinnyes, Eumenides,
and Moirai. No doubt we find associated with these figures the
determinate notions of right and justice; but this inevitable right,
instead of being conceived and clothed in the essentially spiritual and
substantive medium of social morality[165], remains either persistent
in the universal abstract notion, or is related to the obscure right of
that which is natural within the circle of spiritual connections, the
love of kindred, for example, and its paramount claim, which does not
appertain to Spirit in the open freedom of itself self-recognized; and
consequently also does not appear as lawful right, but in opposition to
this as the irreconcilable right of revenge.

To bring the view of the above nearer I will merely draw attention to
one or two ideas bound up with it. Nemesis, for example, is the might
to humiliate the exalted, and to cast down the man all too fortunate
from his lofty seat, and consequently to restore equilibrium. The
claim or right of equilibrium is the purely abstract and external
right, which, it is true, certifies itself as operative in the range of
spiritual circumstances, and conditions, without, however, making the
ethical organization of the same the content of justice. Another aspect
of importance attaches to this circumstance, that the right of the
family-condition is apportioned by the ancient gods, in so far as these
repose on a condition of Nature, and thereby are in antagonism with the
public right and law of the community. We may adduce the Eumenides
of Aeschylus as the clearest illustration of this point. The direful
maidens pursue Orestes on account of the murder of his mother, a murder
which Apollo, the younger god, had directed, in order that Agamemnon,
the slaughtered spouse and king, should not remain unavenged. The
entire drama consequently is concentrated in a conflict between these
divine Powers, which confront each other in person. On the one side
we have the goddesses of revenge, the Eumenides; but they are called
here the beneficent, and our ordinary conception of the Furies, into
which we convert them, is set before us as rude and uncouth. For they
possess an essential right thus to persecute, and are therefore not
merely hateful, wild, and ferocious in the torments which they impose.
The right, however, which they enforce as against Orestes is only the
family-right in so far as this is rooted in the blood relation. The
profoundest association of son and mother is the substantive fact
which they represent. Apollo opposes to this natural ethical relation,
rooted as it is already both on the physical side and in feeling, the
right of the spouse and the chieftain who has been violated in respect
to the highest right he can claim. This distinction is in the first
instance brought to our notice in an external way since both parties
are champions for morality within one and the same sphere, namely
the family. The sterling[166] imagination of Aeschylus has, however,
here--and we cannot sufficiently value it on this score--discovered for
us a contradiction, which is not by any means a superficial one, but
of fundamental significance. That is to say, the relation of children
to parents reposes on the unity of the natural nexus; the association
of man and wife on the contrary must be accepted as marriage, which
does not merely proceed from purely natural love, that is from
the blood or natural affinity, but originates out of a conscious
inclination, and for this reason belongs to the free ethical sphere of
the self-conscious will. However much, therefore, marriage is bound
up with love and feeling it is none the less to be distinguished from
the purely natural emotion of love, because it also freely recognizes
definite obligations quite independent of the same, which persist when
that feeling of love may have ceased. The notion, in short, and the
knowledge of the substantiality of marital life is something later
and more profound than the purely natural connection between mother
and son, and constitutes the beginning of the State as the realization
of the free and rational will. In like manner we shall find resident
in the relation of prince to citizen the association of a similar
political right, law, and the self-conscious freedom and spirituality
of similar social aims. This is the reason why the Eumenides, the
ancient goddesses, pursue Orestes with punishment, whereas Apollo--the
clear, knowing and self-consciously knowing ethical sense--defends the
right of the spouse and the chief, justly opposing the Eumenides: "If
the crime of Clytemnestra were not scented out I should be in verity
without honour and despised as nought by the consummator Here and the
Councils of Zeus[167]."

Of still greater interest, albeit wholly involved in human feeling
and action, is the contradiction which we have set before us in
the "Antigone," one of the most sublime, and in every respect most
consummate work of art human effort ever produced. Not a detail in
this tragedy but is of consequence. The public law of the State and
the instinctive family-love and duty towards a brother are here set
in conflict. Antigone, the woman, is pathetically possessed by the
interest of family; Kreon, the man, by the welfare of the community.
Polynices, in war with his own father-city, had fallen before the
gates of Thebes, and Kreon, the lord thereof, had by means of a public
proclamation threatened everyone with death who should give this enemy
of the city the right of burial. Antigone, however, refused to accept
this command, which merely concerned the public weal, and, constrained
by her pious devotion for her brother, carried out as sister the sacred
duty of interment. In doing this she relied on the law of the gods.
The gods, however, whom she thus revered, are the _Dei inferi_ of
Hades[168], the instinctive Powers of feeling, Love and kinship, not
the daylight gods of free and self-conscious, social, and political
life.

(_γ_) The _third_ point, which we would advert to in connection with
the theogony of the outlook of artists in the classic period, has
reference to the difference between individuals of the older gods
relatively to their powers and the duration of their authority.

(_αα_) In the first place, the origin of these gods is a succession.
From Chaos, according to Hesiod, proceeds Gaia, Uranos, and others,
after that Kronos and his race, finally Zeus and his subjects. This
succession appears in one aspect of it as a rise from the more abstract
and formless to the more concrete and already fairly defined powers
of Nature; in another as the beginnings of the superiority of the
spiritual over the natural. Thus in his "Eumenides" Aeschylus makes the
Pythia in the temple of Delphi begin with the words: "First of all I
revere in my prayer her who first gave us oracles, Gaia, and after her
Themis, who as second after her mother had her prophetic seat in this
place." Pausanias, on the other hand, who also names the Earth first as
giver of oracles, says that Daphne was ordained by her afterwards in
the prophetic office. In another series again Pindar places Night in
the first place, after her he makes Themis follow, then comes Phoebe,
and finally he closes the succession with Phoebus. It would be of
interest to analyse more closely these particular differences; such an
inquiry, however, lies outside our present purpose.

(_ββ_) This succession further, in addition to its aspect of being
an extension into essentially profounder conceptions of godhead,
possessing, that is, a fuller content, also appears as the degradation
of the earlier and more abstract type within the range of the older
race of gods itself. The primary and most ancient powers are robbed of
their masterdom, just as we find Kronos dethroned Uranos, and the later
representatives are set up in their place.

(_γγ_) In this way the negative relation of the reformation[169],
which we settled at once to be the essence of this first stage of the
classic type of art, becomes the proper centre of the same. And it is
so for the reason that personification is here the universal form, in
which the gods are presented to the imagination, and the progressive
movement comes into opposition with human and spiritual individuality.
And although this appears in the first instance still in a form
indeterminate and formless, we necessarily find that the imagination
presents this negative attitude of the younger gods against the more
ancient under the image of conflict and war. The essential advance is,
however, from Nature to Spirit, implying by the latter the true content
and the real form appropriate to classical art. This progress and the
conflicts by means of which we perceive that it is carried forward,
belong no longer exclusively to the sphere of the old gods, but centre
in the war through which the new gods lay the foundation of their
enduring mastery over the ancient.

(_c_) The opposition between Nature and Spirit is in the nature of the
case inevitable. For the notion of Spirit, as in very truth totality,
is, as we have already seen, _essentially_ simply this, to split itself
in twain, that is into its intrinsic constituents as objectivity and as
subject, in order that by means of this opposition it may emerge from
Nature and confront the same forthwith free and jubilant as vanquisher
and superior might. This fundamental phase, rooted in the very essence
of Spirit, is consequently a material aspect in the conception which
it supplies to itself of that nature. Regarded historically, that is
on the plane of ordinary reality, this passage asserts itself as the
reconstruction through progressive steps of the natural man into the
condition where right, property, laws, constitution and political life
are paramount. Regarded under a mode which relates this process to gods
and _sub specie eternitatis_ it becomes the conception of the victory
over the natural Powers by means of the spiritual and individual
Divinities.

(_α_) This contest exposes an absolute catastrophe, and is the
essential deed of the gods, by virtue of which the fundamental
distinction between the old and new gods is first made visible.
Consequently we ought not to point to the war, which exposes this
distinction as a mythical story in the same way we should point to any
other myth; rather we should regard it as the mythos, which in fact
punctuates a great moment of transition, and expresses the creation of
the later theogony.

(_β_) The result of this violent strife among the gods is the ruin of
the Titans, the unique victory of the new gods, who forthwith receive
in their assured dominion a plenitude of gifts in every direction from
the imagination. The Titans, on the other hand, are banished, and
compelled to huddle in the hollows of the Earth, or, like Oceanos,
dally on the dark skirts of the clear, joyful world, or still endure
many grievous punishments. Prometheus, for example, is fettered on
the Scythian mountains, where an eagle insatiable devours the liver
that ever renews itself. In like manner an infinite and inexhaustible
thirst torments Tantalus in the lower world, and Sisyphus is for ever
constrained to roll up hill in vain the rock that for ever rolls back
again. These punishments are, in truth, the false type of infinity,
the yearning of the indefinite aspiration or the unsatisfied craving
of natural desires, which in their eternal repetition fail to discover
rest or final satisfaction. For the truly godlike intuition of the
Greeks regarded the mere extension into space and the region of the
indefinite, not, as some modern votaries of such longings do, as the
highest attainment of mankind, but as a damnation which it relegates to
Tartarus.

(_γ_) If we ask ourselves in a general way, what from this point must
for classical art fall into the background, failing, that is, to have
any right to figure as its final form and adequate content, we shall
find at the earliest point of departure the elements of Nature. With
them disappear from the world of the new gods all that is gloomy[170],
fantastical, void of clarity, every wild confusion between Nature
and Spirit, between significances essentially substantive and the
accidental incidents of externality. In a world such as this the
creations of an unrestricted imagination, which has not yet for its
principle the measure of spiritual proportion, have no place, and
are compelled and justly so to vanish before the clear light of day.
We may furbish up the monstrous Cabeiri[171], the Corybantes, these
representatives of procreative force as much as we choose, yet for
all that such presentations in every trait of them--to say nothing
of the ancient Baubo, whom Goethe sets careering over the Blocksberg
on an old sow--belong to a greater or less degree to the twilight of
consciousness. Only that which is spiritual imperatively demands the
light; and that which does not reveal itself and in itself expound its
own interpretation is the unspiritual, which fades again once more into
Night and obscurity. That which is of Spirit on the contrary reveals
itself, and purifies itself, by itself defining its external form, from
the caprice of the imagination, the flood of obstructing shapes, and
the otherwise perturbed accessories of symbolical sense.

For the same reasons we now find that human activity, in so far as it
is limited merely to Nature's wants and their satisfaction, falls into
the background. That old right, Themis, Dike and the rest, as one not
determinate through laws which originate in self-conscious Spirit,
loses its unimpaired validity, and in the same way, if conversely, that
which is purely local, albeit there is still room left for its play,
passes by incorporation into the universal figures of the gods; in
which we may still trace the lingering vestiges that remain of it. For
as in the Trojan war the Greeks fought and conquered as _one_ people,
so, too, the Homeric gods, who already have their conflict with the
Titans behind them in the past, are one essentially secure and defined
god-world, a world which is yet further with ever-increasing fulness
made definite and unassailable by later poetry and the plastic arts.
This invincible consistency[172] is in its relation to the content of
the Greek world of gods Spirit and only Spirit; but not Spirit in its
abstract ideality, but as identified with its external and adequate
existence, just as with Plato soul and body, as in union brought into
one nature and in this consolidation from one piece, is at once the
Divine and Eternal.


3. THE POSITIVE CONSERVATION OF THE CONDITIONS SET UP THROUGH NEGATION

Despite, then, the victory of the new gods that which came before them
still remains in the classical type of art partly preserved and revered
in the original form in which we have already recognized it, partly
under a transmuted mode. It is only the limited Jewish national god
which is unable to tolerate other gods in its company for the reason
that it purports as _the_ one god to include everything, although
in regard to the definition of its form it fails to pass beyond its
exclusiveness wherein the god is merely the God of His own people. Such
a god manifests his universality in fact only through his creation
of Nature and as Lord of the heavens and the earth. For the rest he
remains the god of Abraham, who led his people Israel out of Egypt,
gave them laws on Sinai, and divided the land of Canaan among the Jews.
And through this narrow identification of him with the Jewish nation
he is in a quite peculiar way the god of this folk; and consequently,
speaking generally, neither stands in positive consonance with
Nature, nor appears truly as absolute Spirit referable back from his
determinate character and objectivity to his universality. Consequently
this austere, national god is so jealous, and ordains in his jealousy
that men shall see elsewhere merely false idols. The Greeks, on the
contrary, discovered their gods among other nations and accepted
what was foreign among themselves. For the god of classical art has
spiritual and bodily individuality and is for this reason not the one
and only one, but merely a _particular_ godhead, which, as everything
else that shares particularity, has a circle of particularity which
surrounds it or in opposition to it as its Other, from which it is the
result, and which is qualified to preserve its validity and worth.
The process here is analogous to that of the particular divisions of
Nature. Although the world of vegetation is the truth of the geological
image of Nature, the animal again the higher truth of the vegetable,
yet the mountains and the flooded land persist as the solid basis of
trees, shrubs, and flowers, which in their turn do not lose their
existence alongside the world of animals.

(_a_) The earliest form under which among the Greeks we come upon
this ancient residue, are the _Mysteries._ The Greek Mysteries were
nothing secret in the sense that the Greek nation was not in a general
way aware of their content. On the contrary, the majority of the
Athenians and a large number of foreigners were among the initiated
in the Eleusinian mysteries; but they were not permitted to speak of
that in which they had been instructed through initiation. In our
own times people have been at great pains to discover more nearly
the type of conceptions which prevailed in these mysteries, and to
investigate the kind of religious services which were used in their
celebration. It appears, however, that on the whole there was no
extensive wisdom or profound knowledge concealed in the Mysteries. They
merely preserved the old traditions, the basis, that is, of what was
latterly reconstructed by the genuine type of art, and consequently,
so far from containing the true, higher, and more valuable content,
rather unfolded that which was of less significance and of inferior
rank. Whatever it was, this holiness was not clearly expressed in the
mysteries, but merely handed down in its symbolical features. And in
fact this character of secrecy and reticence is bound up with the old
telluric, sidereal, and Titanic deposit; Spirit alone is the revealed
and the self-revealer. Consonant, too, with this it is the symbolical
mode of expression which constitutes the other aspect of secrecy
in the mysteries, because in symbolism the interpretation remains
obscure, and contains a something other than the external image, which
it purports to display, in fact offers to the view. In this sense,
for example, the mysteries of Demeter and Bacchus were, it is true,
spiritually interpreted, and contained a profounder sense. The form of
the same remained quite externally isolate from this content, so that
it was impossible clearly to disengage it from it. Consequently the
Mysteries had very little influence over art; for though we are told
of Aeschylus, that he willfully betrayed something which attached to
the Demeter mysteries, this merely amounts to an assertion on his part
that Artemis had been the daughter of Ceres, which is not very profound
wisdom after all.

(_b_) But, _secondly_, we find that the reverence and preservation
of the old _régime_ is yet more clearly indicated in actual artistic
representation. We have already referred to Prometheus as the
chastised Titan who appears in the stage immediately prior to that
of genuine art. We meet with him however again as delivered. For as
the Earth and as the Sun, so also the fire, which Prometheus brought
down to men, that is, the eating of flesh, which he taught them, is
an essential feature of human life, a necessary condition for the
satisfaction of their needs; and consequently Prometheus is honoured
with an enduring recognition[173]. In the Oedipus Colonos of Sophocles
we have the words:

/$
     χῶρoς μὲν ἱερὸς πᾶς ὅδ ἔστ· ἔχει δέ νιν
     σεμνὸς Πoσειδῶν· ἐν δ' ὁ πoρφόρoς θeὸς
     Tιτὰν Πρoμηθὲυς[174]
$/

and the scholiast adds that Prometheus was revered in the Academy along
with Athene, as Hephaestos was, and a temple was shown in a grove of
the goddess, and an ancient pedestal near the entrance, where there
was not only an image of Hephaestos, but also one of Prometheus.
Prometheus, however, according to the statement of Lysimachides, was
represented as primary and more ancient, and he held in his hand a
sceptre; Hephaestos as the younger and in the second place, and the
altar on the pedestal was shared by both. Prometheus, then, according
to the tale, was not obliged to endure his chastisement for ever,
but was released from his fetters by Hercules. In this story of his
liberation we come across certain remarkable traits. In other words,
Prometheus is delivered from his agony because he informs Zeus of
the danger which threatens his empire at the hands of the thirteenth
descendant. This descendant is Hercules, to whom, we may add in
illustration, Poseidon exclaims in the "Birds" of Aristophanes[175],
"he will do himself an injury, if he strike a bargain with reference
to the transference of the divine headship, for all that Zeus leaves
behind him on his decease will most assuredly take place." And, in
fact, Hercules is the only man who passed over into Olympus, became a
god after being a man, and stands higher than Prometheus, who remained
a Titan. Moreover, the overturning of the old race of tyrants is
intimately connected with the name of Hercules and the Heraklidae. The
Heraklidae break up the power of the old dynasties and royal houses,
in which we may remark the selfish desire of personal aggrandizement
and lawlessness no less than disregard for their subjects admitted no
judicial restraint, and consequently was responsible for the grossest
cruelties. Hercules, though himself in the service of a superior lord,
overcame the savagery of this despotism.

In a similar way we may, to linger once more for a moment by the
illustrations we adduced on a former page, recall again to our readers
the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The conflict between Apollo and the
Eumenides is to be settled by the intervention of the Areopagus. In
other words, a human tribunal, as a whole, at whose head stands Athene,
stands forth as the concrete spirit of the folk, and is as such to
terminate the collision. The judges, however, give an equal number of
votes for condemnation and acquittal, having an equal reverence both
for the Eumenides and Apollo; the white pebble of Athene, however,
decides the conflict in favour of Apollo. The Eumenides break out in
indignation against this decision of Athene; she, however, allays
their wrath by promising them worship and altars in the famous grove
of Colonos. What the Eumenides have to give in return to her people
is a protection against the evils[176] which result from the elements
of _Nature_, the earth, the heavens, the sea, and the winds; they
have further to ward off unfruitfulness in the fields, the failure of
living seed, and misbirths in all else that is procreated. Pallas, on
her part, takes beneath her protection the strife of wars and sacred
contests. Ina similar way Sophocles[177], in his "Antigone," not only
makes Antigone suffer and die, but to a like extent we find that Kreon
is punished by the loss of his wife and the death of Haemon, both of
whom perish through the death of Antigone.

(_c_) _Thirdly_, the ancient gods do not merely preserve their place
in juxtaposition to the new, but, what is of more importance, the
natural basis itself is maintained by the new gods, and receives,
continuing to made its echo sound in them, if in conformity with the
spiritual individuality of classical art, a reverential acceptance.

(_α_) And for this reason people are not unfrequently led into the
error of conceiving the Greek gods, in respect to their human character
and form, as mere _allegories_ of such natural elements. This is not
so. In this sense we frequently hear it stated that Helios is the
god of the sun, Diana the goddess of the moon, or Neptune the god of
the sea. Such a separation, however, between the natural element, as
content, and the humanly shaped personification, as form, no less than
the external association of both, regarded merely as the masterdom of
the god over the natural fact, as we are accustomed to it in the Old
Testament, is quite inapplicable to Greek conceptions. We never find
among the Greeks such an expression as ὁ θεὸς τoῦ ἡλίoυ, τῆς θαλάσσης,
and so forth, though it is quite certain they would have used with
others such an expression for the relation in question, had it been
compatible with their point of view. Helios is the sun as god.

(_β_) We must, however, at once insist on the further fact that the
Greeks never regarded mere Nature as itself divine. On the contrary,
they retained the definite conception that what was purely natural
was not divine. This is partly contained, if unexpressed, in what
their gods actually are, in part also it is expressly stated so by
themselves. Plutarch, for example, in his essay upon Isis and Osiris,
refers incidentally to the modes of interpretation current of myths
and divinities. Osiris and Isis belong to the Egyptian theogony, and
had yet more of the natural element for their content than the Greek
gods, who correspond to them; they merely express the longing and
conflict to escape out of the circle of Nature to that of Spirit. In
later times they were very highly honoured in Rome, and the mysteries
allied with them were of great importance. Yet for all that it is
Plutarch's view that it would be an interpretation beneath the level
of the subject to think of explaining them as sun, earth, or water.
Only that which in the sun, Earth, and so forth, is without measure or
co-ordination, defective or superfluous, can strictly be referred to
the natural elements, and all that is good and conformable to order is
as exclusively a work of Isis, and the rational principle, the λόγoς,
a work of Osiris. It is not, therefore, the natural as such which is
adduced as the substantive content of these gods, but the spiritual
principle, the universal, λόγoς, reason, conformity to law.

By virtue of this insight into the spiritual nature of the gods, the
more definite elements of Nature, then, had also among the Greeks
been differentiated from the later gods. We have, it is true, grown
accustomed to associate Helios and Selene, to take two examples, with
Apollo and Diana: in Homer, however, they are presented as distinct.
The same remark applies to Oceanos and others.

(_γ_) But in the _third_ place an echo still lingers in the new gods
of the natural powers, whose operative energies themselves belong to
the spiritual individuality of the gods. We have already indicated,
at an earlier stage, the basis of this positive connection of the
spiritual and natural in the ideal of classical art, and may limit our
observations here to a few illustrations.

(_αα_) In Poseidon resides, as in Pontus and Oceanus, the might of
the world-encircling sea, but his power and activity extends further.
He built Ilium and was a shield of Athens. Generally he is revered
as the founder of cities, in so far as the sea is the element of
sea-faring, of commerce, and a bond between mankind. Apollo, in like
manner, is the light of knowledge, of oracular speech, and preserves,
moreover, a distant relation with Helios, as the natural light of the
sun. Critics differ, no doubt--take Voss and Creuzer for examples--as
to whether Apollo is referable to the sun. One may, however, in fact,
assert that he both is and is not the sun, since he is not limited to
its natural content, but is raised thereby to the significance of a
spiritual import. It is impossible to escape the inevitable connection
in which knowledge and light, the light of Nature and that of Spirit,
if we regard their fundamental characteristics, stand relatively to
one another. Light regarded as a element of Nature is that which
manifests. Without our seeing Light itself it makes visible to us the
illuminated objects around. By means of Light everything grows on
the plane of contemplation for something else. Spirit, that is the
free light of consciousness, knowledge, and cognition, possesses just
the same character of manifestation. The distinction, apart from the
differences of the respective spheres, in which these two modes of
manifestation reveal themselves, consists simply in this, that Spirit
reveals itself, and in that which it brings us, or which it assimilates
as content[178], remains constant to itself. Light, however, does not
make itself apprehensible to itself, but, on the contrary, makes that
which is other and external to itself apprehensible; and though, no
doubt, we may say this is done from its own resources, yet it cannot,
as the Spirit can, once more retire into itself. For this reason it
does not win the higher unity which finds itself constant by itself in
another. Just as, then, light and knowledge are closely associated, we
find in Apollo, as spiritual god, still a recollection of the light of
the sun. For this reason Homer, for example, ascribes the plague in
the camp of the Greeks to Apollo, which, in such a locality is in the
summer solstice ascribable to the operation of the sun. We may add that
his deadly arrows have unquestionably a symbolical reference to the
solar rays. In the external representation it is external signs which
more closely determine under what specific interpretation the god shall
be mainly accepted.

More particularly when we follow up the origins of the later gods
we are able to recognize the natural element, which the gods of the
classic ideal retain in themselves. This is a point which Creuzer in
particular has made clear. For example, in the conception of Jupiter
there are many features which indicate a solar source. The twelve
labours of Hercules, the expedition, for example, in which he carries
off the apples of the Hesperides, have relation both to the sun and
the twelve months. At the root of the conception of Diana we have the
distinct suggestion of the mother of Nature, just as the Ephesian
Diana, for example, which floats between the old world and the new,
has for her fundamental content Nature generally, procreation and
nutrition; which latter feature is clearly indicated in a part of her
external form, namely the breasts. If we consider the Greek Artemis, on
the other hand, the huntress, who slays wild animals, we find that in
her humanly beautiful and maiden form and self-continency, this aspect
falls entirely into the background, although the half moon and the
arrows still distinctly recall to us Selene. To take Aphrodite in the
same way, the more we follow her back to her original source in Asia
the more she approaches a force of Nature. Once arrived in Greece, the
spiritual and more individual aspect of her grace, charm, and love,
passion is more emphasized, albeit here, too, the natural basis is by
no means entirely absent. In the same way the productivity of Nature
is, no doubt, the original cradle which gives us Ceres. Starting from
that we proceed to the spiritual content, whose relations are developed
from agriculture, property, etc. The source in Nature of the Muses
is the murmur of the spring-water; and Zeus himself may be accepted
under one aspect as the universal Power of Nature, and is revered as
the Thunderer, as with Homer already thunder is the sign of misfortune
or assistance, is, in short, an omen, and as such is relative to that
which is human and spiritual. Juno, too, implies a natural association
with the firmament of cloud and the heavenly sphere in which the gods
move to and fro. So we are told, for example, that Zeus laid Hercules
on the breast of Juno, and from the milk which spouted thereout flashed
into being the Milky Way.

(_ββ_) Just as, then, in the later gods, from one point of view the
universal elements of Nature are dethroned, while from another they are
maintained, we have the same process repeated in that which is, more
strictly speaking, animal, which we merely regarded in a former passage
on the side of its degradation. We are now able to point out a more
positive aspect under which such may be considered. Since, however,
in the classic gods the symbolic mode of configuration is abolished,
and they secure as their content the spirit that is self-luminous,
the symbolical _significance_ of animals must tend to pass away
precisely in proportion as the animal form has taken to itself the
right to mingle with the human under a mode naturally alien to it.
It will therefore appear merely as a significant attribute, and is
established in juxtaposition to the human form of the gods. Thus we
find the eagle as attendant on Jupiter, the peacock on Juno, the doves
as accompanying Aphrodite, the hound, Anubis, as watch-dog of the
lower world, and so forth. If, therefore, there is still a symbolical
aspect which attaches to the ideals of the spiritual gods, yet, if
contrasted with the original significance, it will appear of little
importance; and the natural significance, if strictly regarded, which
previously constituted the essential content, will merely persist as
a residue, and mere particular mode of externality, which, on account
of its accidental character, more often than not has a grotesque
appearance, for the reason that the former significance is no longer
there. Inasmuch as the ideal content of these gods is that which
partakes of Spirit and humanity, the externality pertinent to them
approximates to a _human_ contingency and weakness. In this connection
we may once more recall to memory the numerous love affairs of Zeus.
According to their original symbolic significance, they are related, as
we already have seen, to the universal activity of generation, that is,
the vitality of Nature. As the love affairs of Zeus, however, which,
in so far as his marriage with Here is to be regarded as the permanent
and substantive sexual relation, appear in the light of an infidelity
towards his spouse, they have the complexion of accidental adventures,
and exchange their symbolical sense for unconnected tales which possess
the character of purely capricious invention.

With this degradation of the powers which are purely natural and of the
animal aspect no less than of the abstract universality of spiritual
relations, and with the re-acceptance of the same within the spiritual
individuality, permeated and Suffused as it is with Nature, we leave
behind us the origins of classical art which are stamped with necessity
and are presupposed by its essence, inasmuch as it is on this path
that the Ideal evolves itself by its own agency with that which it is
according to its notion. This reality of the spiritual gods adequate to
its notion carries us on to the genuine Ideals of the classical type of
art, which, in contrast to the old _régime_ which has been vanquished,
represent immortality[179], for mortality generally resides in the
incompatibility of the notion to its determinate existence.

[Footnote 139: _Als eine Unwürdigkeit_. As something unworthy of the
full notion of its gods.]

[Footnote 140: That is, the relegation of it to a position of
inferiority.]

[Footnote 141: This is the German word. By genius I presume Hegel means
"the familiar spirit" of a particular animal. Apparently this rather
than "kind." "Iliad," II, 308; XII, 208.]

[Footnote 142: "Odyss." XIV, 414; XXIV, 215.]

[Footnote 143: "Metam." I, vv. 150-243.]

[Footnote 144: "Metam." VI, vv. 440-676.]

[Footnote 145: "Metam." I, vv. 451-567.]

[Footnote 146: _Ibid._, IX, vv. 454-64.]

[Footnote 147: _Ibid.,_ V, v. 302.]

[Footnote 148: _Ibid._, vv. 319-31.]

[Footnote 149: "Herod." II, 46.]

[Footnote 150: Creuzer, "Symb." I, 477.]

[Footnote 151: That is, the sphere of fauns as a part of Nature.]

[Footnote 152: _Praktisch._ The contrast is between the philosophic
contemplation and the world regarded as the sphere of human activity.]

[Footnote 153: By _Umkehr_ Hegel probably means a "return" in the
direction of the art of the Sublime.]

[Footnote 154: _Einen bestimmten Kreis._ The meaning seems to be that
the circle of examples is here a clearly defined and limited one as
contrasted with the vagueness of Oriental Pantheism.]

[Footnote 155: "Herod." II, 52.]

[Footnote 156: _War ein entscheidendes Moment._ That is, was part of
the oracular reply.]

[Footnote 157: Both wording and punctuation of this sentence are at
fault, but I give the sense no doubt intended.]

[Footnote 158: I am not sure what is referred to here by _Telchinen_
and _Pätaken._]

[Footnote 159: _Das Ganze_, means here, I think, the whole of Creation.]

[Footnote 160: That is, took no further active interest in human life.]

[Footnote 161: Politicus ex rec. Bekk. II, 2, p. 283; Steph. 274.]

[Footnote 162: "Protag." I, 1, pp. 170-4; Steph. 320-3.]

[Footnote 163: I have just above translated _Sitte_ with the word
"custom," that is, ethical custom. But the contrast here is, I
think, between morality generally (_sittlich_) and juridical right
(_Rechtliche_).]

[Footnote 164: The argument of Hegel is ingenious. It must be admitted,
however, that in several accounts of Prometheus, notably that of
Aeschylus, Zeus is represented as hostile to human progress. And it
is rather a strain on the facts to trace, in the case of Ceres, so
much that is of an ethical colour to agriculture, and limit the use of
fire simply to the crafts of Hephaestos, ignoring, that is to say, its
domestic use altogether.]

[Footnote 165: _Der Sittlichkeit._]

[Footnote 166: _Gehaltvolle._ That is, intrinsically sound and
substantial.]

[Footnote 167: "Eum." vv. 206-9.]

[Footnote 168: Soph., "Ant." v. 451: ἡ ξὐνoικoς τῶν κάτω θεῶν Δἰκη.]

[Footnote 169: _Umgestaltung._ Remodelling, reorganization. Reformation
in literal sense.]

[Footnote 170: _Trübe._ "Troubled" perhaps is better.]

[Footnote 171: The Cabeiri were mystic Powers. Aeschylus wrote a drama
under this title. The ancients differ greatly as to their origin and
nature, Herodotus assumes an Egyptian origin.]

[Footnote 172: _Feste_ is as a substantive a stronghold, and this may
be Hegel's meaning, but I think he uses it here for _Festigkeit_,
consistency, compact security.]

[Footnote 173: The sentence is not very clear. The sense is that
Prometheus is honoured as the Earth and Sun are honoured by his
assistance of human needs.]

[Footnote 174: Vv. 54-6. "This entire spot is sacred; awful Poseidon
holds it, and therein is the fire bringing god, the Titan Prometheus."]

[Footnote 175: Vv. 1645-8.]

[Footnote 176: Vv. 901 _et seq._]

[Footnote 177: Hegel means that in the suffering of Kleon Sophocles
treats the natural law of Antigone and the higher law of the king on
the same terms.]

[Footnote 178: Lit., "what is made for it," _e.g._, the detail of
objective experience.]

[Footnote 179: _Unvergänglichkeit._ Hegel no doubt refers to the
epithet always applied by Homer and other, Greek poets to the gods of
Olympus, immortal.]




CHAPTER II

THE IDEAL OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

We have already seen what the essence of the Ideal is in our general
consideration of the beauty of art. Here we are to take it merely in
the special sense appropriate to the _classic_ Ideal, whose notion has
already presented itself in its general features in its association
with the notion of the _classical_ art-type. For the Ideal, of which
we have now to speak, consists simply in this, that classical art in
very truth attains to and sets before us that which exposes its most
intimate notion. As content it grasps on this particular plane the
spiritual, in so far as this Spirit attracts Nature and her powers to
its own appropriate realm, and sets itself before us in exposition not
as mere inwardness and dominion over Nature, but furthermore accepts
as its proper form, human shape, deed, and action, through which
the spiritual shines forth clearly in perfect freedom, and the form
penetrates with its life into the sensuous material not merely as into
a mode of externality symbolically significant, but as actually into a
determinate existence, which is the adequate existence of Spirit.

We may divide up, then, the present chapter into the following sections:

We have in the _first_ place to consider the _general_ character of
the classic Ideal, which possesses what is pertinent to humanity
in its form no less than its content, and elaborates both sides in
the completest consistency one with the other. _Secondly_, however,
forasmuch as here the human is absorbed wholly into the bodily shape
and external appearance, it becomes the _definite_ external shape,
which in its conformity is merely a defined content. Since, therefore,
we have the Ideal before us at the same time as _particularity_, there
arises a definite number of _particular_ gods and powers in the shape
of human existence. _Thirdly_, this particularity does not persist in
the abstraction of _one_ type of definition, whose essential character
would constitute the entire content and the one-sided principle for its
representation; but rather it is quite as much essentially a totality
and the _individual_ unity and congruity which is applicable to such.
Without this repletion such particularity would remain cold and empty;
the vitality of Life would fail it, a contingency which is impossible
to the Ideal in any relation whatever.

We have now to consider more narrowly the Ideal of classical art
according to these three aspects of universality, particularity, and
individual singularity.


1. THE IDEAL OF CLASSICAL ART GENERALLY

The questions which arise relatively to the origins of the Greek gods,
in so far as the real centre for ideal reproduction results from
them, we have already touched upon, and seen that they belong to the
elaborated tradition of art. The modification that is incidental to
that treatment can only proceed by means of the twofold degradation,
on the one hand, of the universal powers of Nature and their
personification, and, on the other, of the animal constituents and
its form, in order that thereby it may win the spiritual as its true
determinate substance, and also the human mode of appearance as its
true form.

(_a_) We have described how the classical Ideal first really becomes
actual through such a remodelling of that which came before the
earliest aspect of it. Along with this we have above all to draw
attention to just this fact, that it is generated from mind (Spirit),
and consequently has originated in the most intimate and personal
resources of the poets and artists, who brought it into the presence
of conscious life with the aid of a thoughtful consideration as
clear as it was unfettered and with the distinct object of artistic
production. In opposition to this creation we have, however, apparently
the fact that Greek mythology reposes on earlier traditions, and
contains distinct references to foreign, that is Oriental, matter.
Herodotus, for example, although specifically asserting in the passage
already cited that Homer and Hesiod created for the Greeks their
gods, nevertheless in other passages associates closely these very
Greek gods with other divinities such as those of Egypt. For in the
second book[180] he expressly narrates that Melampus gave the name of
Dionysos to the Greeks, further introduced the Phallus and the entire
sacrificial festival, adding, however, this discrepant detail, that
Melampus had learnt the religious service from the Tyrian Kadmus and
the Phoenicians, who came with Kadmus to Boeotia. These contradictory
statements have roused interest in our own times, more particularly
as associated with Creuzer's researches, who endeavours to discover
in Homer, for example, ancient mysteries and the sources which flowed
in together towards Greece, whether they be Asiatic, Pelasgian,
Dodonian, Thracian, Samothracian, Phrygian, Indian, Buddhistic,
Phoenician, Egyptian, or Orphic, to say nothing of the infinitely
varied peculiarities of specific localities and other details. No doubt
it appears at first sight wholly inconsistent with these many sources
of tradition that those poets should have supplied either the names or
the substantial form of the gods. It is possible, however, to harmonize
entirely both factors, tradition, and individual creation. The
tradition comes first; it is the point of departure, which hands down
the mere ingredients; but for all that it does not contribute the real
content and the genuine form of the gods. This substantive presence is
the product of the genius of those poets, who discovered by a process
of free elaboration the true substantive form of these very gods and
are consequently in fact become the creators of that mythology which
awakes our admiration of Greek art. Yet for this reason the Homeric
gods, in one aspect of them, are not to be taken as the result merely
of the poetic phantasy, or nothing more than capricious invention. They
have their roots in the genius and beliefs of the Greek folk and the
religious basis of that nation. They are the absolute potencies and
powers, the highest stretch of the Greek conception, the central point
of the beautiful regarded universally, presented, so to speak, by the
Muses themselves to the poet.

In this free handling, then, the artist takes up an entirely different
position from that he occupies in the East. The Hindoo poets and
sages have also to begin with material ready to work upon, such as the
elements of Nature, the heavens, animals, streams, and so forth, or
the pure abstraction of the formless and contentless Brahman. Their
enthusiasm, however, is a confusion of the ideal character[181] of
the subjectivity which accepts the difficult task of elaborating such
an external material to it, an enthusiasm which, in the unmeasured
expansion of its imagination, which excludes every secure and
absolute[182] direction, is unable to mould its creations conformably
to genuine freedom of expression and beauty, and remains the slave
of that material in uncontrolled and roving productive activity. It
resembles, in fact, a master-builder who has no firm foundation beneath
him. Ancient ruins of half dismantled walls, mounds, and projecting
rocks fetter him, quite apart from the particular aims according to
which he desires to construct his building; and he can only create
a wild, inharmonious, and fantastical fabric. In other words, that
which he produces is not the result of his imagination freely acting
under its own plastic genius. Conversely the Hebrew poets present
us with revelations which, it is said, they deliver as the Lord's
voice, so that here again the creative source is an enthusiasm not
fully self-conscious; it is separated, that is, and distinct from
individuality and the productive genius of the artist, as in the wisdom
of the Sublime generally it is the abstract and eternal, essentially
in its relation to something other than it and external, which is
consciously or imaginatively conceived.

In classical art artists and poets are, it is true, also prophets and
teachers, who declare and reveal to mankind the nature of the Absolute
and Divine. But we must emphasize here the following distinctions:

(_α_) In the _first_ place the content of their gods is neither that
appearance of Nature which is external to humanity nor the mere
abstraction of one Godhead, whereby merely a superficial formulation
or an inwardness that is without content is preserved. Their content
is, on the contrary, deduced from human life and existence, and for
this reason is that which is peculiar to the human breast; a content,
in short, with which man himself can freely coalesce as at home with
himself, while that which he thus produces is the fairest product of
his own activity.

(_β_) _Secondly_, these artists are at the same time _poets_, that is,
men of creative talent who work the aforesaid material and its content
into a free and substantially independent form. As thus regarded Greek
artists are in all essential respects creative poets. They have brought
together all the varied original ingredients into the melting-pot,
but they have produced thereby no mere broth, such as might come from
a witches' cauldron; rather they did away with all that is troubled,
purely natural, unclean, foreign, and without rational measure in the
pure flame of this more profound spirit; they made all glow together
and permitted the form to appear at last purified, albeit it still
retained a distant accord with the ruder material from which it was
fashioned. What mainly concerned them in this work consisted partly
in the winnowing away of all that was in their inherited material
destitute of form and beauty, distorted and symbolical, and partly in
the prominence they gave to what was really spiritual, which they set
themselves to render under modes of individuality, and in the interest
of which they had to discover gradually the external appearance most
appropriate. Here for the first time we find that it is the human form
and human actions and events, not merely made use of under the mode
of personification, which, as we have already seen, necessarily stand
forth as the uniquely adequate reality. No doubt the artist discovers
these forms, too, in the real world; but he has at the same time to
eradicate all that is accidental and incongruent in them, before they
are entitled to appear as commensurable with that humanity, which, as
essentially apprehended, shall offer to us the image of the eternal
powers and gods. And this is what we call the free and spiritual, and
not merely capricious production of the artist.

(_γ_) And, _thirdly_, for the reason that the gods are not merely
stable existences in their own world, but also are active within the
concrete reality of Nature and human, events, the poet is further
concerned to recognize the presence and activity of the gods in this
relation to human, fact, to interpret, that is, the particularity of
natural event and human actions and destiny wherein the divine powers
are apparently interfused, and to share thus the duties of the priest
and the seer. We, from the point of view of our everyday prosaic
reflection, explain the phenomena of Nature according to universal laws
and forces, and interpret the actions of mankind as the product of
their subjective intentions and self-proposed aims. The Greek poets,
however, have their eyes everywhere directed toward the Divine, and
create, by giving to human activities the loftier colour and habit
of divine actions, and by means of such interpretation, the various
aspects under which the power of the gods is made visible. For a number
of such interpretations results in a number of actions, in which we
are made aware of the character of this or that god. We have but to
open, for example, the Homeric poems, and we shall scarcely meet with
a single event of importance which is not more closely elucidated as
proceeding from the volition or actual assistance of the gods. These
expositions are, in fact, the insight, the independently created
belief, the intuitive conceptions of the poet, just as Homer often,
too, gives expression to them in his own name, and in part also places
such in the mouth of his characters, whether priest or hero. Quite at
the opening of the "Iliad," for example, he has himself explained the
pestilence in the Greek camp as the result of the indignation of Apollo
over Agamemnon, who refused to release to Chryses his daughters[183];
and, in a passage that follows, he makes Calchas transmit this very
interpretation to the Greeks[184].

In a similar way Homer informs us in the concluding canto of the
"Odyssey"--on the occasion when Hermes conducted the shades of the
inanimate suitors to the meadows of Asphodel, and they find there
Achilles and the other deceased heroes, who fought before Troy, and
finally, too, Agamemnon joins them--how the last-mentioned describes
the death of Achilles[185]:

"The whole day long had the Greeks fought; and when at last Zeus
separated the combatants, they carried the noble body to the ships,
and washed it, weeping often the while, and embalmed it. Then there
arose a divine uproar on the sea, and the affrighted Achaeans would
have been flung headlong into their hollow ships, had not an aged and
much knowing man, Nestor to wit, restrained them, whose advice had
also proved the wisest on former occasion." Nestor then interprets for
them the phenomenon in the following terms: "The _mother_[186] comes
forth from the sea with the immortal sea-goddesses, in order to meet
her deceased son. And the great-hearted Achaeans at this word let
their fear depart from them." That is to say, they knew then of what
kind it was--of human origin--the mother in her grief comes toward
him; what they shall see and hear is that which finds its response
in themselves. Achilles is her son, she is herself full of grief.
And in this vein Agamemnon, turning towards Achilles, continues his
narrative with a description of the universal sorrow: "And around thee
stood the daughters of the ancient of the sea, lamenting, and they
robed themselves in ambrosial garments; and the Muses also, the nine
in conclave, wailed by turns in beautiful song; and there was I ween
no man of the Argives to be seen without tears, so greatly did the
clear-toned song move all."

It is, however, another divine apparition in the "Odyssey" which has
always in this connection most particularly fascinated me in my study
of it. Odysseus in his sea-wanderings, insulted among the Phaeacians
during the sports over which Euryalos presides, because he refused to
take part in the rival throwing of the discus, makes answer indignantly
with dark looks and hard words. He then stands up, seizes a disk,
larger and heavier than the rest, and hurls it far and away over the
mark. One of the Phaeacians marks down the throw and calls out: "Even
a blind man could see the stone; it does not lie within the medley of
the rest, but far beyond. Thou hast nothing to fear in this contest;
there is no Phaeacian who will reach or surpass such a throw as thine
is. So he spake; but the much-enduring divine Odysseus rejoiced to see
a well-disposed friend in the lists." And this word, this friendly nod
of the Phaeacian Homer interprets as the friendly apparition of Athene.

(_b_) Of what kind, then, we may further ask, are the _products_ of
this classical mode of artistic activity, of what type are the new gods
of Greek art?

(_α_) It is their concentrated individuality which presents to us the
most general and at the same time most complete idea of their intrinsic
character, in so far, that is, as this individuality is brought
together out of the variety of accidental traits, isolated actions, and
events into the one focus of their simple and self-exclusive unity.

(_αα_) What appeals to us in these gods is first of all the spiritual
and _substantive_ individuality, which, withdrawn into itself as it
is out of the motley show of the particular medium of necessity, and,
the many-purposed unrest of the finite condition, reposes on its own
inviolable universality, as on an eternal and intelligible foundation.
It is only thus that the gods appear as the imperishable powers, whose
untroubled rule is made visible to us not in the particular event in
its evolution with somewhat else and external to it, but freely in its
own unchangeableness and intrinsic worth.

(_ββ_) Conversely, however, they are not by any means the bare
abstraction of spiritual generalities, and thereby so-called general
Ideals, but in so far as they are individuals they appear as one Ideal,
an essentially of itself determinate existence, and consequently
one that is defined, in other words one that as Spirit possesses
_characterization._ Without character we can have no individuality.
From this point of view we find, as we have already indicated
previously, that there is at the root of these spiritual gods a
definite natural force, with which a definite ethical consistency[187]
is blended, such as imposes on every particular god distinct bounds to
the sphere of his activity. The manifold aspects and traits which are
forthcoming by reason of this characterization as particular persons,
being in this way concentrated in the point of a true self-identity,
constitute the characters of the gods.

(_γγ_) In the true Ideal, however, this definition ought just as little
to terminate in the blunt restriction of pure _one sidedness_, but
must at the same time appear as withdrawn into the universality of the
godhead. In just such a way, then, every god, by carrying in his own
person this defined character as divine and as bound up with that as
universal individuality, is in part of a definite type, and in part
is all in all, and floats, as it were, precisely midway between mere
universality and equally abstract singularity. And this is what gives
to the genuine Ideal of classical art its infinite security and repose,
its untroubled blessedness and unimpaired freedom.

(_β_) Add to this that as beauty of classical art the essentially
self-articulate divine character is not only spiritual, but fully as
much plastic form which appears externally in its bodily presence to
the eye no less than to the mind.

(_αα_) This beauty, inasmuch as it possesses not merely the natural or
animal aspect in its spiritual personification, but includes as its
content that which is spiritual in its adequate mode of existence,
can only take up what is _symbolical_ in its incidental aspect and
under those relations in which it appears as purely natural. Its real
external expression is the form that is peculiar to mind and only mind,
in so far as its ideal character reveals itself as existent truth, and
pours itself wholly through that form.

(_ββ_) From another point of view classical beauty is debarred
from giving expression to the _Sublime._ For it is only the
abstract universal, which attaches to itself no inclusion such as
is self-defined, but merely a negative determinacy relatively to
particularity in general, and along with this is resolute in its
antagonism to every form of embodiment which presents us with the
aspect of the Sublime. Classical beauty, on the contrary, carries
spiritual individuality into the very heart of what is at the same time
its natural existence, and elucidates the ideal content wholly in the
material of its external appearance.

(_γγ_) For this very reason, however, it is essential that the
external form quite as much as the spiritual, which creates for
itself therein its home and dwelling, should be liberated from all
dependence on Nature and derangement, all finitude, all that is of
fleeting character, all that is exclusively concerned with the sensuous
presence, and should purify and exalt that definition of it which
discloses affinity with the determinate character of the god into free
commerce with the universal forms of the human figure. The stainless
externality alone, from which every hint of weakness and relativity has
been removed, and every flick of capricious particularity wiped off, is
able to represent the Spirit's ideality, which should sink itself in it
and secure an embodiment from it.

(_γ_) For the reason, however, that the gods are forced once more
from the defined limits of character into the universal wave, the
self-subsistency of Spirit as repose on itself, and as the security of
itself in its external form has to discover a real reflection also in
its manifestation.

(_αα_) Consequently we observe in the concrete individuality of the
gods--when we have before us the genuine classic Ideal, on equal
terms with all else--this nobility and loftiness of Spirit, in which,
despite the entire absorption within the bodily and sensuous presence,
we are made conscious of the absolute removal of all the indigence
of what is wholly finite. Pure self-absorption[188] and the abstract
liberation from every kind of determinacy is the highway to the Ideal
of the Sublime. The classical Ideal, on the contrary, is made visible
in an existence which entirely is its own, that is, the specific
manifestation of Spirit itself; yet for all that we shall find that
here, too, the Sublimity of the same is blended with the beauty, and
that the one aspect passes over immediately into the other. And this
it is which constitutes the expression of loftiness in these figures
of the gods, making inevitable the Sublime of classical beauty. An
immortal seriousness[189] makes its throne on the forehead of these
gods, and is poured forth over their entire presentment.

(_ββ_) In their beauty these gods appear, therefore, as exalted
over their individual bodily shape; we have consequently a kind
contradiction or contention between their lofty blessedness, which is,
in fact, their spiritual self-exclusiveness and their beauty, which
pertains to their external bodily presence. Spirit appears wholly
lost in its external form, and yet for all that appears quite as much
absorbed in itself from out that form. It is precisely as though we had
the moving to and fro of an immortal god among mortal men.

In this relation the Greek gods make on us an impression which, despite
all difference, resembles that which the bust of Goethe by Rauch made
upon me when I first saw it. Many will have doubtless seen it, the high
brow, the powerful, commanding nose, the free eye, the round chin,
the affable, finely-cut lips, the pose of the head, so suggestive of
genius, with its glance a bit on one side and uplifted: add to this
the entire fulness and breadth of an emotional and genial humanity,
and further, those carefully articulated muscles of the forehead, of
the entire countenance, of all that gives evidence of passion and
emotion; and in all this house of Life, the repose, stillness, and
loftiness of advanced age; and we may add withal the fading ebb of the
lips, which retreat back into the teethless mouth, the slackness of
the neck and cheeks, whereby the bridge of the nose appears yet more
dominant, and the reach of the forehead yet more towering. The force
of this firmly set figure, which to an extraordinary degree brings
before us the notion of immutability, appears all the more so in the
loose environment which surrounds it[190], just as the sublime head and
form of the Oriental in his wide turban, but flapping over-garment and
trailing slippers. It is the secure, powerful, timeless spirit, which,
in the mask of encircling mortality, is just ready to let this husk
fall away, and yet suffers it to linger around it freely and without
restraint.

In much the same way the gods appear to us in their aspect of lofty
freedom and spiritual repose to be exalted over their bodily presence,
so that they seem to feel their form, their limbs, despite all the
beauty that is there, as at the same time a superfluous appanage. And
yet withal the entire presentment is suffused with vitality, identical
with their spiritual being, inseparable, without the disunion of what
is essentially subsistent, and those parts which are more loosely put
together, the spirit in short neither escaping nor coming forth from
the body, but both firmly moulded together into a whole, out of which,
and in no other way, the self-absorption of Spirit looks forth in
silence in its amazing and secure self-possession.

(_γγ_) For the reason, then, that the contention we have indicated is
present, without appearing, however, as a difference or separation of
the ideal spirituality from its external form, the negative which is
therein contained, is for this very reason immanent in this inseparable
totality and is thereby expressed. This is within the sphere of this
spiritual loftiness the breath and atmosphere of melancholy, which
men of genius have felt in the godlike figures of antique art even
where the beauty of the external presentment is consummate. The
repose of divine blessedness[191] is unable to split itself up into
the passions of joy, pleasure, and satisfaction, and the _peace_ of
immortality stands aloof from the smile of self-satisfaction and genial
contentedness. Contentment is the emotion of the agreement of our
singular subjectivity with the condition of that environment which is
defined for or given to us or brought about through our own agency.
Napoleon, for example, never expressed more thorough contentment than
when he happened to obtain some success at the cost of making all
the world discontented. For contentment is only the approval of my
own being, action, and engagements, and the extreme of it is readily
recognizable in that state of feeling of the Philistine to which every
man of practical ability necessarily extends it. This feeling and its
expression is, however, no expression appropriate to the prefigured
immortal gods. Free and perfected beauty is not satisfied with joining
the concordant temper of a particular finite existence; rather its
individuality, in its aspect as Spirit no less than in that of form,
albeit it is self-defined with characterization, only finds itself
fully in union with its true nature when it is at the same time free
universality and spirituality in repose upon itself. This universality
is just that which people are wont to point to as the frigidity of
the Greek gods. They are only cold, however, to our modern intimacy
with the temporal. Independently regarded they possess warmth and
life; that peaceful blessedness, which is reflected in their external
presentment, is essentially an abstraction from particularity, a
mode of being indifferent to the Past, a surrender of that which is
external, a giving up which, albeit neither full of trouble nor pain,
is for all that a giving up of what is earthly and evanescent, just as
their cheerfulness of spirit looks far away and over death, the grave,
loss and temporality, and for the very reason that it is profound
inherently contains this negative we are discussing. And the more this
earnestness and spiritual freedom is prominent in the vision of these
godlike figures the more we feel the contrast between this loftiness
and the determinate corporality in which they are enclosed. The
blessed gods mourn quite as much over their blessedness as their bodily
environment. In the letters of their form we read the destiny which
lies before them, and whose development, as actual manifestation of
that contradiction between this very loftiness and that particularity,
spirituality, and sensuous existence classical art itself sets face to
face with its final overthrow.

(_c_) If we ask ourselves, then, _thirdly_, what is the nature of
the external representation, which is adequate to this notion of the
classic Ideal we have just indicated, we shall find in this connection,
too, that the essential points of view have already in our general
consideration of the Ideal been furnished us with considerable detail.
We have consequently here only further to remark, that in the genuine
classic Ideal the spiritual individuality of the gods is not conceived
in their relation to something else, or brought about by virtue of
their particularity in conflict, and battle, but rather is made visible
in their eternal self-tranquillity, in this painfulness of the godlike
peace itself. The determinate character is not, therefore, made active
in the way that it stimulated the gods to the sense of particular
emotions and passions, or compelled them to adopt specific aims of
conduct. On the contrary, it is precisely out of that collision and
development, nay, out of that very relation to the finite and all that
is essentially discordant that they are brought back to that condition
of pure self-absorption. This repose in its most austere severity, not
inflexible, cold, or dead, but sensitive and immutable, is the highest
and most adequate form of representation for the classic gods. When
they make their appearance consequently in specific situations, it is
not necessary that there should be conditions or actions which give
rise to conflicts, but rather such which, as themselves harmless, so,
too, leave the gods in a like condition. It is, therefore, sculpture
which among the arts is above all adapted to portray the classic Ideal
in its simple self-possession, in which what is rather the universal
divinity receives more obvious emphasis than the particular character.
Chiefly it is the more ancient and more austere type of sculpture which
maintains its firm hold of this aspect of the Ideal, and only in the
later forms we find a movement towards increased dramatic vividness
of situations and characterization. Poetry, on the contrary, ranges
the gods in vigorous action, that is, in an attitude of negation to
a definite mode of life, and brings them thereby into conflict and
strife. The repose of plastic art, where it remains in the sphere which
is uniquely its own, can only express the aforesaid negative phase of
spirit face to face with particular facts in that serious strain of
melancholy, which we have already attempted to define more nearly.


2. THE SPHERE OF THE PARTICULAR GODS

As individuality in visible form, represented under the mode of
immediate existence, and withal both definite and particular, godhead
necessarily is divided into a number of figures. In other words,
Polytheism is unquestionably essential as the principle of classical
art, and it would be the undertaking of a fool to think of embodying
the one God of the Sublime and of Pantheism or the absolute religion,
which comprehends God purely as Spirit and essential personality, in
the plastic type of beauty, or to entertain the idea that the classical
forms could have arisen among the Jews, Mohammedans, or Christians,
as adapted to the content of their religious beliefs, from their own
original views of the world, as they did in the case of the Greeks.

(_a_) In this multiplicity the divine universe[192] at this stage
is broken up into a sphere of particular gods, of which each
individual stands by himself alone in contrast to all the others.
These individualities are not, however, of the kind that they can be
taken merely as allegorical presentations of universal qualities, as
if Apollo, for example, were the god of wisdom, Zeus of dominion.
Zeus is also quite as much wisdom, and in the "Eumenides" Apollo, as
we have seen, protects Orestes, the son and the royal son to boot,
whom he himself has stimulated to an act of vengeance. The sphere
of the Greek gods is a multiplicity of individuals, of which every
particular god, albeit also in the specific character of a particular
person, is at the same time a self-exclusive totality, which itself
possesses essentially also the quality of another god. For every such
presentment, viewed as divine, is always, too, a whole. It is only by
this means that the divine personalities of Greek religion include an
abundance of traits; and although their blessedness consists in their
universal and spiritual self-repose no less than in their abstraction
from the direct movement which Time is for ever defeating in the sphere
of the disintegrating manifold of natural fact and condition, yet for
all that they possess the power in a like degree to assert themselves
as energetic and active in many of its aspects. They are neither the
abstract particular nor the abstract universal, but the universal which
is the source of particularity.

(_b_) On account of this type of individuality, however, Greek
polytheism is unable to make up an essentially systematic and
self-integrated totality. At the first glance, it is true, it appears
imperative to require of the Olympus of the gods, that the numerous
gods that are there assembled, should, as thus collected together,
and if their separable unities have real truth in them, and their
content is to be classic in the true sense, also express essentially
the totality of the Idea, should exhaust the entire sphere of the
necessary forces of Nature and Spirit, and give to themselves therefore
constructive completeness, in other words, manifest themselves as
subject to a principle of necessity. This demand, however, would be
liable from the first to the qualification that those forces present
in the emotions and, generally speaking, assertive in the sphere
of spiritual life in the absolute significance[193] which becomes
operative first in the later and higher religion, must remain excluded
from the sphere of the classic gods, so that the range of content, the
particular aspects of which succeed in making an appearance in Greek
mythology, would be already thereby curtailed. Moreover, apart from
this, we have also on the one hand, necessarily introduced by virtue of
the essentially varied character of this individuality, the accidental
incidents of a definition, which avoids the rigorous articulation
of the differences inherent in the notion, and does not suffer
these divinities to maintain the abstraction of merely _one_ mode
of determination. And, on the other hand, the universality, in the
elemental medium of which the divine personalities secure their blessed
state, abolishes any hard and fast particularity, and the loftiness of
the eternal powers exalts itself jubilant over the cold seriousness of
finite fact, wherein, if this inconsequence did not prevail, the divine
presences would be evolved through the medium of their limitations.

However much, therefore, even the principal forces of the world, as the
totality of Nature and Spirit, are reproduced in Greek mythology, this
aggregation, quite as much in the interests of the universal Divine as
in those of the individuality of particular gods, cannot assert itself
as a _systematic_ whole. If this were not so, instead of _individual_
characters the gods would approximate rather to allegorical beings,
and instead of being _divine_ personalities would be characters wholly
limited to finite and abstract modes.

(_c_) When we consequently consider the circle of the Greek
divinities--that is all within the range of the so-called presiding
divinities--more nearly according to their fundamental character,
inquiring how that character appears firmly delineated by sculpture
in its most general and at the same time sensuously concrete
presentment, we find no doubt the essential distinctions and their
totality explicitly set before us, but also in their detail also
ever again obliterated, and the severity of the execution tempered
to a result which is inconsistent with either their beauty or their
individuality. So for example Zeus bears in his hands the dominion
over gods and men, without, however, thereby essentially endangering
the free independence of the other gods. He is the supreme god; his
power, however, does not absorb that of the others. We find in the
conception of him no doubt an association with the heavens, with
lightning and thunder, and the generative vitality of Nature; but he
is yet more truly the might of the State, of the order of fact which
is conformable to law, the binding nexus in contracts, oaths, and
hospitality, and generally the substantial bond that gives subsistence
to the human condition, whether in its practical or ethical aspect,
the potency, in short, both of knowledge and spirit. The dominion of
his brothers is directed toward the sea or the lower world. Apollo is
known as the god of knowledge, as the mouthpiece and fair presentment
of spiritual interests, as the teacher of the Muses. "Know thyself"
is the inscription over his temple at Delphi, a behest which is not
so much concerned with the failings and defects, as the essential
import of spirit, that is with art and the truth of consciousness.
Subtlety and eloquence, mediation in fact generally as we also find
it in subordinate spheres, which, albeit immoral elements are therein
commingled, nevertheless are appurtenant to the complete range of
spiritual life--such is the most important province of the activity
of Hermes, who also leads the shades of the dead to the underworld.
The might of war is what mainly distinguishes Ares. Hephaestos is
conspicuously capable in the technical crafts. The enthusiasm which
still carries with it a natural element, the strong emotions which
wine, sport, and dramatic performances naturally produce are the native
province of Dionysos. The spheres allotted to the feminine divinities
very much correspond to the above series. In Here the ethical bond of
marriage is the most dominant trait. Ceres is the instructress and
developer of agriculture, and as such has presented mankind with both
those adjuncts to its cultivation, that is to say, first, the care for
the nurture of natural products, which satisfy man's immediate wants,
and, secondly, the spiritual accessories of property, marriage, right,
the beginnings of civilization and moral order. In the same way Athene
is the representative of moderation, good sense[194], legality, the
power of wisdom, technical capacity in the arts and courageousness, and
comprises within her intelligent and warlike maidenhood the concrete
spirit of the folk, the free and substantive spirit which uniquely
belongs to the Athenian state, and places the same before us in
positive shape as sovereign and godlike power to be revered. Artemis on
the contrary, wholly distinct from the Ephesian Diana, possesses the
more inflexible independence of maiden modesty for her most essential
characteristic. She loves the chase, and is generally not so much the
quietly pensive, as the severe and eager-striving maiden. Aphrodite,
together with the charming Cupid, who in his descent from the ancient
Titan Eros became a boy, is the interpreter of all that the attractions
and sexual passion effect in our humanity. This, then, is the kind
of content of the spiritually informed individual gods. In so far
as we are concerned with their external representation we can only
repeat that sculpture is the most important art in this respect, and
it is carried to the point of this detail of their particularity. If,
however, it is permitted to express that individuality in its more
specific determination, it at once passes beyond its primary severe
loftiness, although even in that case it unites the variety and wealth
of such individuality under _one_ mode of definition, namely that
which we distinguish as character, and establishes this character in
its more simple clarity for the envisagement of the senses, in other
words for the completest and most final determination of the external
presentment of these divinities. For the imagination always remains
relatively to the external and real existence less distinct, when it
elaborates, as it also does, as poetry the same content in a number
of tales, occurrences, and events which concern the gods. For this
reason sculpture is on the one hand more ideal, while on the other
it individualizes the character of the gods in perfectly clear human
outlines, and perfects the anthropomorphism of the classic Ideal. As
this presentation of the Ideal in its mode of externality, entirely
adequate as it unquestionably is to the essentially ideal content it
declares, these figures of Greek sculpture are the Ideals in their
absolutely explicit realization; they are the self-subsistent, eternal
forms, the centre of the plastic beauty of classical art, whose type
persists as the foundation, even there too, where these figures step
forth on the planes of definite activity, and appear as affected by the
revolutions of particular events.


3. THE PARTICULAR INDIVIDUALITY OF THE GODS

Individuality and its representation is, however, unable to acquiesce
in that which is still an ever relative and abstract articulation
of character. A star is exhaustively summarized in the simple laws
that control it. A few definite traits may sufficiently characterize
the external formation of the world of rocks; but already in the
vegetable world we are aware of an infinite variety of manifold
structure, transition, interfusion, and anomaly. Animal organizations
are distinguished by a still greater range of difference, and
constantly shifting interaction with the external environment to which
they are related. And finally, as we rise to the spiritual realm
and its manifestation, we are conscious of a yet more infinitely
embracing multiplicity, both of its internal and external existence.
Inasmuch, then, as the classic Ideal does not rest content with purely
self-possessed individuality, but is further concerned to place the
same in motion, to bring the same into relation with something else,
and to exhibit it as active in such relation--for these reasons the
character of the gods does not rest stationary in the possession
of what itself is an essentially still substantive determination,
but secures further particular traits of wider extension. The
self-exclusive movement in the direction of external existence, and
the change which is inseparable from it supplies the more intimate
traits that constitute the singularity of any particular god, as is
meet and fit and withal necessary to complete a living personality. The
accidental nature of these particular traits is, however, associated
at the same time with such a type of _singularity_, traits, that is,
we are no longer able to refer back to the universal aspect of the
substantive significance. For this reason this particular aspect of
the separate divinities approximates to something positive, which can
consequently also merely stand about it and continue to resound as an
external accessory.

(_a_) We are therefore at once confronted with the question: "From
what source is the _material_ secured for this mode of the appearance
of singularity, and in what manner is this forward process of
particularization maintained?" For the ordinary individual man, for
his character out of which he brings his actions to a conclusion, for
the events in which he is involved, for the destiny which awaits him,
this closest and more positive material is supplied by his external
conditions, such as the date of his birth, the situation he inherits,
parents, education, environment, temporal relations, the entire
province, that is, of the conditions of his life as they affect his
spiritual nature or bodily existence. The present world contains this
material, and the records of life furnished by different individuals
are from this point of view characterized by every conceivable
difference. It is another matter altogether, however, with the free
shapes of godlike individuality, which possess no determinate
existence in the concrete world of Nature, but have their birth in
the cradle of the imagination. For this very reason it is an obvious
assumption that poets and artists, who, speaking in general terms,
have created the Ideal out of their free spiritual bounty, have merely
borrowed the material for these accidental particular traits from the
caprice of their own innate powers of imagination. This assumption is,
however, false. For we assigned in general terms to classical art, the
position that its construction in the first instance is, by means of
the reaction active in its opposition to the assumptions necessarily
requisite to its own peculiar province, carried forward to that which
as genuine Ideal it is. It is from these presuppositions as their
source that the specific traits of particularity are to be looked
for, which supply to the gods their closer individual vitality. The
fundamental features of these assumptions have already been submitted,
and we have only here to remind our readers shortly of what has been
already advanced.

(_α_) It is the symbolical natural religions which constitute in the
first instance the abundant source which supplies Greek mythology
with the primary substratum that we find then modified within it. But
inasmuch as the traits that are borrowed from such a source have to be
distributed among gods that are represented as individuals possessing
the life of Spirit, they inevitably lose the essential feature of
their character, in which they passed as symbolical; they have now no
longer to retain a significance, which would differ from that which the
individual himself presents and makes visible. The previous symbolical
content becomes now, therefore, converted into the content of a divine
subject itself, and for the reason that it implies no substantive
relation of the god, but is merely an incidental feature, material of
this sort falls together into an external tale, some deed or event,
which is ascribed to the gods in this or that particular situation.
Consequently we find under this head all the symbolical traditions of
the earlier sacred poems, which receive, under the modified shape of
actions proper to a truly self-conscious individuality, the form of
human events and histories, which purport to be accomplished in concert
with the gods, and are not merely the inventions of poets as the mood
dictates. When Homer tells us, for instance, that the gods went off on
a journey to feast for twelve days among the blameless Ethiopians, such
would be a poor enough example of inventiveness regarded as the poet's
invention alone. It is much the same with the tale of the birth of
Zeus. Kronos, we are told, had devoured all his sons; for this reason
Rhea, his spouse, when she was big with her youngest child Zeus, went
off to Crete, where she brought forth her son, presenting to Kronos a
stone to devour instead of her child, whom she swaddled in fur. Later
on Kronos brought up again all his children, his daughters, and along
with them Poseidon. This story, regarded as mere invention, would be
foolish enough. The remnants of symbolical significance still peer,
however, through it, albeit on account of their having lost their
original character, they come down to us in the guise of external
history. The history of Ceres and Proserpina is on similar lines.
Here we have the ancient symbolic significance of the disappearance
and budding forth of the seed of corn. The myth presents this to us
under the image as though Proserpina played one day in a valley with
flowers, and plucked the fragrant narcissus, which from one root opened
in a hundred blossoms. Then the Earth thunders; Pluto ascends from the
depths, lifts the lamenting maiden into his golden car, and bears her
off to the underworld. Thereon Ceres wandered over the Earth for a
long time vainly stricken with a mother's sorrow. Finally Proserpina
returned to the upper world; Zeus, however, had only suffered her to do
this subject to the command that she must never partake of the food of
the gods. Unfortunately she had on one occasion tasted a pomegranate,
and was therefore only able to remain in the upper world during spring
and summer. In this tale, too, we find that the symbolical content has
not been retained, but has been converted into a human event, which
suffers only the more general sense to penetrate through many external
traits. In the same way the supplementary names of the gods point
frequently to symbolical ground-strata of a similar character, from
which, however, the symbolical form has vanished, and which only serve
now to give individuality a more complete characterization.

(_β_) Local conditions supply a further source for the positive
particularities of individual divinities, no less by presenting us with
the origin of the conceptions of godhead, than by pointing to the modes
under which their services were originally obtained and secured, and
the particular places which were in a special sense devoted to their
worship.

(_αα_) Although, however, the demonstration of the Ideal and its
universal beauty is exalted over the particular locality and its
unique claims for recognition, and, moreover, has drawn together the
specific external aspects in the more general range of the artistic
imagination into one comprehensive picture which is throughout adequate
to the substantive significance, yet for all that, when the art of
sculpture associates the gods, regarded as individuals, with isolated
relations and conditions, these particular traits and local colours
come frequently also to the fore, in order to reproduce something
of that individuality, although it is only thus more defined in
its external aspect. An illustration of this is the way Pausanias
adduces a mass of ideas, images, pictures, and myths, which he met
with in temples, public places, temple treasuries, in any place where
anything of importance was to be found or otherwise was in the range
of his experience. In the same way and on the same lines the ancient
traditions and local suggestions which have been borrowed from foreign
sources run along with the home ones in Greek myth; and to all of
them more or less a relation has been attached which unites them to
the history, creation, and foundations of States, more particularly
by means of colonization. Forasmuch, however, as this many-sided
and specific material in the universality of the gods has lost its
original significance, we necessarily come across stories, which
in their motley and intricate character fail to convey any meaning
whatever. As an example we may instance the case where Aeschylus in
his "Prometheus" presents to us the wanderings of Io in all their
severity and external garb without admitting the least suggestion of an
ethical or traditional story, or a natural significance. We find just
the same difficulty when we approach the stories of Perseus, Dionysos,
and others. The most varied and confused kind of material is also run
into the tales about Hercules, which forthwith, in such tales, assume
an entirely human aspect under the guise of chance events, exploits,
passions, misfortunes, and other untoward occurrences.

(_ββ_) In addition to all this the eternal powers of classical art
are the universal constituents of the actual embodiment of the
existence and actions of Greek _humanity_, from whose national origins
consequently in their earliest form, that is, out of the heroic times
and other traditions, still a very considerable residue of detail
remains appendant to the gods even in later days. In this way, too,
many characteristic features in the intricate tales of their gods
unquestionably must be referred to historic personages, heroes, older
folk-races, natural facts and circumstances attributable to wars,
battles, and other matters of a public character. And just as the
family and the distinction of clans is the point of departure of the
State, the Greeks possessed also their family gods, penates, clan-gods,
and furthermore the guardian divinities of particular cities and
states. In this excessive leaning towards the point of view of history
the thesis, however, is apt to be maintained that the origin of the
Greek gods generally is deducible from such historical facts, heroes,
and earlier kings. This is a plausible but none the less superficial
view. Heyne quite in recent times has also given currency to it. In
a way analogous to this a Frenchman, by name Nicholas Fréret, has,
for example, accepted the quarrels of different priestly guilds as
the general principle underlying the war of the gods. That such a
historical phase in the life of a people may contribute something,
that definite clans may have given some effect to their peculiar
notions of deity, that likewise different local aspects may have
afforded further matter in the process of divine individualization--all
this may be admitted, no doubt. The real origin of the gods is for
all that not to be traced to such external material of history, but
resides in the spiritual potencies of Life, under the guise of which
they were conceived. We are consequently only entitled to accept the
more extensive play of all that is positive, local, and historical,
in so far as it makes more definite the formal presentation of each
particular individuality.

(_γγ_) Inasmuch as, further, the god passes into the sphere of the
human imagination, and, still more important, is represented in real
bodily shape, into close relations with which again man is placed by
his _cultus_ in the activities of divine worship, a fresh material is
here, too, presented by such relations for the extension of all that
is positive and accidental. What animals have to be sacrificed to any
god, what vestments the priesthood or the worshipper must appear in,
what particular sequence must be adopted in any ceremonial--by all such
matters the most varied and particular incidents are accumulated. For
every activity of this kind implies an indefinite number of aspects and
modes of arrangement, which may accidentally fall out in this way or
that, but which, as appurtenant to a sacred rite, should be something
settled, and not fixed by caprice, and which necessarily tend to
pass into the sphere of symbolism. The colour of the vestments is an
example of this; in the ritual of Bacchus we have the colour of wine,
in like manner the doe-skin in which those initiated in the mysteries
were enwrapped. The same thing applies to the drapery and attributes
of the gods, the bow of Pythian Apollo, the whip, the staff, and
numberless other accessories. Such things become, however, gradually
a custom and nothing more; no one in the practice of the same thinks
any longer of their birth history; and all that we now by dint of
our research point out as their significance, has in the performance
of them grown to something quite external, which mankind associates
himself with on account of the immediate interest, that is, from mere
sense of fun, delight in the present, devotion, or simply because it
is just a custom and is so fixed for his active senses, and is done
in like manner by others. As an example from our own life, when we
see our German youth light the Johannis fire in summer time, or play
antics elsewhere, and throw it at the windows, such is for us a purely
formal custom, in which the original significance fades as much into
the background as at the festal dances of Greek youths and maidens
the revolutions of the dance do in their imitative (like the twists
and turns of some labyrinth) significance of the spiral motions of
the planets. Youth does not dance in order to entertain ideas of such
things, but the interest limits itself naturally to the dancing and the
tasteful and graceful festivity of its beautiful motion. The entire
significance, which was created by the original stimulus, and of which
the reproduction was for the imagination and sensuous perception of
symbolical character, is throughout an imaginative conception, whose
singular traits we suffer to pass from us like a fairy story, or as in
historical narrative as external detail relative to Time and Space,
and of which we can only say: "It is so," or, "Such is the tale," and
so forth. The interest of art can consequently only consist in this,
namely, that it borrow one aspect from the material which has passed
into the condition of positive externality, and make the best of
this one for an example, which sets the gods before us as concrete,
living individuals, merely retaining a distant echo of any profounder
significance.

This positive aspect is precisely that which endows the Greek gods
with the charm of living humanity when the imagination elaborates it
anew. It is by this latter process that what is otherwise merely of
substantive import, or that of power, is thereby carried into the
individual present, which, speaking in general terms, is concentrated
to a point out of that which is truly explicit or independently actual,
and which is external and accidental, and thereby the indefinite,
which otherwise is always present in the conception of the gods, is
limited in its range and filled out in its content. We are unable to
attach any additional value to specific tales and particular traits
of characterization, for this material, which, in its earlier stage
is, when we look at its primary source, the symbolically significant,
has now only remaining the task to perfect the spiritual individuality
of the gods in their positive sensuous definition in contrast to the
human and to attach to it by virtue of a material which, in respect
to its content and envisagement, is undivine, the aspect of caprice
and chance, characteristics inseparable from concrete individuality.
Sculpture, in so far as it presents to our senses the pure ideals of
the gods, and is concerned to set before us character and expression
solely under the mode of living bodies, can least of all with
clearness make visible the final result of individualization. It does
nevertheless give real effect to it within the limits of its own
province, as we may see, for example, in the different treatment of
headdress, the mode in which the folds or locks of hair are arranged
in each particular case; and this is done not merely with a view to
symbolical interpretation but in order to individualize. In this way
Hercules has short locks, Zeus an abundant growth which rises above the
forehead, Diana quite a different folding of the hair to that of Venus.
Pallas, too, is distinguished by the Gorgo on the helmet, and the like
result is obtained by means of weapons, girdle, fillets, bracelets, and
all the variety of other external adornment.

(_γ_) We find as a _third_ and final source of the closer definition
of divine personality the relation which this occupies to the
concrete actual world and its numerous natural phenomena, human
deeds and events. For however much we have seen that this spiritual
individuality is in part respectively to their universal essence, and
partly in respect to their particular singularity, the visible result
of earlier natural foundations which have symbolical significance,
yet it also persists, if regarded as a spiritually self-subsistent
personality, in a relation of continuous, vitality with Nature and
human existence. It is under this point of view, as we have already
intimated at length, that we have before us the imaginative flow
of the poet, an ever fertile source of particular tales, traits of
character and exploits, such as are related us about the gods. The
artistic aspect of this stage of the process consists in this, that
the divine personalities are made to blend in a vital way with human
affairs, and that the isolated nature of events are without exception
conceived in association with the universality of the divine, just
as we ourselves, for example, are wont to say, if in another sense,
of course, that this or that eventuality comes from God. Even in the
reality of everyday life, in the natural process of his existence, in
his daily wants, fears, and hopes, the Greek took refuge in his gods.
At first it was external accidents, which the priesthood accepted as
omens, and interpreted relatively to his objects and circumstances. If
distress and misfortune appeared, the priest had to explain the cause
of the affliction, to recognize the anger and disposition of the gods,
and to suggest the means by which the misfortune might be faced. The
poets proceed yet further in their interpretations for this reason,
namely, that they ascribe everything, which is related to a pathos
universal and essential, that is, the moving force in human resolve
and action, to the gods themselves and their activity; so that the
activity of mankind appears likewise as the act of the gods, who fulfil
their own counsels by means of their instrument, man. The material in
these poetical expositions is taken from the circumstances of ordinary
life, in respect to which the poet lays it down, whether this or that
god has expressed his purpose in the event which he is expounding
and asserted himself actively therein. For this reason poetry to
an exceptional extent enlarges the range of many specific stories,
which have the gods for their principal subject-matter. We may in
this connection recall to our memories several examples which we have
already used as illustrations when considering another aspect of our
subject, namely, the relation of the universal powers to the practical
pursuits of human personality. Homer places Achilles before us as the
bravest among the Greeks before Troy. This pre-eminence of his hero he
expresses by means of the statement that Achilles is invulnerable in
every portion of his body with the single exception of his heel, which
his mother was compelled to take hold of when she dipped him in the
Styx. This tale has its origin in the imagination of the poet who thus
interprets the external fact. If we accept this bluntly as though an
actual fact purported to be expressed therein which the ancients would
have believed in the same sense that we believe in any fact on the
evidence of our senses such a conclusion is a very crude one indeed.
It in short amounts to this, that Homer no less than all the Greeks
and Alexander with them who admired Achilles and praised his fortunes,
which were the main theme of the song of Homer, were simpletons.
Such a glorification must inevitably carry such a consequence if
the reflection is to hold good that the bravery of Achilles was no
difficult matter since he was aware of his invulnerability. But the
bravery is, in truth, thereby in no way abridged, because he is equally
aware of his early death, and notwithstanding never evades danger,
however it may arise. The like relation is put before us in a very
different way in the "Niebelungenlied." In that the horned Siegfried
is likewise invulnerable, but he has also in addition to this his cap
which makes him invisible. When he assists King Gunther thus invisible
in the fight of the latter with Brunhilde it becomes simply an affair
of barbaric sorcery which does not enhance very much our opinion either
of the bravery of Siegfried or King Gunther. No doubt in Homer the gods
frequently lend assistance to particular heroes; but the gods merely
appear on such occasions as the universal concept of that which man
as an individual himself is and carries out, and to carry out which
he must actively employ the entire strength of his heroic endowment.
If it had been otherwise the gods would have only found it necessary
to decimate _en masse_ the Trojan host in battle in order to complete
at once the triumph of the Greeks. Homer gives us a picture just the
reverse of this when he describes the main fight as essentially a
contest between individuals, and it is only when the press and medley
in general, when the entire mass of combatants, the collective heart
of the host clashes in fury, that Ares at length storms over the field
and gods war against gods. And this is not only generally fine and
splendid as an enhancement of the effect, but we may find in it the
profounder significance that Homer recognizes the particular heroes in
what is singular and exceptional and the universal potencies and forces
in the collective effect and the general aspect. In another connection
Homer permits Apollo to appear on the scene, when the moment arrives
which is fatal to Patroclus who is bearing the invincible armour of
Achilles[195]. Three times had Patroclus plunged into the crowded host
of the Trojans, mighty as Ares, and three times he had already slain
nine men. When he stormed there for the fourth time then it was that
the god, enveloped in obscure night, made toward him among the medley
and smote him on the back and the shoulders, tore away from him his
helmet, so that it rolled on the ground, and rang out sharply as it
struck the hoofs of the chargers; and the plumes of it were besmirched
with blood and dust, which none ever wot of before. Apollo also breaks
the brazen spear in his hands, the shield drops from his shoulders, and
his armour is loosened on him by the god. This interference of Apollo
we may accept as the poetic explanation of the circumstance, that it
is exhaustion no less than natural death which seizes upon and subdues
Patroclus in the turmoil and heat of battle at the fourth encounter.
Then it was that Euphorbus was able to thrust his spear into his
back between the shoulders. Yet one more time Patroclus endeavoured
to withdraw from the battle; but Hector had already hastened to meet
him, and thrust his spear deep into his side. Then Hector rejoiced and
mocked the sinking hero. But Patroclus, speaking in low tones, replied
that it was Zeus and Apollo who had mastered him, and withal with no
trouble, because they had taken his weapons from off his shoulders.
"Twenty men such as thou art," he exclaims, "I could have laid low with
my spear, but I am slain by fateful necessity and the hand of Apollo.
Thou, Euphorbus, hast but slain me the second time, and thou, Hector,
but the third." Here, too, we may remark that the appearance of the
gods simply points to the fact that Patroclus, albeit protected by
the armour of Achilles, becomes faint, confounded, and despite of it
slain. And this is not by any means a superstitious freak or empty play
of the imagination, or rather a statement which amounts to this[196],
that Hector's fame will be detracted from by this interposition of
Apollo, and that even Apollo does not play in the entire affair a
part which entirely redounds to his honour, since we necessarily take
into account the might of the god--speculations of this kind merely
betray a superstition of the prosaic mind as destitute of taste as it
is devoid of reason. For in every case where Homer explains specific
events by means of such appearances of the gods the gods use that
which is already immanent in the conscious life of men, the power,
that is, of their own passion and observation, or the potentialities
of the general condition in which the man is placed, the force and the
foundation of that which befalls and happens to anyone as a consequence
of such conditions If it is true that at times traits that are wholly
external and absolutely positive assert themselves in the appearance
of the gods these in their turn have a comic aspect; as in the case
when the lame Hephaestos goes round as cup-bearer. And generally we may
say that Homer never treats the reality of such appearances from first
to last seriously. At one time we see the gods in action, at another
they occupy a station of complete tranquillity. The Greeks were
fully conscious that it was the poets who were responsible for such
apparitions; and if they believed in them their belief was connected
directly with that spiritual aspect which is equally the possession
of mankind, forasmuch as it is the universal, the very active and
motive principle in the events thus presented. From whatever point of
view, therefore, we consider the matter it is clear that it is totally
unnecessary to import superstition either in our own views or in those
of the Greeks before we can enjoy such poetical representations of
their gods.

(_b_) Such, then, is the general character of the classical Ideal,
whose broader development we shall have to consider more succinctly
when we examine the particular arts. Here we have only to add the
observation that to whatever extent either gods or men are carried
in their positive opposition to the particular and external, yet in
classical art the affirmative ethical substratum must assert itself
as maintained. The subjectivity remains throughout in union with the
substantive content of its powers. Just as in Greek art the natural
element is preserved in harmony with the spiritual and is likewise
subordinated to the ideal content, though it be as adequate existence,
the inward heart of our humanity ever presents itself also in a
thorough identity with the genuine objectivity of Spirit, in other
words, with the essential content of what is moral and true. Regarded
from this point of view, the classic Ideal is unaware of the separation
of ideality from external presentment and of the rending of the
subjective and consequently abstract individual caprice in its various
objects and passions, and it is no less so, on the other hand, of the
abstract universal as thereby created. The foundations of character
must, consequently, always be the substantive, and what is bad, sinful
and evil in the self-housed dwelling of subjectivity is excluded
from classical representations. And above all else the harshness,
wickedness, meanness, and hideousness which finds a place in romantic
art, will be wholly alien to it. It is true, we find many instances
of transgression, matricide, patricide and other crimes against the
love of family and piety treated as the subject-matter of Greek art;
but they are not here regarded simply as atrocities, or, as a little
while since it was the fashion among ourselves, as brought about by
the inscrutability of a so-called fatality which imports the appearance
of a necessary result. Rather, if such transgressions are committed
by mankind and in part ordered and defended by the gods themselves,
such actions are on every occasion presented to us from some point of
view at least in a light which declares a certain justification truly
arising out of the subject-matter itself.

(_c_) Despite this substantive foundation we have seen the general
elaboration of the gods of classical art manifest itself out of the
repose of the Ideal within the variety of the individual and external
embodiment, in all the detail of events, occurrences, and actions,
which become ever and ever more human. By this means classical art
finally, if we consider its content, carries yet further the process
of _articulating_ the accidental individualization, when we consider
it as a mode of making the same _pleasurable_ and attractive. In other
words that which pleases is the elaboration of the particular aspect of
the external phenomenon at every point of the same; by this means the
work of art no longer arrests the spectator merely in its connection
with his own concrete soul-life, but also contains many affiliating
links with the finite aspect of his subjectivity. For it is precisely
in the finiteness of the art-creation that the closer association
subsists with that aspect of the individual which is itself finite, and
which rediscovers itself once more with satisfaction in every respect
as mobile and stable existence in the art-product. The seriousness of
the gods becomes a grace, which does not agitate with violence or lift
a man over his ordinary existence, but suffers him to persist there
tranquil, and simply claims to bring him content. Just as we generally
find that the imagination when it masters religious conceptions, and
endows them with a form appropriate to its notions of beauty, has a
tendency to make the earnest character of devotion disappear, and in
this respect destroys religion strictly as religion; so, too, this very
process moves forward at the stage we are discussing for the most part
by the addition of that which is agreeable and pleases. For it is not
by any means the substantial aspect, the significance of the gods, or
their universal character, which is evolved by virtue of what delights.
Rather it is the finite side, their sensuous existence and subjective
inward life, which purports to awake interest and provide satisfaction.
The more, therefore, the charm of the existence reproduced is the
dominant factor in its beauty to that extent the gracefulness is
disentwined from the embrace of the universal and removed from the
content, through which alone the profounder penetration could rest
satisfied.

The transition to another province of the forms of art is closely
united with this externality and articulate definition. For under the
mode of externality reposes the manifold of the finite condition; a
manifold which, so soon as it secures a free field, asserts itself
finally in opposition to the spiritual Idea, its universality and
truth, and begins to rouse up the dissatisfaction of thought in a
reality which is no longer adequate to express it.

[Footnote 180: Chapter XLIX.]

[Footnote 181: I presume this is the sense of that difficult word _des
Inneren_ here.]

[Footnote 182: By "absolute" I presume Hegel means here absolute in
the sense of predominant, masterful--activity such as the Greek artist
possessed.]

[Footnote 183: "Iliad," I, vv. 9-12.]

[Footnote 184: _Ibid._ vv. 94-100.]

[Footnote 185: "Odyssey," XXIV, vv. 41-63.]

[Footnote 186: That is, Thetis.]

[Footnote 187: _Bestimmte sittliche Substanz._]

[Footnote 188: _Das reine Insichseyn._]

[Footnote 189: _Ein ewiger Ernst._]

[Footnote 190: I presume this refers to some drapery or curtains round
the bust as exhibited.]

[Footnote 191: This is the meaning of _Heiterkeit_ here rather than
"cheerfulness," though _Seligkeit_ is the usual word.]

[Footnote 192: _Göttliche Universum._ A rather curious expression for,
I presume, the ideal totality of the Divine Being.]

[Footnote 193: _Der geistigen absoluten Innerlichkeit._ Lit., "the
spiritual and absolute mode of the inward life." He refers, of course,
to Christianity, with its life of the pure in heart and the pure
reason.]

[Footnote 194: _Besonnenheit._]

[Footnote 195: "Iliad," XVI, vv. 783-849.]

[Footnote 196: I very much doubt whether the words _Sondern das Gerede
allein_ can have this meaning, but the obvious meaning, "but only the
gossip," hardly makes sense. I think the sentence requires revision.]




CHAPTER III

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART

The gods of classical art contain in themselves the germ of their
overthrow; consequently, when this fatal defect which they include is
brought to consciousness through the elaboration of art itself, they
bring about the dissolution of the classical Ideal at the same time.
We established as the principle of this, so far as we have here to
deal with it, that kind of spiritual individuality which secures in
every respect an adequate expression in bodily or external existence
immediate to our senses. This individuality was enclosed within a
complex of divine personalities, whose definition is not essentially
and withal from the first given up to the contingent condition in which
the everlasting gods receive the appearance of dissolution for man's
conscious life no less than for his artistic creation.

1. FATE OR DESTINY

It is true that sculpture in its complete plastic perfection accepts
the gods as substantive potencies, and endows them with a form in whose
beauty they in the first instance repose in security, for the reason
that the accidental character, of their external envisagement is to
the least extent emphasized. Their _multiplicity_ and _distinction_
does in fact, however, constitute this element of contingency, and
thought annuls this in the determinate conception of _one_ divinity,
through whose inevitable power they are mutually at war with and to
the detriment of each other. For however universal the power of every
particular god is conceived as specific individuality, such is of a
restricted range. Add to this the fact that the gods do not continue
in their eternal repose; they are self-determined relatively to
particular aims in actual movement through their being drawn hither
and thither by the pre-existing conditions and collisions of concrete
reality, in order at one time to afford assistance and at another
to obstruct or destroy. These isolated relations in which the gods
as active individuals participate contain within them an element of
contingency, which impairs the substantive nature of the divine,
however much the same may persist as the predominant substratum, and
involves the gods in the contradictions and conflicts of a limited
finitude. By reason of this finiteness immanent in the gods themselves
they fall into contradiction with the loftiness, worth, and beauty of
their existence, through which, too, they are eventually brought down
to the level of mere caprice and chance. The genuine Ideal evades the
complete appearance of this contradiction simply and in so far as--this
is preeminently the case in true sculpture and its particular creations
as we find them in temples--the divine personalities are represented as
explicitly alone in the repose of blessedness, yet retain, as we have
already above indicated, a certain aspect of lifelessness, somewhat
aloof from all emotion, and withal that quiet characteristic of
pathetic lament. It is just this mournfulness which exposes their fate
by demonstrating that something of higher import stands above them, and
the passage from the particularities of form to their comprehending
unity is a necessary one. If, however, we fix our attention on the type
and configuration of this loftier unity we shall find that it is, as
contrasted with the individuality and relative determination of the
gods, the essentially abstract and formless--the necessity, the fate,
which under this mode of abstraction the higher can only in general
terms be, and which constrains both gods and men, while remaining in
itself incomprehensible and inconceivable. Fate is not as yet absolute
and self-subsistent end, and thereby at the same time subjective,
personal, divine purpose, but merely the one and universal Power which
transcends the particularity of the different gods, and consequently is
unable to be presented itself as individual entity; because otherwise
it would simply appear as one among many individuals, and would stand
above them. For this reason it remains without form and individuality,
and is in this abstraction merely necessity and nothing more; with
which gods no less than men, when they differentiate themselves as
separate from one another, contend. And thus they give effect to their
individual power condemned though it be to limitations, and would fain
exalt themselves over the bounds and warrant of Fate, though they
are, in fact, its subjects, and are forced to hearken to all that
unalterably befalls them.


2. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE GODS THROUGH THEIR ANTHROPOMORPHISM

For the reason, then, that the principle of self-determinate
Necessity[197] does not appertain to the particular gods, does not
supply in other words the content of their self-determination, and
only floats over them as an undefined abstraction, the aspect of their
insularity as individuals has consequently free play and is unable to
escape from Destiny, is moreover at liberty to branch out into the
external fabric of the human condition, into the finite consistency of
anthropomorphism, possibilities which convert the gods into the reverse
of that condition which truly constitutes the notion of what they are
essentially and in virtue of their divine nature. The overthrow of
these gods of beauty is consequently quite inevitably brought about for
art through their own nature. The human consciousness is at last quite
unable to find repose in them, and is fain compelled to take leave of
them. And, moreover, if we look more closely we shall find that the
mode and type of Greek anthropomorphism supplies us with a general
example of how the gods vanish away from the faiths of religion no less
than those of poetry.

(_a_) Spiritual individuality here makes its appearance in the human
form, it is true, as Ideal; but for all that it is in the immediately
visible, that is, the bodily presence, not within humanity in all its
essential explication, under the mode in which it is conscious of
itself in its own self-conscious world as distinct from God, while in
the same breath it annuls the distinction, and is, by its own act, as
one with God, essentially infinite and absolute self-consciousness.

(_α_) For this reason the plastic Ideal is unable to present itself
as infinite self-conscious spirituality. These plastic shapes of
beauty are not merely stone and bronze, but also the infinite form of
subjective life vanishes from them in their content and expression.
We may become as enthusiastic as we please over their beauty and art,
but for all that our _enthusiasm_ is and remains something native
to our own souls; it is not really at home in the objects which it
thus contemplates, that is in the gods themselves. To complete the
true totality a real reciprocity is required on this side also of the
subjective, self-knowing unity and infinity; it is this, and only this,
that unfolds our conception of a living God of knowledge, and of men
who thus apprehend Him. If this totality is not also essentially and
with adequacy conformable to the content and nature of the Absolute,
then the Absolute will itself appear not as truly a subject of
spiritual being, and its presentment will confront us merely in its
objective form without the possession of self-conscious Spirit. It is
quite true, no doubt, that the individuality of the gods retains the
content of subjectivity, but merely under modes that are contingent,
and in a process of development,' which moves independently outside
that substantive repose and blessedness of the gods.

(_β_) On the other hand, the subjectivity which is opposed to the
gods of plastic art is also not the form of conscious life which is
essentially eternal and true. In other words, this latter is--as we
shall see for ourselves more clearly in our consideration of the third
type of art, the romantic--that which has before it the objectivity to
which it is conformable under the mode of an essentially infinite and
self-knowing God. Inasmuch, however, as the knowing subject, at the
stage we are now discussing, does not consciously conceive itself as
present in the perfections of these godlike figures, nor even in its
contemplation of such objects is aware of itself as circumstantially
objective, it is still wholly distinct and separate from its absolute
object, and is consequently a purely contingent and finite subjectivity.

(_γ_) We might possibly suppose that the passage into a higher sphere
of reality would have been emphasized by the imagination and art as a
further war among the gods, in a way analogous, in fact, to the first
transition from the symbolism of the gods of Nature to the spiritual
Ideals of classical art. This is by no means the case. On the contrary,
this translation is carried forward in a wholly different field, as a
conflict brought home to consciousness between absolute reality and
the present world. For this reason art, in its relation to the higher
content, which it has to seize under new modes, occupies an entirely
altered position. This new configuration does not assert its importance
as revelation by means of Art, but is made manifest independently
without it, and appears on the prosaic ground of controversial and
rational discussion, and from thence is within the soul and its
religious emotions, mainly by means of miracle, martyrdoms, and so
on, carried into the world of subjective knowledge, together with a
consciousness of the contradiction between all that is finite and
the Absolute, which unfolds itself in actual history as the process
of events toward a Present which is not merely imagined, but is the
_fact_ we have before us. The Divine, God Himself, becomes flesh, is
born, lives, suffers, dies, and rises from the dead. This is a content
which heart did not discover, but which, quite apart from it, was a
present fact, and which consequently it has not borrowed from its own
domain, but merely supplies a form to it. That old transition and war
of the gods, on the contrary, discovered its origins in the artistic
or imaginative view of the world simply, which created its wisdom and
plastic shapes from its inner life, and gave to astonished mankind his
new gods. For this reason the classic gods also have only received
their existence through the fiat of the imagination, and merely exist
as such in stone and bronze, or in the world open to the senses,
not, however, in flesh and blood, or in very and actual Spirit. The
anthropomorphism of the Greek gods is therefore without real human
existence, that of body no less than that of Spirit. It is Christianity
which first introduces us to this reality in flesh and blood as the
determinate existence, life, and activity of God Himself. Consequently
this bodily form, this flesh, however much also the purely natural and
sensuous is recognized as a negation therein, receives its due and
honour, and that which partakes of anthropomorphism here is sanctified.
Even as man originally was made in the image of God, God is an image
of man; whoso beholdeth the Son beholdeth the Father, and whoso loveth
the Son loveth the Father. In a word, God is acknowledged as present
in the actual world. This new content, then, is not brought home to
consciousness by means of the conceptions of art, but is presented from
an exterior source as an actual occurrence, as the history of the God
who became flesh. A transition such as this could not take its point of
departure from Art; the contrast between the old and the new would have
been too disparate. The God of revealed religion, in respect to content
and form, is very God in truth, in contrast with whom all rivals would
become mere creations of the imagination, whom it would be quite
impossible to compare with Him on equal terms. The old and new gods of
classical art, on the contrary, originate in both cases independently
from the ground of the imagination. They have only such reality from
the finite Spirit as enables them to be conceived and represented as
potencies of Nature and Spirit; the contradiction and conflict they
declare, is taken seriously. If, however, the transition from the Greek
gods to the God of Christendom were portrayed in the first instance by
Art, the representation of such a war of gods could not in this direct
form be enforced in all seriousness.

(_b_) Consequently this strife and transition becomes also, in more
recent times, primarily an accidental, isolated subject-matter of art,
which can claim to create no true epoch, and has been able in this form
to embody no fundamental phase in the line of the entire development
of art. We will recall here in this connection, if incidentally, a
few of the more famous examples of this nature. We frequently hear
in more recent times the lament over the submergence of Greek art,
and a yearning towards Greek gods and heroes is not infrequently the
theme of our poets[198]. This lamentation is expressed emphatically
as in direct opposition to Christendom; and though it is, no doubt,
generally granted that it contains the higher truth, the qualification
is added that, so far as art is concerned, the transition is only
to be regretted. This is the theme of Schiller's "Gods of Greece";
and it is worth our while, even in the present inquiry, to consider
this poem, not merely as poetry in the beauty of its exposition, its
musical rhythm, its vivid pictures, or in the charm of its regretful
mood, which was the motive force in its creation, but also in order to
examine the content. Schiller's pathos is always true, no less than
poignant, and the result of profound reflection.

It is perfectly true that the Christian religion contains, and may
justly claim to accentuate, a certain phase of art; but in the due
course of its development, at the time of the Aufklärung[199], it
has also reached a point where we find that thought, or rather the
Understanding[200], has driven into the background that element,
which art pre-eminently requires, the actual human envisagement and
revelation of God. For the human form and all that it expresses and
declares, human events, actions, feeling, is the form under which art
is forced to conceive and represent the content of Spirit. Inasmuch as
the Understanding has converted God into a mere fact of thought, no
longer crediting the appearance of His Spirit in concrete reality, and
thus has alienated the God of Thought from all actual existence, this
type of religious Illumination has necessarily accepted conceptions
and requirements which are intolerable to Art. When, however, the
Understanding is raised once more from the region of these abstractions
into that of Reason, the need at once asserts itself for something
more concrete, and withal for that kind of concreteness which Art
itself unfolds. The period of the illuminating Understanding has, no
doubt, possessed an art of its own, but only of very prosaic type,
as we may even find it in Schiller, whose point of departure was
precisely that of such a period of criticism; later on, however,
owing to his realization how little reason, imagination, and passion
were satisfied by the critical Understanding, he experienced a deep
longing for art, in the fullest sense of the term, and primarily for
the classical art of the Greeks and their gods, and general views of
the world. It is from this kind of yearning, a reaction, in short,
from the mere abstractions of the mind, that the poem referred to
originated. According to the original draft of the poem, Schiller's
attitude to Christianity is entirely polemical; afterwards he modified
it considerably, no doubt realizing that its _animus_ was only directed
against the critical aspect of the Illumination, which at a later time
itself began to lose its importance. In the first instance he praises
the Greek point of view as fortunate in that the whole of Nature was a
thing of Life to it, and full of divinities. After that he reviews the
Present and its prosaic conception of natural law, and the position man
here takes relatively to God:

/$
                  Diese traur'ge Stille
     Kündigt sie mir meinen Schöpfer an?
     Finster wie er selbst ist seine Hülle,
     Mein _Entsagen_, was ihn feiern kann[201].
$/

No doubt resignation is an essential characteristic in the evolution
of the Christian life; but it is only in the monkish conception of it
that it requires he should cut off from himself his soul, his emotions,
the so-called impulses of his Nature, and should not incorporate his
life in the moral, rational, actual world, the family and the State;
and it does so precisely as the Illumination and its Deism, which
presupposes that God is unknowable, imposes on mankind the extremest
form of resignation, namely, that of abandoning all effort either to
know or conceive Him. In any true exposition of Christian doctrine,
resignation is, on the contrary, merely a phasal moment of mediation, a
point of transition, in which that which is purely natural, sensuous,
and in general terms finite, strips off this its incompatible nature in
order to permit Spirit to attain the loftier freedom and reconciliation
of its own possessions, a freedom and blessedness which was unknown
to the Greeks. In Christianity as thus understood we are not entitled
to speak of the celebration of the one God, of the bare seclusion of
Himself, and the cutting ourselves adrift from an ungodly world, for it
is precisely in this spiritual freedom and reconciliation of Spirit
that God is immanent, and from this point of view the famous lines of
Schiller:

/$
     Da die Göttes menschlicher noch waren,
     Waren Menschen göttlicher[202].
$/

is absolutely false. We must for this very reason emphasize the later
alteration made in the concluding lines which refer thus to the Greek
gods:

/$
     Aus der Zeitfluh weggerissen schweben
     Sie gerettet auf des Pindus Höhn;
     Was unsterblich im Gesang soll leben,
     Muss im Leben untergehn[203].
$/

These words support entirely the assertion we have made above that
the Greek gods could only be localized in the mental conception and
imagination; they were neither able to affirm such a position in the
reality of life, nor satisfy in the long run finite spirit.

Of another sort is the opposition of Parny to Christianity--a poet
named the French Tibullus on account of his successful elegies--which
is conspicuous in a prolix poem of ten cantos, a kind of epic poem
entitled "La Guerre des Dieux," as an attempt made to bring ridicule
upon Christian conceptions in the interests of jest and comedy carried
out in a tone of unrestrained frivolity, yet withal marked by good
humour and considerable talent. The sallies of wit here are not,
however, carried beyond the point of levity; we have few traces of
the wanton disregard of things that are sacred and of the highest
excellence such as marks the period of Frederick von Schlegel's
"Lucinde." The Virgin Mary no doubt is treated very badly in this poem.
The monks, Dominicans and Franciscans, yield to the seductions of wine
and Bacchanals, and the nuns do much the same with Fauns, and the
result is sufficiently shocking. Finally, however, the gods of the old
world are vanquished and withdraw from Olympus to Parnassus.

As a concluding illustration Goethe in his "Bride of Corinth" has
more profoundly depicted in a vivacious picture the banishment of
love, not so much as the result of any true principle of Christianity
as the misconceived interpretation of resignation and sacrifice. The
poet here contrasts that false asceticism which seeks to condemn the
determination of a woman to be wife and rates that enforced celibacy
as something more holy than marriage with the natural feelings of
mankind. Just as we find in Schiller the opposition between the Greek
imagination and the critical abstractions of our modern Enlightenment,
so we may detect here the Hellenistic ethical and sensuous
justifications in the matter of love and marriage, placed in direct
contrast to ideas which can only claim to belong to the Christian
religion when regarded from a wholly one-sided and therefore incorrect
point of view. With the greatest art a really horrible tone dominates
the entire work; and the principal reason is this, that it remains
quite uncertain whether the action has reference to a real maiden, or
a dead one, a living reality or a ghost; and in the metre of the verse
itself in an equally masterly way the threads of light foolery and
seriousness are so interwoven as to make the uncanniness still more
effective.

(_c_) Before, however, we attempt to gauge in its profundity the new
type of art, whose opposition to the old does not come into the course
of Art's development, so far, at least, as we here have undertaken to
follow it along its fundamental lines, we must in the first instance
make clear for ourselves that other transition in its earliest form,
which attaches to antique art itself. The principle of this transition
consists in this, that the Spirit whose individuality hitherto has been
contemplated as in harmony with the true subsistency of Nature and
human life, and which, in respect to its own life, volition, and acts,
was consciously at home in that accord, begins now to withdraw itself
into the infinite subjectivity of its essence, but instead of the true
infinity is only able to secure a purely formal and indeed still finite
return upon itself.

If we look more closely at the concrete conditions which correspond to
the principle indicated, we shall see, we have already done so, that
the Greek gods possess as their content the substantive _materiae_ of
real human life and action. Over and above the vision of the gods we
have now the highest mode of determination, the universal interest and
the end in determinate life, that is to say, presented at the same
time as an existing fact. Just as it was essential to the spiritual
configuration of Greek art to appear both as external and real, so,
too, the spiritual growth of mankind in its absolute significance
has elaborated itself in a reality that both externally appears and
is real, with whose substance and universality the individual has
put forward a claim to be in accordant fusion. This highest end was
in Greece the life of the State, the collective body of citizens and
their morality and living patriotism. Outside this supreme interest
there was no other more lofty or true. The life of the State, however,
as an external phenomenon of the world, fades into the Past, as do
the conditions of the entire reality of the outside world. It is not
difficult to demonstrate that a State under the type of such a freedom,
so immediately identical with all its citizens, which as such already
possess in their grasp the highest activity in all public transactions,
is inevitably small and weak, and in part must prove suicidal to
itself, in part fall into ruins in the natural course of the history
of nations. In other words, by reason of this immediate coalescence of
individual life with the universality of State-life, on the one hand
we find that the peculiar idiosyncrasies of spiritual experience and
its particular aspects as private life do not receive their full dues,
nor do they receive sufficient opportunity for a development innocuous
to society at large. Rather, as distinct from the concrete substance,
into which it has not been accepted, such a nature remains simply the
limited and natural egoism, which goes on its own way independently,
pursues its interests however much they are alien to the true interest
of the whole, and, consequently, is an instrument to the ruin of
the State, against which, in the last resort, it strains to oppose
its individual forces. On the other hand within the circle of this
freedom itself the need of a higher personal liberty is roused, which
not merely in the State, as the substantive totality, nor merely in
the accepted code of morals and law, but in the very soul of the man
himself asserts its claim to exist, in so far as he is ready to give
life to goodness and rectitude out of the wealth of his own nature and
in the light of his own personal knowledge, and to recognize the same
at its real worth. The individual subject demands of consciousness that
it should be, in virtue of its claim as self-identity, a substantive
whole. Consequently there arises in this freedom a new breach between
the end of the State and that of the man's own personal welfare as
essentially free himself. Such a conflict as this had already begun in
the time of Socrates, while on the other side the vanity, self-seeking
and unbridled character of democracy and demagogy corrupted the true
State to such a degree that men like Plato and Xenophon experienced a
loathing for the internal condition of their mother-city, where the
direction of all public transactions lay in the hands of those who were
either frivolous, or those who sought nothing but personal aims.

The spirit of this transition, therefore, depends in the first
instance on the general line of severation between Spirit in its
unfolded self-subsistency and external existence. The spiritual in
this separation from its reality, in which it no longer finds itself
reflected, is then the abstract mode of Spirit; it is not, however, the
one Oriental god, but on the contrary the actual self-knowing conscious
subject, which brings to the fore and retains within the clasp of
its ideal subjectivity all that is universal in thought, truth,
goodness, and morality, and possesses therein not so much the knowledge
of a pre-existing reality as simply the content of its thoughts
and convictions. This relation, in so far as it persists in this
opposition, and sets up the two aspects of the same as purely opposites
to one another, would be of an entirely prosaic character. We do not,
however, at this stage as yet arrive at this point of bare prose. In
other words it is true that on the one hand we have a consciousness
present, which as self-secure, wills the Good, the fulfilment of its
desires, conceives the reality of its notion in the virtue of its
emotional life, much as we find it thus imaged in the ancient gods,
morals, and laws. At the same time, however, this consciousness is
split up in opposition to its existence as part of existing Life, in
other words the actual political life of the time, the dissolution
of the old modes of conception, the former type of patriotism and
political wisdom, and adheres thereby unquestionably to that opposition
between the inward life of soul and the real environment outside it.
And the reason of this hesitancy is this that the bare conceptions
of genuine ethical truth which it derives from its own inner world
are unable to fully satisfy it; it consequently faces that which is
exterior to this, to which it relates itself in a negative and hostile
spirit with the object of changing it. This consciousness is, as
already stated, on the one hand no doubt an inward and present content,
which, self-determined and at the same time deliberately articulate,
is concerned with a world that confronts it, to which this content is
opposed, and which receives the task to depict this same reality in
the semblance of the very traits of the corruption peculiar to that
world, and which form such a contrast with its own ideas of goodness
and truth. From another point of view this very contrast is cancelled
by art itself. In other words, another type of art arises, in which the
conflict of this opposition is not emphasized through the medium of
mere thoughts, remaining thus in its disunion; but this reality in the
very folly of its corruption is itself submitted to a mode of artistic
presentation, which exposes it as self-destructive, and exposes it in
such a way that it is precisely in and through this self-destructive
process of what is of no weight that truth is enabled to assert itself
upon this mirror as the secure and endurable power, and thereby all the
force of a direct opposition to what is essentially true is removed
from that side represented by folly and unreasonableness. This art is
comedy, of the type Aristophanes dramatized for his fellow-citizens,
connecting it closely with all that was essential in the world around
him, and doing so with equanimity[204], in a mood of pure and hearty
joviality.


3. SATIRE

We may, however, observe that this resolution of art, despite its
adequacy, tends to disappear to this extent, that the contradictory
antithesis persists in the form of its _opposition_, and, consequently,
instead of the poetic reconciliation a prosaic relation is imported,
by means of which the classical type of art appears to be annulled, and
the gods of plastic shape no less than the entire world of human beauty
vanish with it. We have, then, now to look about us for a form of art,
which is able to reclothe itself from the ruins of this overthrow in
a loftier configuration and to extract the real significance which it
implies. We discovered as the terminating point of symbolic art in
the same way that the separation of pure form from its significance
was emphasized in a variety of modes such as simile, fable, parable,
riddle, and the like. Inasmuch as the severation above adverted to is
causally responsible for the dissolution of that art-type, in a similar
way the question arises what is the nature of the distinction between
our present example of transition as contrasted with the previous one.
The distinction is as follows:

(_a_) In the truly symbolic and comparative type of art the form and
significance are from the very first, despite the affinity of their
relationship, alien to one another; they are placed, however, in no
mere negative, but rather in amicable relationship; for it is precisely
the qualities and traits which are identical to or resemble each other
on the two sides which assert themselves as the causal basis of their
conjunction and comparison. Their persistent separation and hostility
is consequently within the bounds of this union neither, relatively to
the separated aspects, of a _hostile_ character, nor is a blending of
the same, within essentially narrow limits, thereby removed from them.
The Ideal of classical art, on the contrary, proceeds from the perfect
interfusion of significance and form, the ideal individuality of spirit
and its external conformation; and when the composite aspects which
have been brought together in such a consummated unity are disrupted,
this disruption takes place simply because they are unable any longer
to cohere one with the other, and are absolutely compelled to start
forth from their peaceful state of harmony in disunion and hostility.

(_b_) Together with this way of looking at the relation in contrast
to that of symbolic art we may add that the _content_ of both sides
is altered, as they now stand in opposition. To put it thus we may
say that, in the symbolic type of art, it is abstractions more or
less, general thoughts, or at least definite phrases in the form of
generalities peculiar to reflective thought, which, by means of the
symbolic type of art, receive a sensuous embodiment replete with
suggestion. In the form, however, which makes itself predominant in
this transition to romantic art the content, it is true, is made up
of a similar abstraction of general thoughts, opinions, and maxims of
reflective reason, but in this case it is not these abstractions in
themselves, but rather their presence in the _individual's_ mind and
his self-subsistent identity which furnish the content for one side of
the opposition. For the primary requirement of this mediating stage
consists in this, that the spiritual which has attained the Ideal,
shall stand forth in its entire independence. Already in classical
art we found that spiritual individuality was of chief importance,
albeit on the side of its realization it remained reconciled with a
determinate existence as immediately presented. What is of importance
now is to declare a mode of subjectivity which strives to acquire the
mastery over the form that is no longer adequate to it, in a word, over
external reality. In this way the world of Spirit becomes liberated as
independent. It recovers itself from bondage to the sensuous material
and manifests itself thereby through this return upon its own resources
as the subject of a self-consciousness which only finds contentment
in the secret wealth of its own domain. This subject, however, which
repels externality from itself, is not in respect to its ideal aspect
yet the truly concrete totality which encloses as content the Absolute
under the mode of self-conscious spiritual life; rather it is, as still
fettered by its opposition to reality, a purely abstract, finite,
and unsatisfied form of subjectivity. In opposition to this we have
confronting it an equally finite mode of reality, which on its part is
also independent, but just for that very reason--forasmuch, that is,
as the truth of Spirit has withdrawn from it into its own ideality and
henceforward neither will nor can identity itself with it, appears as
a reality void of all gods and an existence fallen into rottenness. In
this manner and at this point art brings forward a Spirit that thinks,
that is, to repeat our former analysis, the individual consciousness
of our humanity, which, supporting itself on its own possession of the
abstract knowledge and volition of goodness and virtue, confronts
with hostility therewith the corruption of its present environment.
That aspect of this opposition which remains unresolved, and in which
the ideal and external modes of its antithesis persist in their
disruption, constitutes the element of prose in the mutual relation of
the two sides. A noble mind or a virtuous soul to whom the realization
of self-conscious life is denied in a world of vice and folly, turns
away from the existence which thus confronts him with passionate
indignation, or more subtle wit and more frosty bitterness, and either
is wroth with or scorns a world which gives the lie direct to his
abstract notions of virtue and truth.

The type of art which accepts this sudden outburst of opposition
between a subjectivity still finite in its mode and a degenerate world
outside it as its matter is the _Satire_, the ordinary theories as to
which have little to commend them, for the simple reason that they
break down precisely where we look for their assistance. Satire has
nothing to do with epic poetry, and it has just as little affinity
with lyric. In the Satire it is not the life of the emotional nature
which is expressed; rather the general conception of goodness and what
is essentially needful, which it no doubt blends with the particular
aspect of soul-life[205], appears as the virtuousness of this or that
individual; but this does not suffer itself to be enjoyed in the open
and unhampered beauty of imaginative conception or let that enjoyment
issue freely. Rather with discontent it retains the existing discord
between the writer's own state of mind and its abstract principles
and the empirical reality which mocks them. To this extent satire
is neither a genuine creation of the poet nor a real work of art.
For these reasons the point of view of the satirical poem can never
be reached satisfactorily through those other types of poetry just
mentioned; it must be apprehended in a more general way as the example
of this very transitional form we referred to from the classic Ideal.

(_c_) Inasmuch, then, as it is, relatively to its ideal content, the
prosaic resolution of the Ideal, which asserts itself mainly in
satire, we do not find that Greece, which is pre-eminently the native
land of Beauty, is the place where we must look for it. Satirical
poems of the nature above described are the characteristic possession
of Rome. The spirit of the Roman world is the sovereignty of the
abstract Ideal, the law that is dead, the shipwreck of beauty and of
the joyousness of civic life, the suppression of the family in the
sense that it is the immediate and most natural form of morality, and
generally the sacrifice of individuality, which surrenders itself
wholly to the State, and in obedience to the abstract law is satisfied
with the frost-like sense of political worth and critical satisfaction
which it supplies. The principle of this civic virtue, the cold-blooded
harshness of which subjects to its pleasure all alien peoples, while
the formal rectitude of the personal life is elaborated to the furthest
point of consistency on equally rigid lines, is wholly inconsonant
with genuine art. We find, therefore, even in Rome no art that is at
once conspicuous in its beauty, freedom, and greatness. It is from
the Greeks that the Romans borrowed all that they mastered whether
in sculpture or painting, epic, lyric, or dramatic poetry. It is a
remarkable fact that all that we can point to as the native product of
Latin art is comic farces, whereas the more cultivated types of comedy,
not excluding those of Plautus and Terence, are borrowed from Greece,
and are rather an affair of imitation than independent production.
Even Ennius first exhausted the sources of Greek poetry before he
made mythology prosaic. That type of art is alone native to the Latin
genius, which was essentially itself prosaic, the didactic poem, for
example, more particularly when it contains an ethical content, and
endows its general reflections with the purely exterior adornment of
metre, images, similes, and a rhetorically beautiful diction. But above
all other forms thus excepted we place the satire. Here we find it is
the mood of virtuous exasperation over the surrounding world which
strives to air itself in what is, in some measure, hollow declamations.
We can only call this essentially prosaic type of art poetical in so
far as it brings before the vision the corrupted nature of real life
in such a way that this corruption practically falls to pieces as the
result of its own folly. Just as Horace, who as a lyric poet entirely
identified himself by study with the artistic type and manner of
Greece, in his epistles and satires--where we have his originality
more emphasized--traces for us a living picture of the morals of his
age, by depicting follies which are self-destructive by virtue of the
stupidity, that carries them into effect. Nevertheless, even this
example only presents us with a kind of merriment that for all its keen
and educated sense can barely be classed as poetry, the object in the
main being to make ridicule out of that which is bad. Among others, on
the contrary, we find that the abstract conception of rectitude and
virtue is deliberately contrasted with vice; and in this case it is
exasperation, anger, hate, and scorn, which in some measure expatiate
in formal eloquence over virtue and wisdom, and in part give full rein
to the indignation of a soul of more nobility against the dissolution
and servility of the times, or hold up before the vices of the day the
mirror of the old morality, the former liberty, the virtues of a state
of the world which has passed away, without any genuine hope and belief
in their recovery; or rather one which has nothing to oppose to the
tottering gait, the dilemmas, the need and danger of an ignominious
present, save a stoical equanimity and the unshakable conscience of a
virtuous soul. Roman history and philosophy not unfrequently receive
something of the same tone from a mood of this kind. Sallust must
needs express himself strongly against the corruptions of morals,
being himself very considerably affected by them. Livy, despite his
rhetorical elegance, seeks for comfort and satisfaction in his picture
of the good old days. Above all we have Tacitus, who, with a severe
melancholy as grand in its scope as it was profound, without the
baldness of declamation, indignantly exposes in the clearest relief
the evils of his time. Among the satirists Persius is remarkable for
his acerbity, with a bitter edge more keen than that of Juvenal. Later
on we find bringing up the rear the Greek Syrian Lucian giving free
vent to his witticisms and pleasantry against all things, whether
heroes, philosophers, or gods; and with exceptional prominence passing
in review the ancient gods of Greece on the score of their humanity
and individuality. However, only too often he goes no further in his
tittle-tattle than the mere external aspect of these godlike figures
and their actions, and is for that reason wearisome to modern readers.
For, on the one hand, so far as our convictions are concerned, we have
already disposed of all that he would destroy, and on the other we are
aware that, despite all his jests and mockery, these characteristic
traits of Greek divinities, when contemplated under the aspect of
beauty, still retain their eternal significance.

Nowadays satirical poems are not likely to prove a success. Cotta and
Goethe have proposed competitions in this form of composition, but no
poems of note are forthcoming. Certain fixed principles are bound up
with it, with which the present age is not in harmony; a wisdom which
is devoid of content, a virtue which adheres with inflexible obstinacy
to its own resources and nothing beyond, may very possibly contrast
itself with the actual world, but is quite unable to bring about the
truly poetical resolution of what is false and repugnant, and effect
the genuine reconciliation in the truth.

In one word, Art is unable to persist in this breach between the
abstract conceptions of the inward life and the objective world
around, without proving itself false to its own principle. The
subjective realm of the soul must be conceived as that which is itself
an essentially infinite and independent existence, which, albeit it
is unable to suffer the finite reality to subsist as Truth itself,
nevertheless does not merely assert itself negatively toward the same
in a bare contradiction, but proceeds all the while on the path of
reconciliation, and for the first time, in its opposition to the ideal
individualities of the classical art-form, declares this very activity,
being in fact the presentment of the absolute mode of self-conscious
life.

[Footnote 197: Lit. "the essentially-and-for-itself-necessary."]

[Footnote 198: Hölderlin, and of course Goethe no less than Schiller,
would be included. With our moderns such as Swinburne the admission is
less obvious than the qualification.]

[Footnote 199: _Die Aufklärung._ That is, the end of the eighteenth
century; usually translated as illumination or enlightenment.]

[Footnote 200: _Verstand_, the faculty of science and common sense.]

[Footnote 201:

/$
     What! doth this same stillness tell me sadly
     All I know of Him who voiced creation?
     Dark as e'en the veil that hides Him from me
     Is my heart's salute of resignation.
$/
]

[Footnote 202:

/$
     Since the gods were then more human
     Men were more in image godlike.
$/
]

[Footnote 203:

/$
     Wrested from the flood of Time's abysses
       Saved they float above high Pindus now;
     All that was immortal life within them
       Lives in song, all other life must go.
$/
]

[Footnote 204: _Zornlos_ lit., without anger.]

[Footnote 205: I think this is the meaning of the words _mit
subjectiver Besonderheit_, but the interpretation "with other material
peculiar to the writer" is not impossible.]




SUBSECTION III

THE ROMANTIC TYPE OF ART

INTRODUCTION

OF THE ROMANTIC GENERALLY

The type of romantic art receives its definition, as we have hitherto
throughout the present inquiry seen was always the case, from the ideal
notion of the content, which it is the function of art to declare.
We must consequently in the first place attempt to elucidate the
distinctive principle of the new content, a content which now, in its
significance as the absolute content of truth, opens up to our minds a
new vision of the world no less than a novel configuration of art.

In the _first_ stage of our inquiry, the entrance chamber of art,
the impulse of imagination consisted in the struggle from Nature to
spiritual expression. In this strain Spirit never reached beyond
what was still only an effort to find, an effort which, in so far as
it was not yet able to supply a genuine content for art, could only
maintain its position as an external embodiment of the significant
aspects of Nature, or those abstractions of the ideal inwardness
of substance which were destitute of a subjective character in the
strict sense, and in which this type of art found its real centre. The
_reverse_ of this point of view we discovered in classical art. Here
it is spirituality--albeit it is only by virtue of the abrogation of
the significances of Nature that it is enabled to struggle forth in
its independent self-identity--which is the basis and principle of
the content, with the natural phenomenon in the bodily or sensuous
material for its external form. This embodiment, however, did not,
as was the case in the first stage, remain superficial, indefinite,
and unsuffused by its content; but the perfection of art attained
its culminating point by precisely this means, namely, that Spirit
completely transpierced its exterior appearance, idealized the shell
of Nature in this union of beauty, and drew round itself a reality
adequate to its own nature as mind under the mode of substantive
individuality. By this means classical art was a presentation of the
Ideal which completely satisfied its notion, the consummation of the
realm of beauty. More beautiful art than this can neither exist now nor
hereafter.

But for all that we may have an art that is more lofty in its aim than
this lovely revelation of Spirit in its immediate sensuous form, if
at the same time one that is created by the mind as adequate to its
own nature. For this coalition, which perfects itself in the medium of
what is external, and thereby makes sensible reality its adequate and
determinate existence, necessarily runs counter to the true notion of
Spirit, and drives it forth from its reconciliation in the bodily shape
upon its own essential substance to seek further reconciliation in that
alone. The simple and unriven totality of the Ideal is dissolved, and
breaks up into one of twofold aspect, namely, that of the essentially
subjective life and its exterior semblance, in order to enable mind,
by means of this severation, to win the profounder reconciliation
in its own most proper element. In one word, Spirit, which has for
its principle the mode of entire self-sufficiency, the union of its
notion with its reality--is only able to discover an existence that
wholly corresponds to such a principle in its own spiritual world of
emotion, soul, that is to say, in the inward life where it feels at
home. The human spirit becomes aware that it must possess its Other,
its _existence_, as Spirit, which it appropriates as its own and what
it verily is, and by doing so at length enjoys its own infinity and
freedom.

1. This elevation of Spirit to its _own substance_, through which it
attains its objectivity--which it would otherwise be obliged to seek
for in the external environment of its existence within its own self
and in this union with itself both feels and knows itself--is what
constitutes the fundamental principle of romantic art. With this truth
we may join as a corollary thereto that for this concluding stage the
beauty of the classic Ideal, or in other words beauty in its most
uniquely consonant form and its most conformable content, is no longer
regarded as ultimate. For in arriving at the point of romantic art,
Spirit[206] becomes aware that its truth is not fully attained by a
self-absorption in the material of sense. On the contrary, it only
comes fully to the knowledge of that truth by withdrawing itself out
of that medium into the inward being of its own substance, whereby it
deliberately affirms the inadequacy of external reality as a mode of
its existence. It is owing to this that when this new content is set
the essential task of making itself an object of beauty, the beauty, in
the meaning of the terms under which we have met with it before, only
persists as a subordinate mode, and the new conception of it becomes
the _spiritual_ beauty of what is its own ideality made fully explicit,
in other words, the subjectivity of Spirit essentially infinite in its
mode.

In order, however, that mind may attain the infinity which belongs
to it it must transcend at the same time purely formal and _finite_
personality and rise into the measure of the _Absolute._ That is to
say, Spirit must declare itself as fulfilled with that which is out
and out substantive, and in doing so proclaim itself as a self-knowing
and self-willing subject. Conversely, therefore, what is substantive
and true is no longer to be apprehended as a mere "beyond" relatively
to our humanity, and the anthropomorphism of the Greek view of things
can be struck out; and in the place of this we have humanity as very
and real subjectivity affirmed as the principle, and by virtue of this
change, as we have already seen, anthropomorphism for the first time
reflects a truth of complete and final validity.

2. We have now in a general way to develop the range of subject-matter,
no less than its form, from the earliest phases in the evolution of
this principle, whose configuration, as it thus changes, is conditioned
by the new content of romantic art.

The true principle of the romantic content is absolute inwardness[207],
and the form which corresponds to it, the subjectivity of mind, meaning
by this the comprehension of its self-subsistence and freedom. This
intrinsically infinite principle and explicitly enunciated universal
is the absolute negation of all particularity[208]; it is simple
unity at home with itself, which consumes all that is separable, all
processes of Nature and its succession of birth, passing away, and
reappearance, all the limitations of spiritual existence, and dissolves
all particular gods in its pure and infinite self-identity. In this
Pantheon all gods are dethroned; the flame of the subjective essence
has destroyed them; instead of the plastic polytheism art recognizes
now _one_ God only, _one_ Spirit, _one_ absolute self-subsistence,
which as the absolute knowledge and volition of itself remains in
free union with it, and no longer falls to pieces in the particular
characters and functions we have reviewed above, whose single unit of
cohesion was the force of an obscure Necessity. Absolute subjectivity,
however, in its purity would escape from art altogether, and only be
present in the apprehension of Thought, unless it could enter into
external existence in order that it might be a subjectivity which was
_actual_ if also conformable to its notion, and further could recollect
itself in its own province from out of this reality. And, what is
more, this moment of reality is pertinent to the Absolute, because
the Absolute, as infinite negativity, contains this self-relation--as
simple unity of knowledge at home with itself, and therewith as
_immediacy_--for the final consummation of its activity. On account
also of this its immediate existence, which is rooted in the Absolute
itself, the Absolute declares itself not as the one jealous God, who
merely annuls the aspect of Nature and finite human existence, without
revealing itself verily therein under the mode of actual divine
subjectivity; rather the very Absolute unfolds itself, and takes to
itself an aspect, relatively to which it is also within the grasp and
presentation of art.

The determinate existence of God, however, is not the natural and
sensuous in its simplicity, but the sensuous as brought home to that
which is not sensuous, in other words to the subjectivity of mind
which, instead of losing the certainty of its own presence as the
Absolute, in its external envisagement, for the first time, and by no
other means than this its reality, is made aware of its actual presence
as such. God in His Truth is consequently no mere Ideal begotten of the
imagination, but He declares Himself in the heart of finite condition
and the external mode of contingent existence, and is, moreover, made
known to Himself therein as divine subjective life, which maintains
itself there as essentially infinite and creating this infinity for
itself. Inasmuch, then, as the actual subject[209] is the manifestation
of God, Art for the first time secures the superior right to apply
the human figure and its mode of externality generally as a means to
express the Absolute, although the new function of art can only consist
in making the external form not a means whereby the ideality of man's
inward condition is absorbed in exterior bodily shape, but rather
conversely to make the consciousness of the Divine mind visible in the
subject of consciousness. The distinguishable phases, which combine to
make up the totality of this apprehension of the world-condition as,
that is to say, the concrete totality of truth, are consequently made
manifest to mankind from this point onwards under such a mode that
it is neither the Natural in its simplicity, such as sun, heavens,
stars, and so forth, nor the Greek conclave of the gods of beauty, nor
the heroes and practical exploits in the field of the family cultus
and political life--it is neither one nor any of these which supplies
us with either content or form. Rather it is the actual and isolated
individual subject who receives in the inward[210] substance of his
living experience this infinite worth, for it is in him alone that the
eternal characters of absolute Truth--which is made actual only as
Spirit--expand out of their fulness within, and are concentrated to the
point of determinate existence.

If we contrast this definition of romantic art with that which
was proposed to the classical--that is to say, as Greek sculpture
completed the latter under the mode most conformable to it--it is
obvious that the plastic figure of the god does not express the
motion and activity of Spirit, in so far as the same has retired from
its actual bodily shape, and has penetrated to the inner shrine of
independent self-identity. That which is mutable and contingent in
the empirical aspect of individuality is no doubt removed from those
lofty, godlike figures: what, however, fails them is the actualization
of the subjective condition in its self-subsistent being as shown in
self-knowledge and self-volition. This defect makes itself felt on the
exterior side in the notable fact that the direct expression of soul in
its simplicity, the light of the eye, is absent from the sculptured
figure. The most exalted works of beautiful sculpture are sightless.
The inward life does not look forth from them as self-conscious
inwardness such as this concentration of Spirit to the point of light
made visible in the human eye offers us. This light of the soul falls
outside of them, and is the possession of the beholder alone: he is
unable to look through these figures as soul direct to soul, and eye
to eye. The God of romantic art, however, is made known with sight,
that is, self-knowing, subjective on the side of soul, and that soul or
divine intimacy disclosing itself to soul. For the infinite negativity,
the withdrawal of the spiritual into itself, cancels its discharge
in the bodily frame. This subjectivity is the light of Spirit, which
reveals itself in its own domain, in the place which was previously
obscure, whereas the natural light can only give light on the face of
an object, is in fact this _terrain_ and object, upon which it appears,
and which it is aware of as itself[211]. Inasmuch as, however, this
absolute intimacy of the soul expresses itself at the same time as
the mode of human envisagement in its actual existing shape, and our
humanity is bound up with the entire natural world, we shall find
that there is no less a wide field of variety in the contents of the
subjective world of mind than there is in that external appearance, to
which Spirit is related as to its own dwelling-place.

The reality of absolute subjectivity, as above described, in the mode
of its visible manifestation, possesses the following modes of content
and appearance.

(_a_) Our first point of departure we must deduce from the Absolute
itself, which as very and actual mind endows itself with determinate
existence, is self-knowing in its thought and activity. Here we find
the human form so represented that it is known immediately as the
wholly self-possessed Divine. Man does not appear as man in his solely
human character, in the constraint of his passions, finite aims,
and achievements, or as merely conscious of God, but rather as the
self-knowing one and only universal God Himself, in whose life and
sufferings, birth, death, and resurrection He reveals openly also to
finite consciousness, what Spirit, what the Eternal and Infinite in
their veritable truth are[212]. Romantic art presents this content
in the history of Christ, his mother, and his disciples, with all
the rest of those in whom the Holy Spirit and the perfected Divine
is manifested. For in so far as God, who is above all the essential
Universal, exists in the manifestation of human existence, this
reality is not, in the Divine figure of Christ, limited to isolate and
immediate existence, but unfolds itself throughout the entire range
of that humanity, in which the Spirit of God is made present, and in
this actuality continues in unity with itself. The diffusion of this
self-contemplation, this essential self-possession of mind[213], is
peace, in other words the reconciled state of Spirit with its own
dominion in the mode of its objective presence--a divine world, a
kingdom of God, in which the Divine, which has for its substantive
notion from the first reconciliation with itself, consummates this
result in such a condition, and thereby secures its freedom.

(_b_) However much, we must fain add, this identification asserts
itself as grounded in the essence of the Absolute itself, as spiritual
freedom and infinity it is no reconciliation which immediately is
visible from the first in either the real worlds of Nature or Spirit;
on the contrary, it is only accomplished as the elevation of Spirit
from the finitude of its immediate existence to its truth. As a
corollary of this it follows that Spirit, in order to secure its
totality and freedom, must effect an act of self-severation, and set
up on the one side itself as the finitude of Nature and Spirit to
its opposed self on the other as that which is essentially infinite.
Conversely with this act of disruption the necessity is conjoined
that from out of this retirement from its unity--within the bounds of
which the finite and purely natural, the immediacy of existence, the
"natural" heart in the sense of the negative, evil and bad, one and
all are defined--a way is at last found by virtue of the subjugation
of all that has no substantive worth within the kingdom of truth and
consolation. In this wise the reconcilement of Spirit can only be
conceived as an activity, a movement of the same, can only be presented
as a process, in whose course arise both strain and conflict, and
the appearance and reappearance, as an essential feature of it, of
pain, death, the mournful sense of non-reality, the agony of the
soul and its bodily tenement. For just as God in the first instance
disparts finite reality from Himself, so, too, finite man, who starts
on his journey outside the divine kingdom, receives the task to exalt
himself to God, to let loose from him the finite, to do away with the
nothing-worth, and by means of this decease of his immediate reality
to become that which God in His manifestation as man accomplished as
very truth in the actual world. The infinite pain of this sacrifice of
the most personal subjectivity, sufferings, and death, which for the
most part were excluded from the representation of classical art, or
rather only are presented there as natural suffering, receive their
adequate treatment necessarily for the first time in romantic art.
It is, for example, impossible to affirm that among the Greeks death
was ever conceived in its full and essential significance. Neither
that which was purely natural, nor the immediacy of Spirit in its
union with the bodily presence, was held by the Greeks as something
in itself essentially negative. Death was consequently to them purely
an abstract passing over, unaccompanied by horror or fearsomeness, a
cessation without further immeasurable consequences for the deceased.
If, however, conscious life in its spiritual self-possession is of
infinite worth then the negation, which death enfolds, is a negation
of this exaltation and worth, and it is consequently fearful, a death
of the soul, which is in the position of finding itself thereby
as itself now this negative in explicit appearance, excluded for
evermore from happiness, absolutely unhappy, delivered over to eternal
damnation[214]. Greek individuality, on the contrary, does not,
regarded as spiritual self-consciousness, attach this worth to itself;
it is able, consequently, to surround death with more cheerful images.
Man only fears the loss of that which is of great worth to him[215].
Life possesses, however, only this infinite worth for mind if the
subject thereof, as spiritual and self-conscious, is reality in its
absolute unity, and is compelled with an apprehension, in this way
justified, to image itself as doomed to negation by death. From another
point of view, however, death also fails to secure from classical
art the _positive_ significance which it receives from romantic art.
The Greeks never treated with real seriousness what we understand
by immortality. It was only in later times that the doctrine of
immortality received at the hands of Socrates a profounder significance
for the introspective reflection of human intelligence. When, for
example, Odysseus[216] praises the happiness of Achilles in the lower
world as one excelling that of all others who were before or came after
him on the ground that he, once revered as a god, is now greatest chief
among the dead, Achilles in the well-known words rates this fortune
at a very low rank indeed, and makes answer that Odysseus had better
utter no word of comfort to him on the score of death; nay, he would
rather be a mere serf of the soil, and poor enough serve a poor man
for wage, than rule as lord over all the ghosts of the dead who have
vanished to Hades. In romantic art, on the contrary, death is merely
a decease of the natural soul and finite consciousness, a decease,
which only proclaims itself as negative as against that which is itself
essentially negative and abolishes what has no real substance, and is
consequently the deliverance of Spirit from its finitude and division,
mediating at the same time the spiritual reconciliation of the
individual subject with the Absolute[217]. Among the Greeks life in its
union with the existence of Nature and the external world was the only
life about which you could affirm anything, and death was consequently
pure negation, the dissolution of immediate reality. In the romantic
view of the world, however, death receives the significance due to
its negativity, in other words the negation of the negative[218],
and returns back to us thereby equally as the affirmative, as the
resurrection of Spirit from the bare husk of Nature and the finiteness
which it has outgrown. The pain and death of the extinguished light of
individual being awakes again in its return upon itself in fruition,
blessedness, and in short that reconciled existence which Spirit is
unable to attain to save through the dying of its negative state, in
which it is shut off from its most veritable truth and life. This
fundamental principle does not therefore merely affect the fact of
death as it approaches man in his relation to the world of Nature, but
it is bound up with a process, which Spirit has to sustain in itself,
quite independently of this external aspect of negation, if life and
truth are to join hands.

(_c_) The _third_ presentment of this absolute world of Spirit is
co-ordinated by man, in so far as he neither makes manifest the
Absolute and Divine in its immediate and essential mode as such
_Divine_, nor declares positively the process in which he is exalted
to the Supreme Being, and reconciled with Him, but rather continues
within the ordinary sphere of his human life. Here it is the purely
_finite_ aspect of that existence which constitutes the content,
whether we regard it in the light of its spiritual purposes, its
worldly interests, passions, collisions, suffering, and enjoyments,
or from that point of view which is wholly external, that of Nature,
its kingdom, and all its detailed phenomena. In order to apprehend
this content with adequacy, however, we must take up two distinct
positions relatively to it. In other words, it is true that Spirit,
for the reason that it has secured the principle of self-affirmation,
expatiates in this province, as one on which it has a just claim, and
one which, as native to it, provides satisfaction, an element from
which it merely extracts this positive character[219], and is permitted
thereby itself to be reflected in its positive satisfaction and
intimacy; yet, on the other hand, we have the fact that this content
is brought down to the level of pure contingency, a contingency which
is unable to claim any independent validity, for the reason that mind
cannot discover therein it veritable existence, and consequently only
preserves its substantial unity by independently on its own account
breaking up again this finite aspect of Spirit and Nature as a thing of
finitude and negation.

3. In conclusion, then, so far as the relation of this content in its
entirety to its mode of presentation is concerned, it would appear,
in the first place, agreeably to what we have above stated, that the
content of romantic art, relatively to the Divine, at any rate, is very
_limited._

(_a_) For, first, as we have already indicated, Nature is divested of
the Divine principle; in other words, the sea and mountains, valleys,
Time, and Night, briefly all the general processes of Nature, have
here lost the worth which they carry when related to the presentation
and content of the Absolute. The images of Nature receive no further
expansion in a symbolic significance. The thesis that their shapes and
activities might possibly sustain traits of Divine import is taken away
from them. For all the mighty questions in regard to the origin of the
world, in regard to the Whence, Wherefore, and Whither, of created
Nature and humanity, and all the symbolical and plastic experiments
in the resolution and exposition of these problems disappear at once
in the revelation of God in Spirit; and we may add that also in the
spiritual sphere the world of variety and colour, with the characters,
actions, and events, as they were envisaged by classical art, are now
concentrated in _one_ single _light-focus_ of the Absolute and its
eternal history of redemption. The whole content meets, therefore, at
this single point of the Inmost of Spirit[220]--that is, of feeling,
imagination, soul--all that strains after a union with truth, that
seeks and wrestles to bring to birth the Divine in consciousness, and
to maintain it; and, furthermore, is constrained to execute the world's
aims and undertakings, not so much for the _world's_ sake as to further
the unique and essential undertaking of its heart by means of the
spiritual conflict of man's inward nature and his reconciliation with
God, presenting personality and its conservation no less than all that
paves the way to them for this object, and this alone. The heroism,
which makes its appearance as the result of such aspirations, is not
the kind of heroism which prescribes laws by its own fiat, establishes
new systems, creates and informs circumstances, but rather a heroism
of submission, which accepts everything as predetermined and ordered
above it, and whose energies are now wholly restricted to the task of
regulating temporal events in line with such direction, and making
that which is in keeping with the higher order and of independent
stability a valid factor in the world as if is and in the Time-process.
For the reason, however, that this absolute content appears as
concentrated to a focus in the inward _life of the soul_, and the
entire process is imported into the life of mankind, the range of this
content is thereby also infinitely extended. It _expands_, in fact,
to a manifold variety practically without limit. For although every
objective history supplies what is substantive in that self-concrete
soul-life, yet for all that the subject of the same reviews it in all
its aspects, presents isolated features taken from it, or unfolds it
as it appears in continually novel human traits by way of addition,
and may very well into the bargain both import the entire expanse of
Nature, as environment and _locale_ of Spirit, and divert them to the
one single object referred to. By this means the history of soul-life
is infinitely rich, and can adapt its form to ever shifting conditions
and situations in every possible way. And, further, if the individual
at last steps forth from this absolute sphere and actively engages in
worldly affairs, the range of interests, objects, and emotions will
be difficult to count on the score in proportion as the spiritual
self-possession is profound, agreeably to the principle in its fullest
application; man is consequently distracted by an infinitely multiplied
profusion of interior and exterior collisions, revolutions, and
gradations of passion, and the most manifold degrees of satisfaction.
The Absolute in its unqualified and essential universality, in so far,
that is, as it is unfolded in the conscious life of the human soul,
constitutes the spiritual content of romantic art; and for this reason
his collective humanity, no less than its entire evolution, becomes its
inexhaustible material.

(_b_) Romantic art does not, however, _as art_ educe this content
in the way we found was the case for the most part in symbolic art,
and, above all, in the classical type and its ideal gods. Romantic
art, as we have seen already, is not, in its _specific_ capacity, the
instructive _revelation_, which, merely in the form of art, makes
the content of truth visible to the senses. The content is already
present in the conceptive mind, and the emotions independently and
outside the sphere of art. _Religion_, as the consciousness of truth
in its universality, is here an essential _premiss_ of art to a degree
totally different from what it was in the previous cases; and, even
if we look at the position in its wholly exterior aspect for the
consciousness that is actual in the reality of the material world, it
lies before us as the prosaic fact of the very present. That is to say,
inasmuch as the content of revelation to mind is the eternal absolute
nature of _mind_[221] itself, which breaks itself loose from Nature
in its bareness and _subordinates_ the same, its manifestation in the
immediacy of present life is such that the external material, in so far
as it consists and is existent, only continues as a contingent world,
out of which the Absolute recollects itself in the secret wealth of
Spirit, and only by such means attains independence and truth. The
external show receives thus the imprimatur of an indifferent medium,
in which Spirit can repose no ultimate trust, and in which it can find
no dwelling-place. The more it conceives the conformation of external
reality as unworthy of its fulness the less it becomes able to seek
consolation therein, or to discover its task of self-reconcilement
consummated by a union therewith.

(_c_) The manner in which, therefore, romantic art gives to itself
a real embodiment agreeably to the spirit of the principle above
indicated, and on the side of its external appearance, is not one
which essentially overleaps the ordinary presentment of reality: it
is by no means averse to accept as cover for itself real existence in
its finite defects and definition. That beauty therefore disappears
from it, which tended to raise the outside envisagement above the
soilure of Time, and the traces that unite it with a Past, in order
to declare the beauty of existence in its blossom in the room of what
had otherwise been a dismantled image. Romantic art has no longer for
its aim the freedom and life of existence in its infinite tranquillity
and absorption of the soul in the bodily presence; no more a life
such as _this_ arrests it. It turns its back on this pinnacle of
beauty. It interweaves the threads of its soul experience with the
contingent material of Nature's workshop, and gives unfettered play
to the emphatic features of ugliness itself. We have, in short, two
worlds included in the Romantic, a spiritual realm essentially complete
in itself, the soul-kingdom, which finds reconciliation in its own
sphere, and therewith the otherwise straightforward repetition of
birth, death, and resurrection now for the first time perfected in
the true circular orbit, doubled back in the return upon itself, the
genuine Phoenix life of Spirit. On the other hand, there is the realm
of external Nature simply as such, which, released as it is from its
secure association and union with Spirit, becomes now a completely
empirical reality, concerning the form of which the soul cares little
or nothing. In classical art Spirit controlled the empirical phenomenon
and transpierced it through and through, because it was the very thing
which it had to accept as its completed reality. But now the ideal
kingdom is indifferent to the mode of configuration in the world of
immediate sense, because this immediacy is beneath the sphere of the
blessedness of essential soul-life. The external phenomenon is no
longer able to express this inward life; and if any call is made upon
it for this purpose, it merely is utilized to make plain that the
external show is an existence which does not satisfy, and is forced
to point back by suggestion to the spiritual content, the soul and
its emotions, as the truly essential medium. Precisely for the same
reason romantic art suffers externality on its own part to go on
its way freely; and in this respect permits all and every material,
flowers, trees, and so on, down to the most ordinary domestic utensils,
to appear in its productions just as they are, and as the chance of
natural circumstance may arrange them. Such a content as this, however,
carries at the same time with it the result, that as purely exterior
matter, its worth is of no validity and insignificant; it only receives
its genuine worth when the soul has made itself a home in it, and it is
taken to express not merely the ideal, but _spiritual inwardness_[222]
itself, which, instead of blending itself with the exterior thing,
appears simply to have attained its own reconciliation with itself. The
ideality thus brought home to a point is that mode of expression which
is without externality, invisibly declaring itself, and only itself,
in other words, a tone of music simply, which is neither an object nor
possesses form, a wavelet over waters[223], a ringing sound over a
world, which, in sounds such as this, and the varied phenomena which
are united with it, can only receive and reflect one reverberation of
this self-absorption of the soul.

To sum up, then, in a word, this relation of content and form in the
romantic type, where it remains true to its distinctive character, we
may affirm that the fundamental note of the same, for this very reason
that its principle constitutes an ever expanding universality and the
restlessly active depths of heart and mind, is that of _music_, and
when combined with the definite content of imagination, lyrical. This
_lyrical_ aspect is likewise the primary characteristic of romantic
art, a tone which gives the key-note also to the epic poem and drama,
and which is wafted as a breath of soul even around the works of the
plastic arts, since here, too, spirit and soul are desirous of speaking
by means of the plastic shape to soul and mind.

As regards the _division_ of our subject, which we must now in
conclusion determine for the examination of this our third extensive
domain of artistic production on the lines of its development, we
shall find that the basic notion of the romantic relatively to
its substantive and progressive articulation is comprised most
conveniently in three branches of division we may define as follows.

The _first_ sphere is the province of _religion_ strictly, in which
the redemption history, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ
constitute the central interest. The principle which is emphasized as
all-important here is that self-involution which mind accomplishes by
negating its immediacy and finitude, overcoming the same, and by means
of this liberation secures its own self-possessed infinity and absolute
self-subsistence in its own kingdom.

This self-subsistence passes, then, in the _second_ place from the
Divine dwelling of essential Spirit, surrenders its pure exaltation
of finite man to God, in order to enter the _temporal world._ Here it
is, in the first instance, the subject of consciousness simply, which
has become self-affirmative, and which possesses as the substantive
material of its content, no less than as the interest of its existence,
the virtues of this positive subjectivity, such as honour, love,
fidelity, and bravery, the aims and obligations, in short, of romantic
chivalry.

The content and form of the _third_ chapter may be generally
indicated as the _formal consistency of character._ In other words,
if the subjective life has been so far concentrated, that spiritual
independence is its essential characteristic, it follows also that the
_particular_ content, with which such independence is associated as
with what is strictly its own, will also partake of such a character;
this self-subsistence, however, inasmuch as it does not, as was the
case in the sphere appertinent to essential and explicit religious
truth, repose in the substantive core of its life, is only able
to reach a formal type. Conversely the configuration of external
conditions, situations, and events is now also independently free, and
is involved consequently in every sort of capricious adventure. For
this reason we find, to put it in general terms, as the termination of
the romantic, the contingency of the exterior condition and internal
life, and a falling asunder of the two aspects, by reason of which Art
commits an act of suicide, and betrays the fact that conscious life
must now secure forms of loftier significance, than Art alone is able
to offer, in which to grasp and retain truth.

[Footnote 206: Throughout, of course, the German word translated in
these paragraphs as mind or spirit is _Geist._]

[Footnote 207: Absolute ideality may perhaps interpret the text more
intelligibly.]

[Footnote 208: It is so because as self-identity it distinguishes
itself from everything to which it is related.]

[Footnote 209: _Das wirkliche Subjekt_, Hegel means, of course,
individual man.]

[Footnote 210: "Most intimate" would perhaps express the meaning more
clearly.]

[Footnote 211: Hegel here gives expression to what is perhaps not
wholly defensible logic, though it may be truly poetic mysticism.]

[Footnote 212: I would refer any reader who is inclined to gasp at
this interpretation of Christian revelation to some useful remarks of
Professor Bosanquet in his Preface to his translation, p. XXVIII.]

[Footnote 213: _Die Ausbreitung dieses Selbstanschauens,
In-sich-und-Bei-sich-seyns_ _des Geistes ist der Frieden._ One of
Hegel's terrors for the translator, though the sense is obvious enough.]

[Footnote 214: The analysis no doubt has its interest. But among
other difficulties it is not easy to see how the argument, based
as it is on rational grounds, makes for anything but annihilation.
Death is a negation--it, according to the argument, puts an end to
the "process"--what remains then is apparently the evanescence of the
finite spirit. This reference to "happiness" assumes that conscious
individual life continues, which is a mere _pelitio principii._ If it
continues the former dual aspect would seem to be implied in it. The
analysis of the actual significance of death for Christendom and Greek
paganism retains, of course, its validity.]

[Footnote 215: But surely in a sense personal life, if only limited
to Earth's existence, may be, I do not say necessarily is, all the
more valuable. This is an important aspect of the matter which is not
here adequately answered, and it suggests a real grievance against
the extravagant follies of a certain type of Christendom. The present
feeling of the wisest minds of our own time will be inclined to
regard a good deal of Hegel's remarks here as insufficient or lacking
directness. One recalls those significant lines of a great writer but
recently taken from us:

/$
     Sensation is a gracious gift
       But were it cramped in station,
     The prayer to have it cast adrift
       Would spout from all sensation.
$/

Hegel's point of view seems neither to be that of mysticism nor mere
absorption.]

[Footnote 216: "Odyssey," XI, vv. 481-91. But this illustration is at
least evidence of the high value a Greek attached to life on Earth.]

[Footnote 217: True enough as an analysis of the Christian
consciousness; but the difficulty above pointed out remains so far as
the writer refers to a future life, which he sometimes appears to do,
sometimes not. Conditions are assumed for human personality of which we
can form no conception.]

[Footnote 218: He means it is the negation of that which is itself
a negation, finite existence. The conclusion is of course, as above
suggested, replete with difficulty.]

[Footnote 219: That is, I presume, the positive character of natural
conditions; but it may mean its own "affirmative" relation.]

[Footnote 220: _Auf die Innerlichkeit des Geistes._]

[Footnote 221: Reason or Spirit are perhaps preferable.]

[Footnote 222: The German words are _das Innerliche_ and _die
Innigkeit._]

[Footnote 223: This is obviously not wholly independent of form.]




CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS DOMAIN OF ROMANTIC ART

Inasmuch as romantic art, in the representation of the consciousness
of absolute subjectivity, understanding this as the comprehension of
all truth, the coalescence of mind with its essence--receives its
substantive content in the satisfaction of soul-life, in other words
the reconciliation of God with the world and therein with Himself, it
follows that at this stage the Ideal for the first time is completely
at home. For it was blessedness and self-subsistency, contentment,
repose, and freedom which we declared as most fundamentally defining
the Ideal. Of course, we cannot therefore on this account deduce
the Ideal simply from the notion and reality of romantic art; but
relatively to the classic Ideal the form it receives is entirely
altered. This relation, already in general terms indicated, we must now
before everything else establish in its fully concrete significance,
in order to elucidate the fundamental type of the romantic mode of
presentation. In the classical Ideal the Divine is in one aspect of
it restricted to pure individuality; in another aspect the soul and
spiritual blessedness of particular gods find their exclusive discharge
through the physical medium; and as a third characteristic, for the
reason that the inseparable unity of each individual both essentially
and in its exterior form supplies the principle of the same, the
negativity of the dismemberment implied in human life, that is the
pain of both body and soul, sacrifice, and resignation are unable to
appear as essentially pertinent to these godlike figures. The Divine
of classical art falls, it is true, into an aggregation of gods,
but there is no organic and essential self-division, no universally
proclaimed essence such as we find in the particular presentment of
man whether in form and spirit, whether empirically or subjectively
considered; and just as little has it confronting it, as being itself
the Absolute in invisible form, a world of evil, sin, and ignorance,
together with the task of resolving such contradictions in harmony, and
only by thus growing on level terms with the very truth and divine out
of this reconciliation. In the notion of the absolute subjectivity,
on the contrary, this opposition between substantive universality and
personality is inherent, an opposition, whose consummated mediation
the subjective ideality perfects with its substance, exalting thereby
the substantive presence to the articulate and absolute subject of
self-knowledge and volition. But there is, _secondly_, appertinent
to the reality of the subjective condition conceived as mind the
profounder contradiction of a finite world, through whose abrogation
as finite, and by whose resultant reconciliation with the Absolute
the Infinite by virtue of its own absolute activity makes its proper
being self-subsistent, and so for the first time exists as absolute
Spirit. The appearance of this actuality on the _terrain_, and in the
configuration of the human spirit receives consequently, in respect to
its _beauty_, a totally different mode of relation to that presented
by classical art. Greek beauty unfolds the inward aspect of spiritual
individuality solely as it is envisaged by means of its bodily shape,
actions, and events, wholly expressed in what is exterior, and living
wholly therein. For romantic art, on the contrary, it is absolutely
necessary that the soul, albeit envisaged in the exterior medium,
should at the same time demonstrate its capacity of self-withdrawal
from the tenement of the body and self-substantive life. The bodily
frame can therefore now only express the inwardness of mind, in so far
as it makes it plain that it is not in this material existence, but
in itself, that the soul discovers its congruent reality. On account
of this beauty is now no longer an idealization in respect to the
objective form, but rather the ideal and essential configuration of the
soul itself; it is in short a beauty of spiritual ideality, that is
the specific mode of such, as every content is informed and elaborated
within the temple of the subjective world, and without retaining the
external medium in this its permeation with Spirit. For the reason,
then, that by this means the interest disappears, which consists in
clarifying real existence to the point of our classical unity, and
is concentrated in the contrary direction of wafting a new breath of
beauty through the unseen content of the spiritual itself, art ceases
to retain the old solicitude for what is exterior at all. It accepts
the same directly as it may chance to find it, leaving it to take
whatever form may happen to please it. The reconciliation with the
Absolute is in the Romantic an act of the inward life, which no doubt
is embodied externally, but which does not retain that exterior in
its material realization as its essential content and object. We may
observe that in close association with this indifference towards the
idealizing union of soul and body, and in its relation to the external
treatment of the more predominant individuality of a sitter, we find
the art of _portraiture_, which does not entirely erase particular
traits and lines, as they are found in Nature, and her inevitable
deficiencies--defects inseparable from finite effects--in order to
replace them with something more adequate. Generally speaking even
here there is a certain limit to the licence given to Nature in this
respect; but to the general aspect of form in the first instance it is
quite indifferent; and no attempt is made to exclude wholly from it the
accidental impurities of finite and sensuous existence.

We may adjoin a further quite sufficient reason for the imperative
character of this radical definition of romantic art from another point
of view. The classic Ideal, where we find it at the culminating point
of its very truth, is self-exclusive, self-subsistent, retiring and not
susceptible[224] in its nature, an orbed individual totality, which
repels all else from itself. Its conformation is uniquely its own; its
life is bound up in that and that exclusively, and it will harbour
no affinity with what is purely empirical and contingent. Whoever,
therefore, approaches an ideal such as this as spectator, is unable
to appropriate its existence as an embodiment strictly akin to that
of his own presence. The figures of the eternal gods, albeit human,
do not belong to our mortality, for these gods have not themselves
experienced the infirmities of finite existence, but are directly
exalted above them. Their affinity with what is empirical and relative
is interrupted. The infinite subjectivity, what we call the Absolute
of romantic art, is on the contrary not absorbed in its presentment;
it is rather carried into its _own_ domain, and for this very reason
retains such external aspect as it possesses not so much _for itself_
as for the contemplation of others, as, in short, an exterior presence
which is freely offered for this purpose. This externality must further
appear in the form of common fact, the human as our senses perceive
it, since it is through that that God Himself descends to the level
of finite and temporal existence, in order to mediate and reconcile
the absolute antithesis, which is inherent in the notion of the
Absolute. For this reason our empirical humanity also contains in its
bodily presence an aspect, which unfolds to man a bond of affinity and
kinship, by virtue whereof he is able to contemplate even his direct
natural presence with assurance; and he can do so because the Divine
incarnation does not, with the severity of the classical type, thrust
on one side the particular and contingent, but presents to his vision
that which he himself possesses, or that which he recognizes and loves
in others around him. It is just this homeliness incidental to what we
ordinarily meet with which attracts and enables romantic art to entrust
itself to the external aspect of reality. Inasmuch, then, as the
externality which is turned adrift is called upon, through this very
abandonment, to suggest the beauty of soul, the lofty pretension of its
spirituality and the sacred colour of the emotional life, so, too, at
the same time, it is a condition of its doing so that it be absorbed
itself within the ideal realm of mind and its absolute content, and
that it appropriate the same.

To sum up finally what is implied in this act of surrender we may
assert that it consists in the general conception, that in romantic art
the infinite subjectivity does not abide in solitary self-sufficiency,
as the Greek god did, living in the full perfection and blessedness
of his self-exclusion; rather it moves out of itself in relation to
somewhat else, which, however, is its own substance, in which it
discovers itself again and continues all the time in union with itself.
This condition of self-unity in some other that is yet its own is the
real form of beauty appropriate to romantic art, the Ideal of the same,
which receives for its mode and envisagement what is, in its essence,
subjective ideality or inwardness, soul-life and its attendant
emotions. The romantic Ideal expresses, therefore, the relation to
another spiritual correlative, which is so closely associated with
the ideal possessions of the first one, that it is only by virtue of
this further one that the soul lives in the complete wealth of its own
kingdom. This essential life of the soul in another is, when expressed
in terms of emotion, the inwardness of love.

We may consequently affirm _lave_ to be the general content of the
romantic, so far as the sphere of religion is concerned. Love, however,
only receives its truly ideal configuration when it expresses the
_positive_ reconcilement of Spirit in its immediacy. Before, however,
we shall be in a position to examine this stage of the fairest and
most ideal spiritual satisfaction, we must first pass in review _the
process of negation_, which the absolute Subject enters in overcoming
the finiteness and immediacy of its human envisagement, a process which
is divulged in the life, death, and suffering of God for the world and
humanity, and its possible reconcilement with God. And, secondly, we
have on the other side, humanity, which is called upon conversely on
its own account to pass through the very same process in order to make
actual the reconciliation which is implicitly contained in its nature.
Midway within the steps of this process, in which the _negative_ aspect
of the sensuous and spiritual passage 011 to death and the grave
constitutes the central act of achievement, we shall find that the
expression of _affirmative_ blessedness is conspicuous, which in this
sphere characterizes art's most beautiful creations. For the better
division of this first chapter we may examine its subject-matter as it
falls into three distinct heads of inquiry.

_First_, we have the redemption-history of Christ; the phasal moments
of absolute Spirit presented in the person of God Himself, in so far as
He becomes man, and takes to Himself an actual existence in the world
of finitude and its concrete conditions, and in this to start with
isolated existence gives visible shape to the Absolute itself.

_Secondly_, we shall consider love in its positive presentment as the
feeling of reconciliation between the human and the Divine; in other
words the Holy Family, the maternal love of Mary, the love of Christ
and that of his disciples.

_Thirdly_, we have the community before us. Here it is the Spirit
of God as present by virtue of the conversion of soul and the
mortification of the natural and finite sense, in short, the return of
man to God, a return in which penances and pains mediate in the first
instance this union of God and man.

1. THE REDEMPTION-HISTORY OF CHRIST

The reconciliation of God with His own substance, history in its
absolute significance, or, in one word, the process of realization, is
made visible to our senses and assured to our minds by the revelation
of God in the world. The content of this reconcilement as expressed
in the most direct way is the coalescence in unity of the absolute
essence of reality with the individual subject of human consciousness.
An individual man is God and God is an individual man. In this truth
is implied the fact that the human spirit _intrinsically_, that is,
relatively to its notion and essence, is Spirit in truth; and every
particular individual in virtue of the humanity he connotes possesses
the infinite vocation no less than the infinite significance of being
an object of God and in union with God. But along with this and of
a like importance the obligation is imposed on man to realize this
notion, which, in the first instance, he merely possesses under the
implication of his nature. In other words, he has to place before
himself and attain to this union with God as the seal of his existence.
Only when he has thus consummated his proper destiny does he become
essentially free and infinite Spirit. This he can only do in so far as
that unity is itself the origination, the eternal ground-root of the
human and Divine nature. The goal is here the explicit beginning of the
process, namely, the presupposition for the religious consciousness
exhibited in romantic art, that God is Himself man and flesh, that He
has become this particular human individual, in whom the reconciliation
consequently no longer remains as only implicit, so that it is merely
to be inferred from its _notional_ existence, but asserts itself in
_objective_ existence also before the perception of human sense as this
particular and actually existing man. The importance of this aspect of
_particularity_ consists in this that it enables all other individuals
to find in the same the picture of his own reconcilement with God;
it is now no longer a mere possibility, but a fact which has on this
very account appeared as really accomplished in this one person.
Inasmuch, however, as this unity, conceived as the ideal reconciliation
of opposed factors of one process, is no immediately unified mode of
being, it is inevitable, in the _second_ place, that the process of
Spirit as exemplified in this _one_ individual--the process, that
is, by means of which consciousness is for the first time Spirit in
Truth--should receive the form of its existence in the history of this
very person. This history of Spirit attaining its consummation in one
personal life consists simply in all that we have already adverted to;
that is to say, the particular man casts on one side his singularity
both in its bodily and spiritual presence, in other words he suffers
and dies, but furthermore through the agony of death rises again out of
death and ascends as glorified God, very and real Spirit, who now, it
is true, has entered actual existence as this particular person, yet is
with equal truth only very God as Spirit in His community.

(_a_) This history furnishes the fundamental material for the romantic
art of the religious consciousness, in its attitude to which, however,
art, taken simply as Art, is to some extent a superfluity. For the
main thing here is spiritual conviction, the feeling and conception
of this eternal truth, and _the faith_ which is essential evidence to
itself of the truth, and becomes in consequence a vital possession of
the ideality of that conception. In other words, faith in its developed
condition consists in the immediate conviction that it has confronting
soul, in the organic movement of this history, the _truth_ itself. If,
however, the consciousness of truth is the main point of importance it
follows that the _beauty_ of the artistic reflection and presentation
is of incidental value to which we may be comparatively indifferent,
for the truth is present to mind quite independently of art.

(_b_) From another point of view, however, the religious content
comprises at the same time within its compass a certain aspect of
this process, by virtue of which it not merely admits of artistic
treatment, but, in a specific relation, admits of it as _necessary._ In
the religious conception of romantic art, as we have more than once
explained it, it is an inseparable concomitant of the content that
it carries anthropomorphism to the verge of an extreme; and this is
so because it is precisely this content which possesses for its main
_centrum_ the complete coalescence of the Absolute and Divine with the
human consciousness as a visible part of sensuous reality, in other
words, as envisaged in the external bodily frame of man, and further,
is compelled to represent the Divine in the form of individuality such
as is associated with the deficiencies of Nature and the mode of finite
phenomena. In this respect Art supplies to the consciousness which
seeks to envisage the Divine manifestation, the definite presence of
an individual and real human figure, a concrete image, moreover, of
the exterior traits of events, in which the birth, life, sufferings,
death, resurrection and ascension of Christ are more widely circulated
to the glory of God; so that it is exclusively by Art that the real
and visible presence of the Divine is for ever renewed over again in a
permanent form.

(_c_) In so far as, in this Divine manifestation, an emphasis is laid
on this, namely, that God is essentially a particular individual to
the exclusion of others, and does not merely present to us the union
of Divine and human consciousness in its universal significance, but
rather as that of this _particular_ man, to that extent, the very
nature of the content makes it inevitable that all the features of
contingency and particularity incidental to finite existence assert
themselves, from which the beauty which characterized the consummation
of the classic Ideal had purified itself. That which the free notion
of beauty had removed from itself as unfitting, in other words, the
non-ideal, is in the present case accepted as a necessary aspect,
which actually originates in the movement of the content itself and is
consequently made explicit.

(_α_) And it follows from this that when the person of Christ is
selected for the object of art, as so frequently occurs, artists, no
matter when or where, have taken the very worst course of all who
create in their presentment of Christ an Ideal in the meaning and mode
of the classical Ideal. Such heads or figures of Christ may no doubt
display earnestness, repose, and ethical worth: but the true Christ
presentment should rather possess on the one hand soul-intensity
and pre-eminently spirituality in its _widest_ comprehension, on the
other, intimate personality and _individual_ distinction. Both these
contrasted aspects are inconsistent with that blissful repose in the
sensuous environment of our humanity. To combine these two _termini_
of artistic reproduction, expression and form, as above defined, is a
matter of the greatest difficulty, and painters especially have almost
always got themselves into difficulties when they diverged from the
traditional type[225].

Earnestness and depth of consciousness should no doubt be prominent
in the expression of such heads, but the specific features and lines
both of countenance and figure ought as little to be of a simply
ideal beauty as they are entitled to fall short in the direction of
the commonplace and the ugly, or erroneously to aspire after the
bare pretensions of the Sublime. The truest success in respect to
the external figure will be found in a mean between the directness
of Nature's detail and the ideal of beauty. Rightly to hit on this
just mean is difficult. It is pre-eminently in this that the ability,
taste, and genius of an artist will assert itself. And in general we
may assert that in all artistic execution of this character--putting
on one side entirely the different nature of the content, which is
inseparable from religious faith--there is more scope offered for the
exercise of the artist's private judgment than is the case when dealing
with the classic Ideal. In classical art the artist seeks to present
the spiritual and Divine immediately in the lines of the bodily shape
itself, in the organism of the human figure; the lines of the human
form, therefore, in this ideal divergence from what is ordinarily met
with in finite existence, are fundamentally necessary to the interest.
In the kind of art we are now discussing the configuration remains that
of ordinary experience; its specific lines are up to a certain point
unessential, detail, in short, that may indifferently be treated in
divers ways and with greater artistic licence. The supreme interest,
therefore, is concentrated, on the one hand, in the mode and manner
whereby our artist makes that which is spiritual and ideal within the
content under the mode of Spirit itself shine forth through this
envisagement of ordinary experience; and, on the other hand, in the
individual discretion exercised in the execution, the technical means
and shifts employed, by virtue of which he is able to impart to his
creations the breath of spiritual life and to bring home this finer
essence to our hearts and senses.

(_β_) With regard to the further aspect of the content we have already
pointed out that it is referable to the history of the Absolute under
the mode that the same is deducible from the notion of Spirit itself;
a history which makes objective in the real world bodily and spiritual
singularity as infused with its own essential and universal nature.
For the reconciliation of our individual consciousness with God
does not immediately appear as an original harmony, but rather as a
harmony which only is modulated from infinite pain, from resignation,
sacrifice, and the mortification of the finite, sensuous, and
particular. We see here the finite and the infinite brought into unity;
and this reconciliation only asserts itself in its true profundity,
intimacy, and power by means of the grossness and severity of the
contradiction which yearns for resolution. We may therefore without
fear assert that the entire asperity and dissonance of the suffering,
torture, and agony, which such a contradiction brings in its train,
is inseparable from the very nature of spiritual life, whose final
consolation constitutes here the content.

This process of Spirit is, if accepted frankly for all it implies and
unfolds, the essence, the notion of Spirit absolutely. It consequently
determines for conscious life that _universal history_[226] which is
for ever repeated in every individual consciousness. For it is nothing
less or more than this consciousness as the universal mind or Spirit
is explicated in the multiplicity of individual life, reality and
existence. In the first instance, however, for the reason that the
essential significance of the spiritual process is concentrated in that
mode of reality which is purely individual, this universal history
comes before us itself merely in the form of _one_ person, to which it
is conjoined as its own, as the history, that is, of his birth, his
suffering, death, and return from death; at the same time there is the
further significance attached to this personal history, namely, that it
is the history of universal and absolute Spirit itself.

The supreme turning-point of this life of God is the putting aside of
individual existence as the life of a _particular_ man simply--the
story of the Passion, the suffering on the Cross, the Calvary of
Spirit, the agony of death. In so far as the content here comprises
the fact that the external and bodily form--immediate existence in
its personal mode--is, in the pain of its inherent contradiction,
propounded in this aspect of negation in order that Spirit may secure
its truth and its blessedness by the sacrifice of the sensuous and its
individual singularity, to that extent we reach the extreme line of
division between it as an artistic creation and the classic or plastic
Ideal. From one point of view no doubt the earthly body and the frailty
of human Nature is expressly exalted and honoured in the fact that
it is God Himself who is made manifest within it. On the other hand,
however, it is just this human and bodily side which is posited as
negative, and declares itself in its pain. In the classic Ideal the
undisturbed harmony in no way vanishes before the co-essential Spirit.
The main incidents of that Passion, the mocking of Christ, the crowning
with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the final death on the same in
the agony of a torturing and tedious death, are wholly incompatible
with the presentment of the Greek type of beauty. The lofty aspect in
such situations as these is the essential holiness implied in them, the
depth of the Spirit's inmost, the eternal significance of the agony in
its relation to the spiritual process, the endurance and Divine repose.

The personal environment of this sublime figure is in part composed
of friends and in part of enemies. The friends are throughout no
ideal creations, but relatively to the notion[227], particular
individualities typical of ordinary men, which the impulse of Spirit
attaches to Christ: the enemies, on the other hand, by virtue of the
fact that they place themselves in hostility to God, judge, mock,
put to torture, and crucify Him, are presented to us as spiritually
evil, and this conception of their wickedness of heart and enmity
to God brings in its train on its exterior side ugliness, grossness,
barbarity, the rage and distortion of Spirit. In all these respects,
in contrast with the classical beauty we have before us in such
representations the non-beautiful as an inevitable concomitant.

(_γ_) The process of death, however, in the Divine nature is only
to be regarded as a point of transition, by means of which the
self-reconcilement of Spirit is effected; and the aspects of the Divine
and human, the out and out universal and the phenomenal individuality,
to mediate the division of which is the main object in view, are
positively suffered to coalesce. This positive affirmation, which is
the underlying root and origination of the process, is consequently
also forced to exhibit itself in a like positive way. As emphatic
situations in the Christ-history the resurrection and ascension supply
conspicuously the very means to put that affirmation in the clearest
light. In more isolated fashion we have over and above this for the
same purpose those occasions in which Christ appears to His own as
teacher. Here, however, plastic art is confronted with an exceptional
situation of difficulty. For in a measure it is Spirit in its purity,
which is to be presented in this very impalpable ideality, and in a
measure, too, it is nothing less than absolute Spirit, which in the
full pregnancy of its infinitude and universality is affirmatively
propounded in union with an individual consciousness and exalted above
immediate existence; and yet notwithstanding such preconceptions it has
undertaken the task to envisage for sense in the bodily configuration
of this person the entire expression of the infinite and innermost
spiritual profundity which it refers to him[228].


2. RELIGIOUS LOVE

Mind in its ultimate and most complete explication as reason is, as
such, not the immediate object of art. Its highest and most essentially
realized reconciliation can only find such satisfied consummation in
the intellectual medium as such, that is to say, the ideal medium which
is withdrawn from the reach of artistic expression; for absolute Truth
stands on a higher level than the show of beauty, which is unable
to break away from the sensuous and phenomenal. If, then, Spirit is
to receive an existence as _Spirit_ in its positive reconciliation
through the medium of art, an existence which is apprehended not merely
as ideal, in other words, as pure thought, but can be _felt_ and
_envisaged_, it follows that the only mode left to us, which supplies
this two-fold condition of spirituality on the one hand and of its
capability of being conceived and presented by art on the other, is
that of the inner realm of Spirit itself, what we understand by the
soul and its emotional experience. And the condition of that kingdom
which alone fully answers to the notion of free Spirit brought into
peace and joy with itself is _Love._

(_a_) In other words, if we look at the content, we shall see that its
articulation is in its important features similar to the fundamental
notion of absolute Spirit, the return of a reconciled presence from
its Other to itself. This Other in the sense of the Other, in which
Spirit continues by itself, can only be itself something spiritual,
or rather a spiritual personality. The true essence of love consists
in the surrender of the self-consciousness, in the forgetting oneself
in another self, yet for all that to have and possess oneself for the
first time in this very act of surrender and oblivion. This mediation
of Spirit with itself and surcharge of its own to the unit of totality
is the Absolute, not, however, of course, under the mode in which the
Absolute coalesces with itself as merely singular and thereby finite
individuality in another finite subject; rather the content of the
spiritual individuality which is here self-mediated in another is the
Absolute itself. It is, in short, Spirit which is only the knowledge
and volition of its own substance as the Absolute by being in another,
and which receives therewith the fruition of such knowledge.

(_b_) More closely regarded this content as love has the form of
self-concentrated emotion, which, instead of making its content more
explicit, that is to say, presenting it to consciousness in its
definite terms and universality, rather converges the infinite breadth
of the same directly to one focus in the clear profundity of the soul,
without further unfolding in other directions for the imagination the
wealth which it essentially includes. By this means a content of equal
significance, which would be inconformable to artistic presentation,
is fresh from the mint of its pure and ideal universality, is none the
less capable of being the subject-matter of art in this individual
existence of subjective emotion; for while under a mode such as this it
is not on the one hand compelled to accept an articulation of perfect
clarity by reason of its still undisclosed depth, which is the obvious
characteristic of soul-life, yet on the other hand it receives under
this mode a medium that it is possible for art to make use of. For
soul-life, heart, feeling, however self-contained and spiritual they
may remain, have none the less a bond of affiliation with the sensuous
and material, so that they are able also on the outside show of things
through the bodily members themselves, through a look, the facial
expression, or in a still more spiritual way through the voice tones
or a word to disclose the inmost life and existence of Spirit. But
this exterior medium is in such a case only acceptable in so far as it
strictly expresses this most intimate life of soul in ways that reflect
the inward nature of the soul itself.

(_c_) We defined the notion of the Ideal to be the reconciliation of
the inward life with its reality; we may now in like manner point
to the emotion of love as _the Ideal_ of romantic art in the sphere
of the religious consciousness. It is _spiritual_ beauty in its
pure emanation. The classic Ideal also exhibited the mediation and
reconcilement of Spirit with its Other. But here the opposing factor
of Spirit was the exterior medium suffused with that Spirit, it was
its bodily organism. In love, on the contrary, the opposing presence
of that which is spiritual is not the phenomenon of Nature, but a
spiritual consciousness itself, another subject of such; and the
realization of Spirit is consequently effected by Spirit itself in its
own kingdom, in that medium which is uniquely its own. It follows from
this that love in this its positive self-fruition and essentially
tranquillized and blessed realization is ideal, but before everything
else _spiritual_ beauty, which can only be expressed for the sake of
the ideal virtue it possesses and further only in and as a part of
the inmost shrine of the soul. For that Spirit, which is present in
_spirit_ to itself and is immediately aware of its own, which withal
possesses what is spiritual for the substance and bottom of its very
existence, abides in intimacy with itself, and, best definition of all,
is the inward being of Love.

(_α_) God is Love; and consequently it is this most profound essence
which, in this form native to artistic presentation, is thus
apprehended and presented in the person of Christ. Christ is, however,
_Divine love_ in the sense that from one aspect of it declares God
Himself as its object, that is, God in the mode of His invisible
essence, and from another it as truly reveals humanity under the seal
of its redemption; and for this reason it is not so much in Him[229]
that the passage of one individual into another particular individual
is made manifest in His love, as the fact that we have here the _idea_
of Love itself in its universality, in other words, the Absolute,
the spirit of Truth in the medium and mode of emotion. With the
universality of its object the expression of Love is also universalized
in pursuance of which the purely individual concentration of heart and
soul is not made the important point, just as among the Greeks in the
ancient Titan Eros and Venus Urania we find, though, of course, in an
entirely different connection, that it is the universal idea rather
than the individual side of personal form and feeling which is the
factor emphasized. Only when Christ is, in the presentation of romantic
art, rather conceived as at the same time the isolate self-absorbed
personality himself, is the expression of love clothed in the form of
individual inwardness, and even then it is, of course, always exalted
and uplifted by the universality of the content.

(_β_) The kind of love, however, which in this sphere of art is most
within its reach and is generally the most successful object of the
romantic and religious imagination, is the love of Mary, the mother's
love. It stands closest to Nature's reality, is very human, and yet
entirely spiritual, without either the interest or the egotism of
sensual desire, not sensuous and yet present inward bliss in its
absolute condition of fruition. It is a love that has no longing
in it, not friendship, for friendship, albeit also so rich in soul
quality, requires a substantive content, an essential material as the
associating object. A mother's love, on the contrary, possesses without
any mutuality[230] of aim or interests an immediate basis in the
natural maternal bond. But in this particular case the mother's love
is just as little restricted to the purely natural affiliation. Mary
possesses in the child which she has carried under her heart and borne
with travail the perfected knowledge and feeling of her very self, and
this selfsame child, the blood of her blood, is also in equal degree
exalted above her, and yet for all that she is conscious that this
higher belongs to herself, and is precisely that she gains in her act
of self-oblivion and possession. The natural intimacy of the mother's
love is absolutely spiritualized, it receives for its very embodiment
the Divine; but this spiritual coherence remains lowly and unaware,
permeated in a wonderful manner with the unity of Nature and the
emotion of womanhood. It is the _blessed_ mother's love, and pertains
only to the _one_ mother, who first was recipient of its joy[231]. It
is quite true that even this love is not without its pain, but the pain
is merely the grief of loss, the lament over the suffering, dying, and
dead son, and, as we shall find it at a later stage[232], has nothing
to do with the injustice and torture suffered from a force without, or
with the infinite conflict with sin, still less with agonies and pangs
that arise in the soul. The inwardness of soul such as we have analysed
is the beauty of Spirit, the Ideal, the human identification of man
with God, with Spirit, with Truth; oblivion in its pure selflessness,
the surrender of the ego, which, however, in this surrender, is from
beginning to end at unity with that in which it is absorbed, and it is
in this coalescence that the feeling of blessedness is consummated.

Under such a fair aspect we have maternal love embodied in romantic
art, and it is at the same time a picture of Spirit itself, because
Spirit is only apprehensible by art in the form of feeling; and the
feeling of that union of the individual with God in its most original,
most real, and most vivid form is only present in the mother's love of
the Madonna. It must inevitably form the subject-matter of art, if in
the representation of this, the sphere of the religious imagination,
the Ideal, the affirmative reconciliation in its joy is not to
fall short of its aim. There has consequently been a time when the
maternal love of the Blessed Virgin has been placed as the highest
and holiest of Earth's possessions, and as such has been revered and
presented to mankind. When, however, Spirit is brought before the human
consciousness in its own native element, separated, that is, from all
underlying emotion, the free mediation of Spirit that is built up on
such a foundation can alone be regarded as the free road to Truth;
and consequently we find that in Protestantism, as contrasted to this
worship of Mary whether in art or belief, it is the Holy Spirit, and
the inmost mediation of Spirit which has become the loftier truth.

(_γ_) _Thirdly_, and in conclusion, the positive reconciliation of
spiritual life is embodied in the feelings of Christ's own disciples,
the women and friends who follow him. Such are for the most part
characters who have personally taken on themselves the severity of the
idea of Christianity, hand iii hand with their Divine friend, by virtue
of the friendship, teaching, and sermons of Christ, without passing
through the external and inward pangs of spiritual conversion, who have
carried it forward, made themselves masters both of it and themselves,
and in the depth of their hearts remain strong in the same. From such,
no doubt, the immediate unity and intimacy of that mother's love in a
measure vanishes; but they still possess as the bond which unites them
the presence of Christ, the common service to a great life which they
share, and the direct impulse of Spirit[233].


3. THE SPIRIT OF THE COMMUNITY

In making our passage over to a concluding stage of the subject under
discussion we can hardly do better than associate it with that which we
have already touched upon in connection with the history of Christ.
The immediate existence of Christ, as this particular man, who is God,
is assumed to be wiped out, in other words, the truth itself asserts
itself that in the manifestation of God as man, the true reality of
God thus envisaged is not immediate sensuous existence but Spirit.
The reality of the Absolute regarded as infinite subjectivity[234] is
simply Spirit itself; God is in knowledge, in the element of the inner
life, and only there. This absolute existence of God, as absolutely
ideal to the same extent as it is subjective[235] _universality_, does
not therefore admit of the limitations of this particular individual,
who has in the story of his life made manifest the reconciliation
between the Divine and human self-consciousness, but on the contrary
is enlarged to the full measure of the human consciousness which is
reconciled to God, that is, in general terms to our _humanity_, which
exists as an aggregate of many individuals. In his independence,
however, taken, that is, as a specific personality, man is not under
any immediate mode the Divine, but on the contrary finite and human,
which only in so far as it really propounds itself as a negation, which
it essentially is, and thereby annuls itself in this negative aspect,
can attain to the reconcilement with God. It is only by virtue of this
deliverance from the frailty of finitude that our humanity declares
itself as the vehicle of the existence of the absolute Spirit, as the
spirit of the community, in which the union of the human and Divine
Spirit within the bounds of human reality itself, in the sense of its
realized mediation, carries into fulfilment what essentially, if we
look at it in the light of the notion of Spirit, it is from the first
in that very union.

The principal modes which are of importance in respect to this new
content of romantic art may be distinguished as follows:

The individual, who in his separation from God lives in a condition
of sinfulness and conflict with the immediacy and frailty of finite
existence, possesses the eternal destiny to come into reconciliation
with himself and God. Inasmuch, however, as we find that in the
redemption-history of Christ the negative relation of immediate
singularity is affirmed and declared an essential feature in the
spiritual process, so, too, every particular individual is only through
a conversion from the natural state and his finite personality uplifted
to the free condition and into the peace of God.

This abrogation of finitude asserts itself in a threefold manner as
follows:

_First_, as the repetition in _actual life_ of the history of the
Passion, a repetition of real bodily suffering--martyrdom.

_Secondly_, the above conversion is removed to the _inmost_ life of
soul, as spiritual mediation by means of repentance, penance, and
conversion.

_Thirdly_, and finally the manifestation of the Divine is so conceived
in the world of Nature's reality that the ordinary course of Nature
and the natural mode of occurrences as they otherwise take place is
arrested, in order to display the might and presence of the Divine.
Wonder or miracle is consequently the form of presentation.


(_a_) _The Martyrs_

The earliest mode under which the spirit of the community makes itself
actively present in the human consciousness is effected when man forms
a mirror in himself of the Divine process and so makes himself a new
form of existence for the eternal Life[236] of God. Here we find once
more that the expression of that immediate and positive reconciliation
disappears, inasmuch as man can only attain to this by abrogating his
finite existence. Everything, therefore, that was of central importance
in the first stage returns to us again here only in an aggravated
degree, because the incompatibility and unworthiness of our humanity
is here presupposed, and to remedy this defect is assumed to be man's
supreme and unique duty.

(_α_) The specific content of this phase is consequently the endurance
of torments, and along with such the individual's willing renunciation,
sacrifice, and self-imposed renunciation with the express aim of
arousing sufferings, tortures, and anguish of every kind in order that
Spirit may reveal itself therein, and feel itself in union with the
fruition and blessedness of its heaven[237]. The negative aspect of
pain is an object in itself for the true martyr, and the greatness of
the revelation is such that it can treat with indifference the awful
aspect of that which man has thus suffered, and the dreadful nature of
that to which he submits himself. The first thing, then, which will
be brought beneath the ruthless mace of negation in order that the
individual who still experiences this drought of the soul may wean
himself from the world and become sanctified, will be his _natural_
existence, his life, the satisfaction of the most essential necessaries
of his bodily existence. The main subject-matter therefore of the
type we are now dealing with will be torments of the body, sufferings
which have been perpetrated on the believer either by his enemies and
persecutors out of hatred and persecution, or have been deliberately
accepted by himself on principle by way of expiation. In both cases
the individual accepts them in the full fanaticism of his readiness
to endure, not, that is to say, as an injustice to himself, but as a
blessing through which alone he is enabled to break down the walls of
what he feels to be his sinful flesh, heart, and soul, and so obtain
reconcilement with his God.

In so far, however, as this conversion of the soul can only manifest
itself in such situations, in atrocities and awful treatment of the
bodily frame the beauty of the presentation of such subjects may be
very readily impaired; and, in fact, we may say that the treatment
of all subjects of this kind is a perilous undertaking for art. For,
on the one hand, it is obvious that individuals here, impressed as
they are wholly with the hall-mark of finite existence, and its
inevitable blemishes and defects, will have to be represented in an
entirely different atmosphere from that we claimed for the history of
Christ's Passion; and, from a further point of view, we unfortunately
meet with unheard of agonies and horrors in such cases, distortion,
and dislocation of limbs, bodily torments, scaffolds, decapitation,
burning or roasting in oil, flaying alive, and every other sort of
frightful, repugnant, and loathsome abuse of the body, such as lie
much too remote from beauty for any sane art to think of selecting
them for its subject-matter. The artistic dexterity of the artist may,
in such cases, no doubt, so far as execution is concerned, be of the
highest class; but, at best, such manual dexterity will merely possess
a personal interest, we may indeed find before us the technique of an
admirable painter; but it will be equally obvious that all his efforts
have been unable to produce out of such material a harmonious work of
art.

(_β_) For these reasons it will be necessary that the artistic
presentation of this negative process should emphasize another aspect
of it, which stands out thereby above this agony of the body and soul,
and establishes in relief the positive presence of reconciliation.
This is just that essential reconcilement of Spirit which is finally
won as the result sought for of the pain suffered. Under an aspect
such as this the martyrs may be depicted as the guardians of the
Divine in conflict with the grossness of material force and barbarism
of unbelief. For the sake of their heavenly treasure they endure pain
and death, and this courage, steadfastness, endurance, and consolation
must consequently, with equal truth, appear upon them. And yet for all
that this intimate possession of their faith and love in its spiritual
beauty is no sanity of soul which brings to them a sense of the sanity
of their body; rather it is a sense of inward life, which has worked
its way through their pain itself, or at least is made manifest in
their suffering, and which, even in the moment of their ecstasy,
retains the experience of pain as an essential condition of their
beatitude. The art of painting has, in particular, made this attitude
of saintly humiliation the object of its efforts. What this art mainly
should strive after here is to delineate the bliss of such torments in
the pure and simple lines of the countenance and its expression, as
contrasted with the offensive laceration of the flesh; and to present
such an ecstasy as may reflect the surrender and victory over pain,
the fruition, in short, of the Divine Presence in the temple of the
soul. If, on the contrary, the art of sculpture seeks to give a visible
form to such a content, it will inevitably find itself less qualified
to depict this ecstasy of soul-life at this strain of its intensity
with such a concentrated power, and will consequently be compelled to
emphasize that aspect of pain and laceration in so far as it declares
itself in its full force on the bodily frame.

(_γ_) _Thirdly_, it is to be observed that in the kind of examples
with which we are now dealing it is not merely the existence of Nature
and immediate finite conditions which is affected by this attitude
of self-abnegation and endurance, but the impulse of the soul is
transported by such feelings to an extreme point of this heavenly
rapture to such an extent, in fact, that what is merely human and of
the world, even when it is essentially beyond reproach on ethical or
rational grounds, is none the less thrust behind and scorned. In other
words, just in proportion as the Spirit, which here makes vivid to
itself the idea of its conversion, is in the first instance deficient
in an educated sense, to that extent it will with so much the more
uncontrollable and logical frenzy--the entire force of its piety being
concentrated on this one object--turn its back on everything which
as finite opposes this bare and abstract infinitude of its religious
fanaticism, that is to say, on every definite human emotion, all
the manifold ethical impulses, relations, and obligations of the
heart. For the moral life of the family, the bonds of friendship, of
blood, of love, of the State, and a man's calling, every one of them
belong to the things of the world; and all that is of the world, in
so far as it is not as yet suffused with the absolute conceptions of
faith and developed in unity and harmony with the same, appears to
this form of abstract spiritual intensity of the soul of faith so
far from being something acceptable to its emotional life and sense
of obligation, that it is, on the contrary, a thing of no worth at
all, and therefore both hostile and hurtful to its religious state.
The moral organism of the human world is consequently not as yet
respected, because its significant features and duties are not as
yet recognized as necessary, integrated members in the concatenation
of an essentially rational reality, in which nothing, it is true,
ought to assert itself in a one-sided and independent isolation, yet,
none the less, as an essential factor in the organic process, must
be maintained as such and not be sacrificed. In this respect the
religious reconciliation remains itself _one-sided_, and declares
itself in the truly simple heart as an intensity of belief which
is deficient in comprehensiveness, that is, as the piety of the
self-secluded soul, which has not yet attained in its growth to the
fully expanded self-reliance of maturity, and to conviction based on
genuine insight and circumspection. When the force of a soul deficient
in these qualities maintains its opposition to the world which is
thus treated in a purely negative way, and forcefully breaks loose
from all human ties, even though they may originally be the very
closest, we can only characterize such conduct as the rawness of Spirit
and a barbaric result of the power of abstraction, which is simply
repulsive. So we may say that though from the point of view of the
religious consciousness, as we find it to-day, it is indeed possible
to honour, and to honour highly, this opening germ of religiosity in
such representations, if, however, such a pious tendency proceeds to
such lengths that we find it advancing to lay siege to what is both
essentially rational and moral, then, so far from sympathizing with
such a fanaticism of sanctity, we can only protest that a kind of
abnegation such as this, which casts off from itself, shatters and
treads upon that which is independently justifiable, and even sacred,
appears to us both immoral in itself and subversive of the very type
of religion it represents. There are many legends, tales, and poems
which deal with this extreme form of the pious craze. We have, for
example, the tale of a man who, though full of tenderness for his wife
and family, and, moreover, beloved by all his friends, leaves his home
and makes a pilgrimage. When at last he returns home in the guise of
a beggar he refuses to disclose his identity. Alms are given him,
and out of compassion a permanent lodging provided under the stairs.
In this plight he lives for twenty years; he sees the grief of his
family on his account, and only declares who he is on his death-bed.
This kind of thing, which we are asked to revere as sanctity, is, of
course, merely the egotism of a fanatic which revolts us. This long
endurance of renunciation may remind us of the distrait nature of
those penances, which the Hindoos voluntarily impose on themselves
on religious grounds. But the endurance of the Hindoo has a very
different significance. In that case a man deliberately places himself
in a condition of vacuum and unconsciousness; in the case which we
are now considering the _pain_, and the deliberate consciousness and
feeling of the same is the real object, which it is assumed will be
attained with just so much more purity as the suffering is associated
with the consciousness of the value of and devotion to the severities
which are accepted, and is, moreover, united with a vision for ever
concentrated on the renunciation thus made. The richer the heart which
takes on itself the burden of such ordeals, the nobler the content
of its own possessions, and yet withal believes that it is bound to
condemn them as of no merit, just so much the more difficult grows the
task of reconciliation, and the more prone it is to bring about the
most terrible convulsions and the most raving distraction. Indeed, to
our vision, it is clear enough that a soul such as this, which is only
at home in a world which, however full of ideas, is not the world of
common experience, and which consequently only feels its grasp slipping
from the stable and paramount centres of activity and aims of this our
actual world, ay, and although it be with heart and soul held in and
associated with that world, yet regards all that is moral there simply
as something which contradicts its absolute destination--we can only
say that such a soul, both in its self-inflicted sufferings and its
renunciations, is from the rational point of view simply mad, so mad
that we can neither feel any profound compassion for it, nor propose
any means of liberation. What is lamentably lacking to a mode of life
of this kind is an object of real substance and valid significance;
what it proposes to secure is an aim wholly personal, an object sought
for by the individual for himself alone, for the salvation of his own
soul, for his own blessedness. Few are likely to concern themselves
very deeply whether an individual, at any rate one of this type, is or
ever will be happy[238].

(_b_) _The inward Penance and Conversion_

The kind of representation, in the same general class of cases which
we shall now contrast with the one above examined, turns aside from
the extremity of merely bodily suffering, as it is also from a further
point of view more indifferent to the purely negative impulse directed
against what is essentially just and right in the actual conditions of
the world; the material of such representations consequently, both in
respect to its content and its form, opens up a ground which is more
conformable with ideal art. And this ground is the conversion of the
_inner_ life of the soul, which only here seeks to express itself in
its _spiritual_ pain, and its change of heart. Here, therefore, we
find in the first place that we have no more of those ever repeated
horrors and barbarities of pain inflicted on man's poor body: and,
secondly, that which we have referred to as the barbarian religiosity
of the soul no longer holds fast to its antagonism as against the
purely ethical aspects of humanity in order to trample under iron foot
in the abstraction of its purely conceptive satisfaction[239], and
in the pain of an absolute renunciation that other kind of sensuous
enjoyment; for the most part its attention is now solely directed
against what is in fact sinful, criminal, and evil in human Nature.
We find here a lofty assurance that faith, this spiritual impulse
towards God, is capable of converting the past action, even though it
be a sin or a crime, into something alien to the man who perpetrated
it, washing it away in fact. This withdrawal out of evil, that wholly
negative condition, which is realized in the individual by the
subjective volition and spirit at once scorning and confounding itself
under its former state of evil--this return to the positive which
is now self-established as the only real in contrast to the former
state of sinfulness, is the truly infinite content of religious love,
the presence and actuality of absolute Spirit in the individual soul
itself. The feeling of the stability and endurability of the personal
existence, which through God, to which it addresses itself, triumphs
over evil, and in so far as it is thus mediated with Him is aware
of itself as one with Him, produces as its effect the fruition and
blessedness of contemplating God, it is true, in the first instance
as the absolute Other in His opposition to the sin inherent in finite
existence, but further of knowing this Infinite Presence as identical
with me as this particular person, of knowing, in short, that I carry
this self-consciousness of God, as the seat of my own personality,
that is to say, my own self-consciousness, as certainly as I carry
the sense of my own self-identity. Such a revolution takes place no
doubt entirely within the shrine of the soul, and belongs, therefore,
rather to religion than art: for the reason, however, that it is the
intimate movement of the soul, which pre-eminently makes itself master
of this act of conversion, and also is able to throw a gleam of light
through the external embodiment, a plastic art such as painting can
also claim to make visible the history of such conversions. If it
attempts, however, to depict the entire course of events which belong
to such a transition, much that is very far from being beautiful may
readily appear in the result, because in such a case both that which is
sinful and repulsive requires to be depicted, as, for example, in the
story of the prodigal son. Painting, therefore, achieves its greatest
success when it concentrates the act of conversion into _one_ picture
where that is the prevailing motive, and pays little or no attention
to the previous course of events. The ordinary presentations of Mary
Magdelene may be noted as an admirable example of this kind of work,
and particularly in the hands of the old Italian masters has been
treated in a way both excellent in itself and throughout consistently
with fine Art. She is depicted here both in the characterization of her
soul and her external presence as the _fair sinner_, in whom the sin no
less than the sanctity is intended to exercise a sort of fascination
on the spectator. But at the same time neither sin nor sanctity are
treated with any great intensity. She is forgiven much because she has
loved much, and her forgiveness is in a measure the portion both of her
love and her beauty. And what affects us most of all in this picture
is this, that she makes for herself a conscience as it were out of
her love, and robed in the beauty of her sensitive soul pours forth
her sorrow in a flood of tears. We are not led to feel that the fact
that she has loved so much is her error, but rather that her fair and
fascinating folly is this, namely, that she _believes_ herself to be a
sinner,[240] for her exquisitely sensitive beauty only leaves us the
impression that in her love she is both noble and profound.

(_c_) _Miracles and Legends_

The final aspect, which is closely associated with the two above
considered, and is frequently asserted as a concomitant of both, is
that of miracle. It plays in fact an important part throughout this
stage of our inquiry. In this connection we may define miracle as the
conversion-history of the immediate existence of Nature. Such reality
lies before us as a commonplace, contingent existence. This finite
substance is touched by the hand of God, which, in so far as it strikes
upon what is purely external and particular, breaks it up, transmutes
it into something entirely different, interrupting what in ordinary
parlance we call the natural course of things. To bring before us the
soul arrested by such inexplicable phenomena, in which it imagines it
recognizes the presence of the Divine, vanquished, in short, in its
ordinary view of finite events, this is the main subject-matter of
a host of legends. In fact, however, the Divine can only touch and
dominate Nature as Reason, that is, in the unalterable laws of Nature
herself, as implanted therein by God, and the Divine has no occasion
to exploit Himself in the supreme sense of this term in particular
circumstances and modes of causation which run contrary to these
laws of Nature, for it is only the eternal laws and determinations
of reason which apply in any real sense to Nature. From another
point of view legends frequently carry with them quite unnecessarily
an amount of matter which is abstruse, out of taste, senseless, and
ridiculous, inasmuch as the intention is that both intellect and heart
should be stimulated to believe in the presence and activity of God
by precisely those things which are essentially irrational, false,
and heathenish. The consequent emotion, piety, and conversion of the
soul may even then awake our interest, but in that case it is only
on the _one_ side, namely, that of the soul: so soon as that enters
into relation with somewhat else outside it, and the idea is that this
external correlative shall effect the conversion of the heart, then we
inevitably require that such should not be wholly a meaningless and
irrational sequence of events.

Such, then, would be the fundamental divisions of the substantive
content at this particular stage of our inquiry, regarding that content
as the self-subsistent Nature of God, or in its aspect as a spiritual
process, through which and in which He is Spirit. We have here the
absolute object, which art neither creates nor reveals out of itself,
but which it has received from religion which it approaches with the
conviction that it is _essentially_ true that it may express and
represent the same conformably to its modes. It is the content of the
believing, yearning soul, which is intrinsically the infinite totality
itself, so that for it the external medium remains to a more or less
degree outside it, or a matter of indifference, and is unable to be
brought completely into harmony with that inner life. And for this
reason it frequently presents a repellent material which art finds
itself unable wholly to subdue to its aims.

[Footnote 224: _Nicht aufnehmend._ Not ready to absorb extraneous
matter.]

[Footnote 225: This of course is an opinion which may be strongly
contested in its application to particular artists.]

[Footnote 226: Hegel means not so much the history in which the whole
totality of events is comprised as that aspect of human history which
declares its universal significance as infinite spirit.]

[Footnote 227: That is, of self-consciousness in all that it
implies--the personality of Christ, for example.]

[Footnote 228: Hegel does not further dwell upon this relativity. But
the next paragraph explains what is really in his mind. The important
question, however, how far such events are worthy of credence as
objective history, to say nothing of the inadequacy of their artistic
presentation, one cannot but feel is deliberately evaded. What Hegel
would say no doubt was that the bare historical aspect was only of
relative importance. The main question was their significance in the
spiritual process. It is in this direction that much of our noblest
modern thought finds a certain indissoluble unreality of statement.]

[Footnote 229: That is in Christ.]

[Footnote 230: _Gleichkeit._ Equality, reciprocity.]

[Footnote 231: We are reminded of our treasures in Christian art such
as the Virgin and Child in Tintoret's "Flight into Egypt," Rafael's
San, Sisto Madonna and the rest.]

[Footnote 232: In other words as regarded at a later date by the
Church.]

[Footnote 233: This statement hardly does justice to the profound
idealism of the epistles of St. Paul.]

[Footnote 234: Perhaps "the infinite form of subjectivity" is better.
He means "the infinite form of individual self-consciousness."]

[Footnote 235: That is, characterized by personality.]

[Footnote 236: _Geschichte._ Life as an evolved Process.]

[Footnote 237: Compare the poem of Meredith, "Theodolinda," in his
ballads of the Tragic Life. It is, in another aspect, that iron crown
which that thoughtful contemporary writer, Mr. H. W. Nevinson, refers
to in his Essays on Rebellion.]

[Footnote 238: The elimination even of sympathy with such fanaticism
where it is quite sincere, a rare case no doubt, seems severe. The
best illustration in modern literature I know of the principle "all
or nothing," is Ibsen's great drama "Brandt." Readers of Carlyle will
doubtless recall from "Past and Present" and elsewhere that prophet's
repeated denunciations of the craze for personal happiness.]

[Footnote 239: By _intellectuellen Befriedigung_ Hegel does not mean
"intellectual" in a good sense, but merely that the man imagines his
happiness in his mind rather than feels it through the senses. The
psychology of religious ecstasy, however, is a rather involved problem.]

[Footnote 240: This analysis is rather surprising. Did Hegel, the
robust Swabian, really think the above the finest type of art's
presentations of the Magdalene? Does it not lean very closely to that
soft sentimentalism which a Carlo Dolci gives us in its decadence? At
any rate the idea that the Magdalene was not really a sinner flatly
contradicts the original references to her in the gospels, and to
my mind at any rate seems from the artistic point of view also to
destroy half the rare beauty of her repentance. The principle of
such an interpretation is surely the entirely pagan one, whether
Greek or French, that a great passion is its own justification
quite irrespective of moral considerations. She is the historical
impersonation of the frailty of a love too dependent on the senses,
not of one in which either nobility of bearing or extreme selflessness
is conspicuous. Hegel's analysis may be true enough of certain
pictures--but do they really present us the ideal; most assuredly not.]




CHAPTER II

CHIVALRY

The principle of the essentially infinite subjective consciousness
possesses for the content of faith and art in the first instance, as
we have already discovered, the Absolute itself, in other words the
Spirit of God as it is mediated and reconciled with the conscious
spirit of man and thereby is first itself independently free. This
romantic mysticism in its self-limitation to the sense of blessedness
in the Absolute Presence remains a mode of spiritual inwardness which
is abstract, because it confronts the things of the world in opposition
and rejects the same. Faith is, in an abstraction of this kind,
alienated from life, from the concrete reality of human existence,
removed from the positive relations of mankind to one another, who only
know and love each other in faith, and for the sake of their belief
as completely bound together in yet a third association, namely, the
spirit of the Christ community. This association is alone the clear
spring in which the image of that blessedness is reflected, without
it being necessary for man to look his brother first in the face, to
enter into any direct relation with another, or to experience the
unity of love, of trust, of confidence, of mutual aims and actions
in contact with the living concrete presence. That which constitutes
the hope and yearning of the inner life man here, in this sense of
exclusive religious intimacy, can only discover as actual life in the
kingdom of God, in the society of the Church. He has not as yet[241]
withdrawn this single identity in a third factor from his conscious
life in order that he may possess all that he is really himself in
his entire spiritual concreteness no less before his eyes directly
in the knowledge and volition of that other whole. The collective
religious content, it is true, assumes the mode of real existence, but
it is still an existence which is located in the ideal world of an
imagination which consumes the expanding boundaries of actual life. It
is still far away from attempting to satisfy its own life also in that
abundance which it receives from the world and its realization in the
world as the higher demand in the medium of life itself.

It follows that the soul which found its initial consummation in the
simple feeling of Divine blessedness must step forth from this heavenly
kingdom peculiar to the _religious_ sphere, must undertake the effort
of self-introspection and assimilate a content which is, as vitally
present, adequate to the demands of the individual consciousness in
its fullest extension. And in this process that which was before a
_religious_ coalescence of soul is changed to one of _secular_ type.
Christ indeed said; "Ye must leave father and mother, and follow Me."
And in the like spirit: "Brother shall hate brother; men shall crucify
you and persecute you." But as soon as the kingdom of God has secured
a foothold in the world, and is actively employed in transfusing with
its spirit and illumining the aims and interests of that world; when
father, mother, and brother are already numbered in the community,
then the things of the world on their side commence to assert their
just claim to recognition and furtherance. If this claim is not merely
fought for but vindicated then also the negative attitude of the
religious spirit, which was at first exclusively hostile to all that
was merely human, vanishes; the spirit of man enlarges, it explores
the full scope of its actual presence, and unfolds its heart in the
entire world of reality[242]. The fundamental principle suffers no
alteration; the substantive and infinite self-consciousness merely
directs its attention to another province of its own kingdom. We may
perhaps define this transition in the statement that the individual
singularity is now as such singularity independent of its mediation
with God and self-subsistently free. For precisely in that mediation,
whereby it divested itself of its purely finite limitation and natural
life, it has passed over the path of mere negation, and reappears
after having thus secured an essentially _affirmative_ position,
in the condition of a consciousness that is free and as such makes
the demand that it shall, in virtue of its own infinitude, though
the infinitude is here only in the first instance one of pure form,
secure complete recognition both for itself and others. In this the
religious mode of the individual consciousness is reposed the entire
spiritual wealth of the infinite soul, which it has hitherto filled
up with God. If we, however, made the inquiry, of what material the
heart of man is suffused in this its inward repletion, such a content
merely concerns the infinite relation of the subjective consciousness
in its active self-relation; it is simply replete with its own
formal medium, that is, as essentially infinite singularity without
further and more concrete expansion and significance as a content of
interests, aims, and actions which is itself essentially objective
and substantive[243]. If we further examine the matter, however, more
closely we shall see there are in the main _three_ emotions, which
in their independence rise up in the individual soul to the level of
this infinite mode, namely personal _honour, love_, and _fidelity._
They are not so much moral qualities and virtues as simply modes which
inform the intimate presence of the individual soul when fulfilled
with its own self-relation as such is recognized by romance. For the
personal self-subsistency for which _honour_ contends does not assert
itself as intrepitude on behalf of a communal weal, and the repute
of thoroughness in relation to it and integrity of private life.
On the contrary it contends simply for the recognition and formal
inviolability of the individual person. The same principle applies to
_love_, which forms the central subject-matter of this sphere. It is
merely the adventitious passion of one individual for another; and
however much it may expand under the wand of imagination or may be
deepened by excess of emotion, it is for all that neither the ethical
relation of marriage or family. _Fidelity_ possesses no doubt more
the appearance of a moral character, inasmuch as it does not merely
will its own but holds fast to something higher, something shared
with itself, surrenders itself to another's will, whether it be the
wish or behest of a master, and thereby renounces the personal desire
and independence of its own particular volition. But the feeling of
loyalty does not concern the objective interest of the social weal
in its independent form, that is, in the concrete freedom of the
developed state life, but associates itself merely with the _person_
of a master, who, in his own fashion, acts with independence, or
concentrates himself in more general relations and is active on their
behalf[244]. These three modes of feeling taken together and as they
reciprocally affect one another constitute with the exception of the
religious relation, which also has its part to play here, the principal
content of _chivalry_, and furnish the necessary steps of advance
from the principle of purely religious enthusiasm to the entrance of
the individual soul into the concrete social life of the world, in
the kingdom of which romantic art now secures a platform on which it
can from its own resources work out its independence, and at the same
time embody a freer type of beauty. It stands here, so to speak, in
the free room midway between the absolute content of the independently
stable religious conceptions and the varied particularity and
restricted boundaries of the finite world. Among the various arts it is
pre-eminently poetry which has shown itself most qualified to master
such a material, its modes of expression being directed to the life of
the soul as wholly occupied with its own domain and as realized in its
aims and events.

Inasmuch as we now have before us a material which man takes possession
of in his own spiritual life, or rather, from the world of his pure
humanity, we might at first suppose that romantic art occupied the
same ground as that of classic art. This, therefore, is an excellent
opportunity for placing them together both in comparison and
contrast. We have already defined classical art the Ideal of humanity
certified as true in its objective self-subsistence. Its imaginative
vitality requires as its core a content which is substantive in type
and excludes an ethical pathos. The Homeric poems, the tragedies of
Sophocles and Aeschylus, are in the main concerned with interests
of an absolutely factual content, an austere treatment of the
passions reflected therein, a solid style of speech and execution in
conformity with the nature of the ideas expressed, and above this
domain of heroes and other figures which alone are in their individual
self-concentration at home in such an atmosphere of pathos we have
the realm of the gods at a still more advanced stage of objective
presentment. Even in the case where art, in more introspective fashion,
is occupied with the infinite experiments of sculpture, bas-reliefs and
similar forms, or the later elegies, epigrams, and other diversions
of lyrical poetry, we still have the same type before us, that is to
say, the type which portrays the object more or less as it finds it,
and obedient to the claim that it already has secured its constructive
presentment. We have, in short, represented figures of the imagination
already established and defined in their characterization such as
Venus, Bacchus, or the Muses. It is just the same with the later
epigrams, where we get the description of a material already to hand
or, as in the case of Meleager, a posy of well-known flowers, bound
together with the cords of exquisite feeling and taste. It is, in
short, an exhilarating mode of activity carried on in a wealthily
furnished house overflowing in its stores with every kind of bounty,
image and provision for every conceivable object. The poet and the
artist is simply the magician, who wafts them into use, collects and
groups them.

It is wholly different in romantic poetry. In so far as it is of the
world worldly, and is not directly associated with the story of our
Lord, the virtues and objects of its heroism are not those of the
Greek heroes, whose type of morality Christendom in its early days
simply regarded as a brilliant enormity. Greek morality presupposes
the presence of humanity in its complete configuration, in which
the volition then and there as it ought to act conformably to its
essential notion of independence has received a definite content and
the actual conditions of freedom imperatively valid such as belong to
that content. Such are the relations of parents and children, married
persons, or of citizens of city or State in the realized liberty of
such. Now inasmuch as this objective content of human affairs belongs
to the _evolution_ of man's spirit on the basis of Nature cognized
and insured as actual fact, it is unable any longer to satisfy that
self-absorbed introspection of the religious life, which seeks to
destroy the natural aspect of human life, and must deviate considerably
from the virtue of humility which opposes it, and the surrender of
human freedom and its staunch self-dependence. The virtues of Christian
piety simply prove the death of such a world-attitude if held in their
extreme of abstraction, and only make the individual free, when he
absolutely denies the human part of him. The individual freedom of our
present sphere is no doubt no longer conditioned by mere endurance
and self-sacrifice but essentially positive in the world arena; that
infinite self-relation of the individual has, however, as we have
already discovered, the inward realm of the soul as its content and
only that, the subjective soul, that is, whose movement is in its own
peculiar medium, as the secular ground of its own domain. In this
connection poetry does not draw from any objective material already
presented it, no mythology, for instance, no imaginative pictures
and embodiments, which already lie ready waiting for its expression.
It stands there wholly free, without any extraneous matter, purely
creative and productive. It is free as a bird that sings straight
from its breast. It follows, then, if this subjective activity
proceeds also from a noble will and a profound soul, we shall merely
have in its workings and relations and existence the evidence of
caprice and contingency, for the reason that freedom and its aims
proceed, relatively to a content which is throughout immaterial, from
internal self-reflection. And, consequently, we do not find so much in
individuals a particular pathos in the Greek conception of the term
and a vital self-subsistency of character associated with it by the
closest bonds, as that which is simply a grade of heroic conception in
its connection with love, honour, bravery, and fidelity; a grade into
which it is mainly the nobility or depravity of soul which imports the
distinguishing features. The characteristic trait, however, which the
heroes of the Middle Ages possess in common with those of antiquity
is that of _bravery._ Yet even this receives a totally different
complexion. It is not so much a natural courage, which reposes on the
character that is sane and sound, and flows forth from the growth of
an unimpaired robustness of body and will, assisting the execution of
objective interests. Rather it is the outcome of the secret wealth of
the soul, its honour and chivalry, and is in the main a creation of
the phantasy, which undertakes adventures that have their origin in
individual caprice and the chance intricacies of external circumstance
or the impulses of mystical piety, and we may add generally the
personal attitude of the individual.

This romantic type of art finds a home, then, in two hemispheres, in
the Western world as this penetration into the more intimate shrine of
Spirit, in the Eastern this its first expansion of the self-absorbed
consciousness as it frees itself from the finite environment. In the
West poetry reposes on a soul which is withdrawn upon its resources,
which has become the centre of its activity, yet possesses this flavour
of secularly merely as one part of its complexion, as one aspect, over
which is superposed a yet loftier world of belief. In the East it is
the Arab above all, who as a solitary,[245] who in the first instance
has nothing before his eyes but his dried-up desert and his heavens,
stands forth in the full strength of life as the proclaimer of the
splendour and primary extension of the world of Nature, and thereby
still preserves at the same time the freedom of his soul. And generally
we may say that in the Orient it is the Mohammedan religion, which
has cleared the ground, made an end of all idolatry in the service
of finite things or the imagination, and given the soul at the same
time the personal freedom, which wholly floods the same, so that the
secularity does not here only constitute another province, but runs
beyond it into the universal licence, where heart and mind, without
ascribing any objective reality to God, find their reconciliation in
the jubilant lust of living just like beggars by throwing the glory
of their fancy on the objects around them: enjoy their loves and are
happy, blessed, and contented.


1. HONOUR

The motive of honour was unknown to ancient classic art. In the "Iliad"
it is quite true that the wrath of Achilles constitutes both the
content and the motive principle, so that the entire series of events
is dependent upon it; but what we moderns understand by the term honour
is not grasped here at all. Achilles believes himself to be insulted
to all intents and purposes only in the fact that the share in the
booty which he considers justly to belong to him and the reward of
his personal merits, his _γέρας_, has been taken away by Agamemnon.
The insult here has a direct reference to something actual, a bounty,
in which no doubt a privilege, a recognition of fame and bravery was
reposed, and Achilles is enraged because Agamemnon meets him unworthily
and lets the Greeks know that they are not to pay any attention to
him. An insult of this kind is not driven home to the real centre
of personality in its abstract purity; in fact Achilles expresses
himself satisfied with the restitution of the abducted slave and the
addition of other goods and bounties, and Agamemnon finally makes this
reparation although from our point of view they have both insulted one
another in the grossest fashion. Maledictions of this kind, however,
have only made them angry; and, after all, the particular insult, which
has reference to a matter of fact, is done away with in the same matter
of fact fashion.

(_a_) The honour of romance is, on the contrary, of another kind.
Insult has no reference here to the factual values of real things,
property, status, obligation, etc., but to personality simply, and
its idea of its own importance, the work which the individual claims
as his right. This worth is in the cases we are now discussing of
an infinite significance equal to that of personality itself. In
honour, therefore, man possesses the earliest positive consciousness
of his infinite spiritual medium, independent of the content. What
the individual has, what in him something peculiar creates, after
the loss of which it may yet subsist precisely as it did before--in
this elusive something the absolute validity of the entire subjective
life is reposed and apprehended in it both for itself and others.
The determining measure of honour therefore does not depend on what
the individual really is, but on what is contained in this personal
self-regard. This regard, however, raises all particularity to the
level of the universal conception that the personal core in its full
significance resides in this particularity which it claims as its own.
Honour is merely an outward show it is sometimes said. No doubt this is
so: but from our present point of view we must, if we look at it more
narrowly, accept it as the appearance and reappearance of the personal
medium self-reflected, which as the semblance of an entity essentially
infinite is itself infinite. And through this infinitude it is just
this show or semblance of honour which is the real existence of the
individual, its highest actuality; and every particular quality, into
which honour is reflected and appropriates as its own is by virtue of
this show exalted itself to an infinite worth. This type of honour
constitutes a fundamental determinant in the romantic world, and
presupposes that man has not merely passed beyond the limits of purely
religious conception and inward life, but actually entered the arena
of the great world and makes itself vital in the material of the same
simply by virtue of the pure medium of its personal self-subsistence
and absolute intension[246].

The _content_ of honour may be of the most varied kind. For everything
that I am, do, or is done to me by others affects my honour. We may
consequently reckon within its boundaries the out and out substantive
itself, loyalty towards princes, fatherland, a man's profession,
fulfilment of obligations, marital fidelity, integrity in business
affairs and conscientiousness in scientific research. For the point
of view of honour, however, all these essentially valid and veritable
relations are neither sanctioned nor recognized in and through
themselves, but only so far as the individual reposes in them his
personal relation and makes them thereby matters affecting his honour.
A man of honour consequently always thinks first of all about himself,
and the question for him is not if anything is on principle right
or not, but whether it is the right thing for him to do, whether it
becomes him then as a man of honour to make himself master in it and to
stand by it. And consequently he may also perpetrate the worst actions
and still be a man of honour. He creates at the same time objects at
will, imagines himself of a specific character, and appropriates to
himself, both as he sees himself and is seen by others, that which
in the natural order of things has nothing to do with him at all.
Even then it is not the natural fact, but the personal view of it
which places difficulties and devolutions in the path, because it has
become an affair of honour to maintain that character. So, to take
an example, Donna Diana conceives it to be derogatory to her honour
to confess in any way the love she feels, because she has pledged
herself not to listen to love. In general we may say, then, that the
content of love is at the mercy of accident, because its validity
depends purely on the personal attitude, and is not directed by that
which is the essential mode of the inner life itself. For this reason
we may observe that in romantic representations on the one hand that
which is on principle justifiable is expressed as the _law_ of honour,
the individual associating with the consciousness of right at the
same time the infinite self-conscious unit of his personality. What
is then expressed by the statement that honour makes such and such a
demand, or forbids it, is this that the entire personal attitude of
consciousness implants itself within the content of such a demand or
prohibition so that no trespass in any transaction can fail to attract
its attention without a repair and restoration being effected; and
we may add the individual is unable to attend to any other content.
Conversely, however, honour may resolve itself into something wholly
formal and contentless, in so far as it contains nothing but the shell
of the Ego, which is formally infinite, or only accepts an entirely
bad content as obligatory upon it. In this case, more particularly
in dramatic representations, honour remains but a wholly frosty and
unvitalized object: its aims express no longer an essential content
but simply an abstract form of consciousness. But it is only an
essentially substantive content which possesses the contingency of law,
and is capable of explication in its multifold environment, and can be
apprehended in its imperative sequence of consequences. This defect
in profound content especially rises to the surface when casuistry of
reflection includes within the embrace of honour matter which is purely
accidental and insignificant which the individual comes in contact
with. There is never a lack of material, because this casuistical
tendency analyses with great subtlety in its modes of distinction,
and many aspects may be elicited and made the subject of honour which
in themselves are quite unimportant Above all the Spaniards have
elaborated this casuistry of reflection over matters of honour in their
dramatic poetry, and made their particular heroes of honour deduce all
their consequences in their speeches. In this way the fidelity of the
married woman may form a subject of investigation into the minutest
details, and the mere suspicion of another, nay, the possibility of
such even when the husband is aware that the suspicion is false may
be an affair of honour. If this leads to collisions we can derive no
real satisfaction from the process, because we have nothing of material
moment to arrest us, and consequently instead of the resolution of an
antagonism which is causally inevitable we can only extract from it a
painfully contracted feeling. Also in French plays we frequently find
that it is an honour which is barren, that is entirely abstract, which
is made the essential fulcrum of interest Still more extreme is this
essentially frostlike and lifeless type of it apparent in the drama
"Alarcos" of Herr Friedrich von Schlegel. The hero here murders his
noble and loving wife. And we ask why. Simply for honour's sake; and
this honour consists in this that he may marry the king's daughter, for
whom he entertains no affection, and thus become the king's son-in-law.
Such a pattern is of course contemptible and an ignoble conception
which merely prides itself as something lofty and of infinite intension.

(_b_) Inasmuch, then, as honour is not only a semblance in me myself,
but must also exist in the mind and recognition of _another_, which
again on its part makes a claim to a similar honourable recognition,
honour is the extreme embodiment of _vulnerability._ For it is purely
a matter of personal caprice how far I choose to extend the claim
and to what material I care to relate it. The smallest offence may
be in this respect of significance; and inasmuch as man is placed
relatively to concrete reality in the most manifold relations with a
thousand things, and is able to extend practically without limit the
sphere of that which he conceives to affect him, and to which he
is placed in the relation of honour it follows that when we come to
deal with the independence of mankind and the obstinate isolation of
their units, aspects for which the principle of honour is in the main
responsible, there is no end to the strife and contention to which
they give rise. Moreover, in the case of insult also no less than in
that of honour generally, the important matter is not the content, in
which I necessarily feel myself insulted; for that which is negated
has reference to the personality which has appropriated such a content
as its own, and now conceives itself as this ideal centrum of infinity
attacked.

(_c_) For such reasons every insult to honour is regarded as
essentially of an infinite significance. It can consequently only
be repaired by means which possess that character. No doubt we may
have many degrees of insult, and as many modes of satisfaction; what
however at the stage we are now considering any man may take as an
insult, how far he will feel himself as insulted and claim satisfaction
therefore, such considerations depend once more wholly on the personal
caprice of the particular person, which is justified in pursuing its
object to the utmost point of scrupulosity and outraged feeling. In
this process of satisfaction, which is here claimed, it is essential
that the man who delivers the insult no less than he who receives it
should be recognized as a man of honour. For the latter requires the
free recognition of his honour from the former; but in order to have
honour in his eyes and through his action that man must appear to
the recipient of insult as a man of honour, in other words he must
substantiate by virtue of his personality the infinite character of the
insult which he has laid upon the outraged man and despite his personal
enmity that is thereby directed against him.

It is, then, a fundamental determinant in the general principle of
honour that no one through his actions can give to any one a right over
himself; and consequently all that he has done and may have initiated
will be regarded both previous to its commencement and after its
conclusion as unalterably affiliated to infinity, and will be accepted
and treated under such a qualitative relation.

Moreover, since honour, in its conflicts and its satisfaction in this
respect, depends on personal independence, which is conscious of
itself as subject to no limitation, but acts directly from its own
resources, we find a fact recur to our attention, which we previously
observed fundamentally characterized the heroic figures of the Ideal,
namely the self-subsistence of individuality. In honour, however, we
have not merely the secure self-dependence and action from personal
resources, but this self-subsistence is in this case united with _the
idea of itself_; and it is just this preconception which constitutes
the real content of honour in the sense that it perceives what is its
own in that which is presented exterior to it, and envisages itself
therein to the full extent of its personal life. Honour is consequently
a self-subsistence, which is a _self reflection_, and possesses in such
a reflection its exclusive essence, and moreover leaves it wholly to
accident whether its content be that which is essentially moral and
necessary, or contingent and insignificant.


2. LOVE

The second emotional source which plays a predominant part in the
productions of romantic art is _love._

(_a_) We have found in honour that the individual conscious life,
as it prefigures itself in its absolute _independence_, forms the
fundamental determinant; in a similar way the highest attitude of
love is the _surrender_ of the personal life to some object of the
opposed sex, a sacrifice of its independent consciousness and its
personal isolation, which for the first time in the consciousness of
another, is aware emotionally that it has thoroughly brought home to
itself its own self-knowledge. In this respect we may contrast love
and honour. Conversely, however, we are entitled to regard love as the
_realization_ of that which was already inherent in honour, in so far
as honour claims recognition[247] that it should be received in another
as the infinite significance of personality. This recognition is only
true and complete when it is not merely my personality in the abstract,
or in a concrete and consequently restricted case, is respected by
another, but when I, in the' entire significance of my personal
resources, with everything this either emphasizes or includes, as this
particular person in all my past, present, and future relations, both
penetrate the conscious life of another, and, in fact, constitute the
object of his real volition and knowledge, his effort and his property.
In this respect it is this same inward infinitude of the individual
which makes love of such importance to romantic art, an importance
which is materially enhanced by the exalted character of the wealth
which the notion of love itself carries.

More closely, then, love does not subsist, as may frequently happen
in the case of honour, upon the subject-matter of the mind and the
casuistry of reflection, but originates in the emotions, and for the
reason that here the distinctions of sex play an important part,
possesses at the same time for its basis natural conditions as already
related to spirit life. This basis is, however, only present in the
sense that the individual comes into relation with such conditions by
way of his soul-life, that essentially infinite aspect of himself.

This state of a man's losing his own consciousness in another, this
appearance of disinterestedness and unselfishness, by virtue of which
a man first really finds himself and comes to himself--this oblivion
of his own, so that the lover no longer exists, or is careful for
himself, but discovers the roots of that life in another, and yet
only comes into the full enjoyment of himself in that other is what
gives us the infinite relation of love; and we must look for beauty
mainly in so far as this feeling does not persist as mere impulse
and emotion, but through the imagination makes its world conform to
such a condition, exalts everything which otherwise belongs by virtue
of its interest, circumstances, and objects to real existence and
life, into an adornment of this feeling, bears away all else into the
charmed circle, and only attaches a value to it in this relation.
More particularly it is in female characters that love appears in
most beautiful guise because this sacrifice, this surrender, is with
them as the culmination of everything else. It is these qualities, in
fact, which concentrate and extend life in its spiritual breadth and
reality to the wealth of this emotion, which alone discover within
it a stay for existence, and if any misfortune sweeps across the
path, vanish like a light which is extinguished by the first rude
breath[248]. In this personal and intimate sense of feeling love is
not presented in classical art, and only appears as a feature of quite
secondary importance for the representation, or is only conspicuous
under its aspect of physical enjoyment. In Homer, either we find it is
not emphasized at all, or love appears in its most respected type as
wedded love in the sphere of the domestic state, exemplified in the
figure of Penelope, or as solicitude of wife and mother, exemplified
in the case of Andromache, or in other ethical relations of a similar
character. The tie, on the other hand, which unites Paris to Helen is
recognized as immoral, and the cause of the horror and fatal course of
the Trojan war. The love, too, of Achilles for Briseis has little depth
of sentiment or spiritual flavour, for Briseis is a slave entirely at
his disposition. In the odes of Sappho it is true that the language
of love receives the dramatic emphasis of lyrical enthusiasm; yet it
is rather the insinuating and devouring flame of the blood which is
here expressed than the profound emotion of the singer's heart and
soul. From another aspect we find in the short and charming odes of
Anacreon a wider and more jovial sense of enjoyment, which sports with
delight on the immediate sense of enjoyment as over something to be
simply accepted as it falls without troubling itself with infinite
heartaches, without this overmastering of the entire life or the pious
submission of a burdened, yearning, and yielding soul; in this type
the point of infinite importance whether it is precisely this or that
girl which you possess is as absolutely disregarded as the monkish
notion that you should shun maidenhood altogether. The lofty tragedy
of the ancients does not recognize the passion of love in its romantic
significance. Pre-eminently in the case of both Aeschylus and Sophocles
we find that it makes no pretension to contribute to the main interest
of the drama. For although Antigone is the accepted lover of Haemon,
and Haemon claims her before his father, nay, goes to the length of
committing suicide because he is unable to deliver her, yet it is the
external aspects of the case rather than the power of his own personal
passion, which, we may also note, is not that of a modern lover, which
he emphasizes before Creon. As a more essential type of pathos love
is treated by Euripides in the "Phaedra." But here, too, it rather
makes itself felt as a criminal aberration of the blood, as a passion
of the senses, initiated by Aphrodite, who is desirous of slaying
Hippolytus, because he refuses to sacrifice to her. In the same way we
have, no doubt, in the Medicean Aphrodite a plastic figure of love,
whose exquisite pose and lovely elaboration of bodily form is quite
consummate; but any profound expression of soul-life such as romantic
art demands is wholly absent. On the other hand, the immortality of
Petrarca, although he himself treated his sonnets in the light of
recreation, and it was rather through his Latin poems and other works
that he appealed to posterity, is due to this very love of the fancy
which, under an Italian sky, joined sisterly hands with religion in
the medium of a somewhat artificial outpouring of the heart. Dante's
exaltation, too, originated in his love for Beatrice, which was
transfigured in his soul to the white fervour of religious ecstasy,
while the courage and boldness of his genius created energetically
a religious outlook on the world, in which he dared, an attempt
impossible without such gifts, to constitute himself the judge of
mankind, and to apportion to individuals hell, purgatory, or paradise.
In contrast to an exaltation of this kind love is placed before us by
Boccaccio in those romances of his, in which he brings before our eyes
the morals and life of his country, partly in all its impetuosity of
passion, partly, too, in the spirit of frivolity without any ethical
aim whatever. In the songs of the German Minnesingers we find a type
of love, sensitive, tender, without much generosity of imagination,
sportive, melancholy, and monotonous. Among the Spaniards it is copious
in imaginative expression, chivalrous, somewhat casuistical in its
discovery and defence of rights and duties, so far as they relate to
private affairs of honour; and in this respect also possesses all the
richest splendour of enthusiasm. In contrast to this among Frenchmen
of more modern times love is more an affair of gallantry with a
distinct bias toward vanity, an artificial state of feeling converted
to the uses of poetry with a kind of sophistry of the senses often
marked with the finest wit, at one time expressing a kind of sensuous
enjoyment which is devoid of passion, at another a passion that brings
with it no enjoyment, a sublimated condition of feeling and sensibility
which feeds upon the maxims of reflection. But I must here break off
these general indications which our subject does not permit me now to
carry further.

(_b_) More closely looked at the secular interest may be treated
under two general divisions. We have on the one side secularity as
actually organized, such as family life, the tie of citizenship and
politics, law, justice, morality, and the rest; and in opposition to
this[249] independent and assured existence love springs up in noble
and impetuous spirits; this world-religion of hearts, which at one
time we find joining hands with religion in every respect, while at
another it supersedes it, forgets it, and by constituting itself the
single essential, or rather the unique and supreme condition of life,
is not only prepared to renounce all else, and to fly for refuge to a
desert with the beloved, but proceeds in this extremity of its passion,
which we can only exclude from the domain of beauty, to sacrifice all
the worth of humanity in a manner at once servile, degrading, and
despicable. An example of this we have in "Kätchen von Heilbronn." On
account of this cataclysm of life's essential interests the objects
of love cannot be realized without _collisions_ in the theatre of the
world. For despite of love the general conditions of life make their
demand and assert their claims and the despotism of love's passion is
unable to maintain itself against them with impunity.

(_α_) The first and most frequently exemplified type of collision we
may draw attention to is that between _honour_ and _love._ In other
words, honour possesses just as love possesses in its own right this
infinitude of claim, and may accept a content, which may confront love
as a positive obstacle in its path. The obligations of honour may
require the sacrifice of love. From a certain point of view it would
be, for example, dishonourable for a man of high rank to wed one of the
lower classes. The distinction between class and class is a necessary
fact of natural condition as ordinarily presented[250]. And so long
as our secular life has not been emancipated through the infinite
notion of true freedom, whatever may be the class or profession from
which that life in the particular individual and his free choice takes
its rise, to that extent it will always be Nature, that is, the birth
condition, which to a greater or less degree will, on the one hand,
determine the social position; and, on the other, these distinctions
of status, as they thus originate, and quite independently of general
grounds of honour, in so far as social position is made an affair of
honour, will maintain themselves as of absolute and infinite stability.

(_β_) Quite apart, however, from questions of honour we must add as
a further example of collision that the eternal and _substantive_
powers themselves, the interests of the State, love of country, family
obligations, and the rest, come into conflict with love and preclude
its realization. Particularly in modern representations, in which the
objective conditions of life have been already elaborated in all their
available stringency, this is a favourite type of collision. Love is in
such cases, as itself an important right of the personal soul, either
set forth in opposition to other rights and duties, or despite of its
own recognition of such it enters upon a conflict with them reliant
upon itself and with the power of its private passion. The "Maid of
Orleans"[251] is an example of a drama which rests upon a collision of
this kind.

(_γ_) And in the _third_ case we may find in a general way that
_external_ condition and its impediments oppose obstacles in the path
of love. Such are the ordinary course of events, the prose of ordinary
existence, misfortunes, passion, prejudice, follies, the selfishness
of others, occurrences of every conceivable complexity and kind. Much
will here present itself that is hateful, terrible, and mean, for
it is mainly the evil, ruthless, and savage aspects of other forms
of human passion which work contrary to the tender spiritual beauty
of love. More particularly in later times we frequently come across
external collisions of this sort in dramas, narratives, and romances,
works whose main interest centres in a sympathy for the sufferings,
expectations, and ruined prospects of unhappy lovers and affect or
satisfy us by means of their bad or happy endings, or merely provide
entertainment. This type of conflict, however, on the ground that it
merely depends upon accidental matters, is a subordinate one.

(_c_) No doubt love, from whatever of these points of view you choose
to regard it, possesses a lofty quality, in so far as it does not
merely remain an impulse of sex-attraction, but emphasizes the bounty
of a really rich, beautiful, and noble soul, and is a living, active,
courageous, and disinterested bond of union between one person and
another. But romantic love is also not without its _limitation._
That which disappears from its content is the essentially realized
_universality._[252] It is merely the _personal_ feeling of one
particular individual, which does not attest itself as fulfilled
with interest of eternal import and the actual content of organic
human life, as made up of family, political aims, one's own country,
obligations of profession, status, freedom, and religion, but merely
with the personal consideration which is intent upon receiving again
such private feeling as reflected back from some one else. Such
a content of what is itself still but a formal mode of spiritual
life does not correspond in full truth to the totality, which the
essentially complete personality[253] ought to be. In the family,
marriage, duty, and the State the personal feeling simply as such and
the unity which issues from it with some particular person and no other
is not the main point of interest. In the love of romance, however,
all centres in the fact that this man or woman loves that woman or man
and _no one else._ Yet it is precisely this fact that it is only this
or that person, which is solely based upon personal idiosyncracy, in
other words, the contingency of caprice. There is no lover who does
not think his beloved, no maiden who does not fancy her lover, as the
fairest and most supreme, to the exclusion of all others, although
they may appear very ordinary mortals in the eyes of other folk. But
in just this fact that all the world or, let us say, a large number,
act thus exclusively, and will not make an exception in favour of the
unique Aphrodite herself, but rather possess an Aphrodite of their
own, and very easily somewhat more than Aphrodite, we can only very
obviously conclude that there are many who pass for the same fairy
Princess, as no doubt every one knows well enough, that there are a
whole bevy of pretty or good and excellent girls in the world, all
of whom, or let us hope the majority, will secure their own lovers,
adorers, and husbands, to whom they doubtless appear as gifted in like
manner with all the beauty and virtue of Christendom. To bestow in
every case our preference on one, and only one, is obviously a wholly
private affair of the heart and of the separate individuality of each
person, and the incommensurable obstinacy in discovering as though by
a law of necessity one's life and supremest sense of such in just that
one individual is proof that it is a caprice no less infinite in its
significance than it is inevitable. We have without question in this
attitude the loftier freedom of the personal life and its absolute
power of choice recognized, the power to be, not merely as we find
in the "Phaedra" of Euripides, under the constraint of a pathos, a
divinity; but in regard to the absolutely individual volition, from
which such a liberty proceeds, such a choice appears at the same time
to be a mere idiosyncrasy, an inflexibility of that which is wholly
self-exclusive.

For this reason the collisions of love, more particularly when it is
set in hostile opposition to substantive interests, retain an aspect of
contingency and lack of authorization, because it is the personal life
as such which confronts in opposition with a demand not independently
justifiable that which for its own essential sake has a claim to
recognition. The personalities in the lofty tragedy of the ancients
such as Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Oedipus, Antigone, and
Creon have, it is true, among other things a personal object; but the
substantive thing, the pathos, which as the content of their action is
the compelling force behind them, is of absolute authority, and for
this very reason, is also itself essentially of universal interest.
The destiny which affects them on account of their action does not
therefore move us on the ground that it is a fate of misfortune,
but because it is a misfortune which affects or redounds to their
honour. In other words the pathos, which will not rest until it is
satisfied, possesses an essentially necessary content. When the guilt
of Clytemnestra, in this concrete case of it, receives no punishment,
when the insult which Antigone receives as sister[254] is not removed,
in both cases we have a substantial wrong. These sufferings of love,
however, these shattered hopes, this being in love generally, these
infinite pains experienced by lovers, this measureless happiness and
bliss which such imagine, are no such essential interest but rather
something that merely affects themselves. All men, it is true, should
be sensitive to love and may claim satisfaction in this respect. But
when a man fails to secure that object in some particular place, in
precisely this or that association, under just these circumstances
and in respect to one unique maiden we can admit no absolute wrong.
There is nothing essentially inevitable in the fact that a man should
capriciously select any particular young woman, and that we should
interest ourselves consequently for that which is in the highest degree
accidental, a caprice of his own conscious life, which carries with it
no impersonal expansion or universal significance. We have here the
source of that tendency to cool which we cannot help feeling in the
representation of the passion of romantic love however that passion may
be emphasized.


3. FIDELITY

The third type of soul-life which is of importance to the romantic
consciousness on the field of its activity in the world is _fidelity._
By fidelity in the sense we are now using it we do not mean either
the permanent adherence to the avowal of love once given, nor yet the
stability of friendship in the beautiful image of the same such as we
have left us by the ancients in that of Achilles and Patroclus, or with
yet more intimacy, that of Orestes and Pylades. Youth is pre-eminently
both the soil and the occasion from which friendship of this
latter type originates. Every man has to construct his path of life
independently, to work out and sustain a given mode of realization. The
time of youth, when individuals still live in an undefined atmosphere
of external relations which they share, is the one in which they
associate closely, and are bound together so nearly in _one_ mode of
thought, volition, and activity, that everything that any one of them
undertakes becomes at the same time the undertaking of another. When
men attain maturity this is no longer the case. The circumstantial
life of the grown man pursues its independent course and will not
admit of so close an affiliation with that of another that we can
affirm of it that one cannot accomplish it without the other. Men make
acquaintances and then separate; their interests and business are at
one time disjoined, at another they coalesce; friendship, intimacy of
mutual opinions, of principles, and the general trend of their life may
remain; but this is not the friendship of youth, in which no individual
unit either makes a decision or carries it into effect without
inevitably making it a matter in which another is concerned. It is an
essential principle at the very root of our life that in general every
man must look after himself, must, in other words, prove by himself his
capacity to confront the reality which affects him.

(_a_) Fidelity in friendship and love, then, subsists solely between
equals. The fidelity which we have now to consider is relative to a
superior, one more highly placed, a _master._ A fidelity of this type
is to be found even among the ancients in that of servants to the
family, the house of their lord. The most beautiful example of such a
relation is supplied us by the swine-herd of Odysseus, who sweats by
night and through tempest in order that he may look after his swine;
who is full of anxiety on his master's account, to whom he finally
gives loyal assistance against the suitors. Shakespeare offers us a
picture of fidelity no less moving, though it is here shown entirely
on the side of the feelings, in his "King Lear."[255] Lear asks Kent,
"Dost thou know me, fellow?" And Kent replies: "No, sir; but you have
that in your countenance which I would fain call master." This borders
as close as possible on that which we would make clear as romantic
fidelity. Fidelity at this stage is not the loyalty of slaves and
churls, however true and pathetic such unquestionably may be, which is
none the less devoid of the free independence of individuality and its
unrestricted aims and actions, and is consequently of subordinate rank.
What we, in short, have before us is the liege-service of chivalry, in
which each vassal preserves intact his own free self-dependence as an
essential element in the attitude of subordination to one of higher
rank, whether lord, king, or emperor. This type of fidelity, however,
is a principle of supreme importance in chivalry for the reason that it
forms the fundamental bond of union in a common society and its social
co-ordination at least in the original form of its appearance.

(_b_) The object which thus receives a fuller content and is made
apparent in this new type of association between individuals is not,
however, by any means patriotism regarding that as an objective and
universal interest, but a bond merely with one person, the lord, and
for this reason conditioned by private honour, personal advantage
and opinion. In its fullest brilliancy we find fidelity of this kind
in a surrounding world that is unregulated and uncouth, beyond the
control of right and law. Within a lawless reality of this kind the
most powerful and commanding spirits stand out as fixed points of
attraction, as leaders and nobles, and the rest rally round them of
their own free will. Such a condition is later on elaborated into a
legalized co-ordination of fealty, in which every vassal has his own
claim to rights and privilege. The fundamental principle, however, upon
which the entire system reposes is in its primary origins free choice,
no less in relation to the dependent vassal than to the conditions
under which he remains faithful to his vassalage. For this reason the
fidelity of chivalry is quite prepared to maintain property, right, and
personal independence and honour, and is on this account not simply
recognized as an _obligation_ which may be enforced to the entire
disregard of the private inclinations of the vassal however they may
arise. Quite the contrary. Every subordinate unit only continues there
and helps to establish the general social order so long as the same
falls in with his own wishes, inclinations, and opinions.

(_c_) On this account fidelity and obedience to the feudal lord can
very readily clash with private feelings, an exasperated sense of
honour, sensitiveness to insult, love, and many other chance incidents
of the personal or external life. It is consequently of a highly
precarious character. A knight, for example, is loyal to his lord,
but a friend of his happens to quarrel with him. He has now to choose
between the two objects of his fidelity, and, chief of all, he has to
consider himself, the claims of his personal honour and advantage.
The most beautiful example of such a conflict we have in the "Cid."
He remains as true to himself as he is to his king. If the king acts
wisely he assists him with his arm's strength; if his feudal lord acts
wrongly or the Cid feels touched on the point of honour this powerful
support is withdrawn. The paladins of Charles the Great exhibit
much the same attitude. It is a tie of chieftainship and obedience
not unlike that which we have already observed between Zeus and the
other gods. The superior lord commands, blusters, and scolds, but the
independent and powerful individualities resist him precisely when and
as they please. We find the most consistent and charming picture of the
conditional and easy terms under which this bond is maintained in the
"Reinecke Fuchs." Just as the magnates in this kingdom are most really
true to their own aims and independence, we find that the German barons
and knights in the Middle Ages were not at home when called upon to
act for the sake of the general weal and their emperor; and it really
looks as though our chief praise of the Middle Ages must consist in
this that no man is in such a period justified in his own eyes or a man
of honour, except in so far as he runs after his own inclinations, in
other words, does precisely that which he is not suffered to do in a
State which is organized on a rational basis.

In all these three stages of honour, love, and fidelity, we shall find
the soil on which the self-subsistency of personality, the soul, is
supported, an independence which, however, constantly unfolds in a
wider and more affluent content, remaining in the same self-reconciled.
Here stretches before us in romantic art the fairest strip of country
which we can find anywhere outside the enclosure of religion in its
strict sense, Its objects are concerned with that which is simply
human, a relation with which we can at least from one aspect of it,
namely, that of personal freedom, absolutely sympathize, and we do
not find here, as we do now and again in the religious field, both
a material and modes of representation which clash with our modern
notions. But at the same time we must add that our present subject
matter may very frequently be brought into direct relation to religion
so that religious interests are interwoven with those of the world
of chivalry; as, for example, was the case in the adventures of the
knights of the round table in their quest of the Holy Grail. In this
interfusion we find not only much that is mystical and fantastical,
but also much that is allegorical added to the poetry of chivalry. And
conversely this secular sphere of the interests of love, honour, and
fidelity may also be totally unconnected with the deepening of their
content with religious aims and opinions, and only bring to view the
earliest movement of soul-life in the secular aspect of its spiritual
intensity. That which, however, drops away from the present levels is
the repletion of this inner life with the concrete content of human
conditions, characters, passions, and realized existence generally. In
contrast to this variety the essentially infinite soul still remains
abstract and formal, and has therefore in front of it the task, to
accept as part of its own this further material with what it held
before, and to exhibit the same in the forms congenial to artistic
composition.

[Footnote 241: He has not in this exclusive sense of religiosity
identified himself with the spirit of the Christian community. _Der
Anderen_ refers to _Gemeinschaft._ Such appears to me the sense.]

[Footnote 242: _Zur Wirklichkeit entfaltetes Leben._]

[Footnote 243: Put more simply we may say in popular terminology that
it is filled up or amplified by virtue of the sense of individual
personality. This Hegel himself further elucidates below. Falstaff
undoubtedly possessed a strong personality, but in his famous soliloquy
on honour he deliberately emptied himself of any sense of it by
refusing to view himself under the self-relation, that is self-respect.]

[Footnote 244: I fail to appreciate this distinction, except in a very
qualified form. Even in the Middle Ages when the feudal relation was in
full force, the relation between the master and the servant was surely
one of the institutions of the State, though no doubt the rights of the
dependent were not always very readily enforced. Even in the case of
slavery in the Southern States of America the relation between master
and slave carried with it quite definite ethical obligations--there was
in general at least quite a distinct social if not actually political
status.]

[Footnote 245: I suppose Hegel means by _ein Punkt_ a centre or point
of life. The expression is rather unusual.]

[Footnote 246: _Absoluten Geltung_, that is its absolute validity in
its ideal character.]

[Footnote 247: The punctuation in text is defective.]

[Footnote 248: So runs the text. It comes from such a writer with a
shock. Why such qualities should vanish (_schwinden_) in the presence
of unhappiness it is not easy to see. It would rather appear that such
was the condition to evoke them. What is meant is, I suppose, that the
failure of _reciprocity_, especially in the love of women, often brings
complete collapse. We may illustrate it in several of Meredith's novels
such as "Diana" and "Sandra Belloni."]

[Footnote 249: The two sides would appear to be the secularity of the
social organism and "free" love.]

[Footnote 250: This I think is the meaning. Until the full notion of
liberty is apprehended the divisions of class will have the appearance
of natural necessity.]

[Footnote 251: Schiller's drama of that name.]

[Footnote 252: _Die an und für sich seyende Allgemeinheit._ The
universal notion as explicitly made actual in life.]

[Footnote 253: _Ein in sich konkretes Individuum._ The whole of this
analysis appears to me a rather abstract and professorial consideration
of romantic attachment, separating love from its reality of association
and relation in actual life. In so far as it is true it is purely
abstract truth, and must be regarded as such. In actual life it is no
more true that even in the average case misfortune blights the blossom
than it is true that the love of the individual concentrates itself
solely on the mere attachment between two persons. It is bound up with
the idea of family and continuation of the race, and so indirectly with
the State.]

[Footnote 254: As sister of her violated brother Polyneices.]

[Footnote 255: Act I, sc. 4.]




CHAPTER III

THE FORMAL SELF-SUBSISTENCY OF INDIVIDUAL PARTICULARITIES

If we take a glance back on the territory we have passed through, we
see in the first instance that the object of our investigation was
the life of the soul[256] in its most absolute capacity, in other
words, consciousness in its mediation with God, the universal process
of the self-reconciling spirit. The abstraction of this point of view
consisted in this that the soul by an effort of abnegation withdrew
itself from all that was secular, purely natural and human--even
when the same had ethical features, and for this reason possessed a
claim upon us--into its own distinctive domain in order to satisfy
its yearning for the pure heaven of spirit. _Secondly_, we found
ourselves able, it is true, to bring into view the human consciousness
without this factor of abstract negation which was included in that
mediation, in other words, positively in its independence and as
related to others[257], but the content of this secular infinitude as
such was none the less only the personal self-subsistency of honour,
the intensiveness[258] of love and the vassalage of fidelity, a
content which, no doubt, may appear before us in many relations, in a
many-folded variety and many gradations of feeling and passion, subject
to the most extensive changes of external condition, yet for all that
only propounds just this personal independence and inwardness within
such examples. The _third_ aspect, then, which we have now left us to
examine is the mode and manner in which that further material of human
existence, both on the side of its inward and its external life, that
is to say, Nature and its apprehension and significance for soul-life,
is able to enter into the romantic type of art. We have here to deal
with the world of particular objects, determinate existence generally,
regarded in its unfettered independence, and which, in so far as it
does not appear transparent to religion and spiritual synthesis,
bringing it into unity with the Absolute, asserts itself on its own
foothold and declares its self-subsistence in its own kingdom.

In this third province of the romantic type of art consequently the
purely religious material and chivalry with those lofty views and aims
that we found it brings to birth from its spiritual womb[259], but
which were not directly concordant with anything visible in the reality
of the existing world, have vanished. The new object of satisfaction
is a thirst for this actual presence itself, a delight in the facts of
existence, a contentment of the soul with the dwelling that confronts
it, with the finitude of our humanity, and what is finite, particular,
and the true counterfeit of such generally. Man is intent to recreate
for his own world the world as he actually finds it, although such
may imply a sacrifice of the Beauty and ideality of the content and
manifestation will reflect it as it stands before him endowed with
life in his art, will have that present life before his eyes as the
work of his own mind. The religion of Christianity as we have already
seen has not sprung up from the soil of the imagination as was the
case with the divinities of the East and Greece, whether we consider
them relatively to form or content. It is the imagination which
fashions the vital significance out of its own resources in order to
promote the unity between the reality of soul life with the perfected
embodiment of the same. In classical art this complete coalescence is
actually attained. In the Christian religion, on the other hand, the
secular aspect in its exclusive character is from the first accepted
for just that which it really is as an essential factor of the Ideal;
and the soul of man finds satisfaction in the ordinary and contingent
presence of the external world without the necessary interposition of
beauty. But man is nevertheless in the first instance reconciled to
God only by implication, and as a possible result. All men are called
to the blessed condition, but few are chosen; and the soul for which
both the kingdom of heaven and that of this world still remain as a
"beyond" is constrained to renounce both that which is spiritual in the
external world and its own presence therein. The point of departure is
from a distance infinitely remote from that world; and to make this
reality, which in the first instance is simply surrendered, a positive
constituent of that which is man's own, in other words to bring about
this rediscovery of himself and his volition in his own present life,
from which all takes its rise, this it is which supplies us first with
a terminating point in the elaboration of romantic art, and is the
final outlook to which the spiritual penetration of man is carried and
on which it is concentrated.

In so far as the form of this new content is concerned we have already
observed that romantic art from its first initiation was infected
with the contradiction that the essentially infinite mode of the
self-conscious life is, in its independence, incapable of being united
with the external material, and is bound to remain in such separation.
This independent opposition of both aspects and the withdrawal of the
inwardness of spirit into its own domain is that which constitutes the
content of romance. These two aspects are continually separated anew
by self-rehabilitation[260], until at length they fall entirely apart,
and thereby demonstrate that we must search for some _other field_ than
_Art_ to secure their absolute union. And by this falling apart we find
that these aspects in their relation to art are _formal_; in other
words they fail to appear as a totality in that complete type of unity
which was secured to them by the Classic Ideal. Classical art is placed
in a region of stable figures, that is in the midst of a mythology
and its irresoluble types perfected by art. The resolution of the
classical form is consequently brought about--as we found in discussing
its transition to the romantic form--leaving out of our present
consideration the generally more restricted territory of the comic and
satyric modes--by an over-elaboration in the direction of all that
pleases the senses or an imitation which loses itself in the deadly
frost of a pedantic learning, till it at length entirely degenerates
into a negligent and inferior technique. The objects of art remain,
however, the same throughout the process, and merely play truant to
the earlier intelligent mode of production with a presentation that is
increasingly more spiritless and a purely traditional and mechanical
technique. The progress and conclusion of romantic art on the contrary
is the resolution of the material of art within its own boundaries[261]
altogether, a material which falls apart into its elements, an
increase of freedom in the several parts, along with which process and
in contrast to the previous case, the individual craftsmanship and
artistic mode of presentment is enhanced; and in proportion as the
substantive content tends to break up to that extent attains a fuller
perfection.

We may now attempt a more specific subdivision of this the final
chapter of this part of our subject in the following terms.

In the first place we have before us _the self-subsistency of
character_, which is, however, a particular one, that is, a definite
individual self-absorbed in its world, its specific qualities and aims.

In opposition to this formal particularity of character we have the
external conformation of situations, events, and actions. For the
reason, moreover, that the inward spirituality of romance stands
generally in an indifferent relation to that which is external the
actual phenomenon[262] appears in the present case independently free,
that is as neither permeated by the spiritual content of human aims and
actions nor clothed in modes adequate to retain them. By reason of its
unrelated and loose mode of manifestation it therefore enforces the
contingency of natural processes[263], circumstances, the sequence of
events, and manner of its realization as _the unexpected._[264]

In the _third_ place, and finally, the severation of the two factors
asserts itself, the complete identity of which supplies us with
the real notion of art. This is consequently the dismemberment and
dissolution of art itself. On the one hand we find that art passes to
a representation of wholly commonplace reality, to the reflection of
objects precisely as they appear in their contingent isolation and its
equally singular characteristics. Its interest is now wholly absorbed
in reproducing this objective existence by means of the technical
ability of the artist. On the other hand we have, in what is a mode
of conception and representation entirely dependent on the accidental
idiosyncracy of the artist himself, that is in humour, a complete
reversal of the pictorial style above mentioned. For in _humour_ we
meet with the perversion and overthrow of all that is objectively solid
in reality; it works through the wit and play of wholly personal points
of view, and if carried to an extreme amounts to the triumph of the
creative power of the artist's soul over every content and every form.


1. THE SELF-SUBSISTENCY OR INDEPENDENCE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER

The fundamental determinant of our present subject-matter is once again
that infinitude implied in the very nature of the human consciousness
which was our point of departure in the romantic type of art. The new
accretions we have now, however, to add to our conception of this mode
of self-subsistent infinity consist partly in the _particularity_
of content, which constitutes the world of the individual mind, as
to a further aspect of it in the immediate coalescence of the ego
with this its particularity, its wishes and objects, and thirdly,
in the living individuality, in which the substantive character is
self-determined. We are not, therefore, entitled to understand under
the expression "character" as now employed that which the Italians
represented in their masks. The Italian masks are also no doubt
definite characters, but this definition is only presented by them
in its abstraction and generality, without a personal individuality.
The characters, on the other hand, of the type under discussion are
each of them a character unique in itself, an independent whole, an
individual person[265]. If we have, therefore, occasion here to refer
to the formalism and abstraction of character, such an expression is
entirely relative to the fact that the fundamental content, the world
of such a character appears, on the one hand, as restricted and to that
extent abstract, and, on the other, as qualified by accidental causes.
What the individual is is not carried or sustained by virtue of what
is substantive or essentially self-accredited[266] in its content,
but through the naked personality asserted by the character, which
consequently reposes formally on its own individual self-subsistency
rather than on its content and its independently secured pathos.

Within the limits of this formalism we may now observe _two_ main lines
of distinction.

On the one hand we have the stability of character in the energy of its
_executive_ power, which restricts its line of action to specific aims,
and entrusts the concentrated force of individuality thus restricted to
the realization of such objects. On the other hand we have character
under the aspect of a totality that is _personal_, which, however,
persists not wholly articulated throughout the content of that inward
life and in the unsounded[267] depths of the soul, and is unable to
unravel itself wholly, or express itself with absolute clarity.

(_a_) What we have therefore before us, in the first instance, is the
particular character which wills to be that its immediate presence
proposes, Just as animals differ from each other and discover
themselves as independent creatures in this difference, so, too, here
we have different characters whose range and idiosyncracy remains
subject to the element of contingency[268], and is not to be accurately
determined by the mere notion.

(_α_) An individuality of this kind built up entirely on itself
consequently has no ready thought-out opinions and objects, which
it has associated with any universal principle of pathos: all that
it-possesses, does, and accomplishes it creates right away with no
further reflection out of its own specific nature; which is just
what it happens to be, and has no wish to be rooted in anything more
exalted, to be resolved in that and to find its justification in
something substantive. Rather it reposes unyielding and unmalleable
on itself, and in this stability either goes on its way or goes to
ground. A self-subsistency of character of this kind is only able to
appear, where the secular or natural man[269], in other words, humanity
in its particularity has secured its fullest claim. Pre-eminently the
characters of Shakespeare are of this type. It is just this iron[270]
steadfastness and exclusiveness which constitutes the aspect of them
which most excites our wonder. We have no word here of religion for
religion's sake, or action as the embodiment of human reconciliation,
in the unqualified religious sense, or of morality pure and simple.
On the contrary we are presented with individuals, conceived as
dependent solely on themselves, possessed with aims that are their
own exclusively, exclusively deducible from their individuality, and
which they carry through as best satisfies them with the unmitigated
consequences of passion, and with no incidental reflection on the
principles involved. In particular the tragedies, such as "Macbeth,"
"Othello," "Richard III" and others contain one character of this type
for their main interest surrounded by others less pre-eminent for such
elemental energy. Macbeth is forced by his character, for example, into
the fetters of his ambitious passion. At first he hesitates, then he
stretches his hand to seize the crown; he commits a murder in order
to secure it, and in order to maintain it storms on through the tale
of horror. This regardless tenacity, this identity of the man with
himself, and the object which his own personality brings to birth is
the source to him of an abiding interest. Nothing makes him budge,
neither the respect for the sacredness of kingship, nor the madness of
his wife, nor the rout of his vassals, nor destruction as it rushes
upon him, neither divine nor human claims--he withdraws from them
all into himself and persists. Lady Macbeth is a character of the
same mould, and it is merely the chatter of our latter-day tasteless
criticism which can find in her the least flavour of affection. At
her very first entrance, on reading Macbeth's letter reporting his
meeting with the witches and their prophecy in the words[271]: "Hail to
thee, thane of Cawdor! Hail to thee king that shall be!" she exclaims,
"Glamis thou art and Cawdor; and shall be what thou art promised. Yet
do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness, to
catch the nearest way." She shows no affectionate trait, no joy over
the happiness of her husband, no moral emotion, no sympathy, no pity
of a noble soul; she simply fears lest the character of her husband
will stand in the path of his ambition. She regards him simply as a
means. With her there is no recoil, no uncertainty, no consideration,
no retreating, as we find is at first the case with Macbeth, no
repentance, but the pure abstraction and rigour of character, which
perpetrates that which falls in with it, until it finally breaks.
This collapse which comes in a tempest on Macbeth from the outside as
he executes his object, becomes madness of the mind in Lady Macbeth.
Of the same type is Richard III, Othello, the old Margaret and many
another also. We have its opposite in the wretched coherence[272] of
modern characters, such as those of Kotzebue, which are outwardly noble
in the highest degree, great and excellent, yet in their soul-force
are all rags and tatters. Later writers have done no better in other
relations, despite their supreme contempt for Kotzebue. Heinrich von
Kleish is an example with his Kätchen and Prince von Homburg[273],
characters in which, in contrast to the alert condition of real causal
effect, magnetism, somnambulism, and sleep-walking are depicted as
that which is of highest and most effective moment. This Prince von
Homburg is a most pitiable exhibition of a general; he is distracted
when he makes his military dispositions, writes out his orders in a
way none can decipher them, is engaged in the night previous to the
battle with morbid forebodings, and acts on the day of battle like a
fool. And despite such duality, raggedness, and lack of harmony in
their characters these writers imagine that they tread in the footsteps
of Shakespeare. Wide indeed is the distance which separates them, for
the characters of Shakespeare are essentially consequent in what they
do; they remain staunch to their master passion; in what they are and
in what confronts them, nothing makes them veer round but what is in
strict accord with their rigidly determinate character.

(_β_) The more particular, then, the character is, which relies purely
on itself, and consequently readily approaches evil, to that extent
it is forced in the concrete world of reality to maintain itself, not
merely against the obstacles which lie in its path and prevent the
realization of life's aims, but so much more by this very realization
such is driven headlong to its downfall. In other words, on account
of the fact that it achieves its object, the fate that has its origin
in the specific nature of its character itself, deals it a blow in a
mode of destruction it has itself prepared. The development of this
fatality is, however, not merely a development from the _action_ of the
particular personality, but quite as much a growth of the soul[274],
a development of the _character_ itself in its headlong movement,
its running wild, its shattering in pieces or exhaustion. Among the
Greeks, for whom pathos, the substantive content of action, rather
than the personal character, is the important feature, a destiny
affects the character that is thus sharply defined to a less degree for
this reason, that it is not further evolved within the sphere of its
activities, but remains at their conclusion what it was at the start.
In the compass of our present subject-matter, however, by the carrying
through of the action itself, the inner life of the personality is
evolved quite as much as the progress of the action; the advance is
not simply on the outside. The action of Macbeth appears at the same
time a descent of the soul into savagery, accompanied by a result
which, when all irresolution is thrown to the winds, and the dice is
cast, leaves nothing further able to restrain it. His wife is from the
very first decided: development is shown here merely as the anxiety
of the soul, which is carried to the point of physical and spiritual
ruin, the madness, in short, which strikes her down. And this is the
kind of process which we can follow in the majority of Shakespeare's
characters, whether important or unimportant. The characters of ancient
drama assert themselves, no doubt, also on fixed lines, and we find
them even face to face with opposed forces, relief from which is no
longer possible except through the advent of a _deus ex machina._ Yet
this stability, as in the case of Philoctetes, is united to a content,
and, on the whole, penetrated with a pathos which may be vindicated on
ethical grounds.

(_γ_) In the sphere of presentation we are now considering, owing to
the contingent nature of all that the characters which belong to it
seize upon as their aim and the independence of their individuality,
no _objective reconciliation_ is possible. The environment of all that
they are, and what opposes their progress, is in part without defined
lines, but also in part we see that there is neither a "Whence" nor a
"Whither" unriddled for themselves. Here we have once more presented
to us that Fate which is the most abstract form of Necessity. The only
reconciliation of the individual issues from the infinite mode of his
soul-life, his own steadfastness, in which he stands supreme over his
passion and his destiny. "Thus it came to pass,"[275] whatever falls
in his way, whether it be due to a controlling destiny, necessity or
accident, there is his "Wherefore"; he accepts it at once without
further reflection. It is fact, and man adjusts himself thereto, and
tries to make himself as stone toward its authority.

(_b_) In absolute contrast to the above, however, there is a further
or _second_ mode in which the formal aspect of character may find its
seat within the _innermost_ of soul-life, and in which the individual
may remain fixed without being able to extend its range or execute its
effects.

(_α_) Such are those spiritual natures of intrinsic substance, who,
while self-absorbed in a complex whole, are only able in the simplicity
of their compactness[276] to perfect that profound activity within the
shrine of the soul without further development or explication in the
world around them. The formalism which we have hitherto been examining
was relative to the defined character of the content, the entire
self-concentration[277] of the individual upon one object, which it
makes to appear in all its unrelieved severity, a concentration which
expressed itself, was carried out, and in which, just as circumstances
fell out, either collapsed or held on to the end. This further mode
of formalism is emphasized in a converse way by its undisclosed and
formless character, and by its defect of expression and expository
power. A soul of this type is like some precious jewel, which is only
visible at certain points, a manifestation which is that of a lightning
flash.

(_β_) And the reason that such state of self-seclusion should still be
of worth and interest to us is due to the fact that it presupposes a
secret wealth of the soul, which, however, only permits its infinite
depth and fulness, and precisely, by means of this silence, to show
itself in a few and so to speak half-muted ways of expression. Such
simple natures, unconscious of what they possess, and without speech,
may exercise an extraordinary fascination. But that this may be so
their silence must be like the unruffled stillness of the sea upon
its surface, over its unsounded depths, not the silence of all that
is shallow, hollow, and stupid. It is quite possible sometimes for
the dullest fellow to succeed by means of an external demeanour that
manages very little to expose itself, and merely presents now and
again something that is but half intelligible, to awake in others
the opinion that it is the veil of a profound wisdom and spiritual
depth, so that people wonder what in the world lies hidden in such a
heart and soul, where we find in the end there is just nothing. The
infinite content and profundity of _silent_ souls of the genuine type
is made clear to us--and to declare it makes the greatest demand on
the intuitive powers and executive ability of the artist--by means of
isolated, unrelated, naïve, and involuntary expressions of soul-life,
which quite unintentionally make it plain to all who can grasp their
significance that such a soul has seized upon the substantial import
of all that confronts it with the richest quality of spiritual
insight, that its reflective capacity, however, is not carried further
by positive expansion into the general environment of particular
interests, motives, and finite aims, but rather preserves its original
purity that the fact it refuses to have its powers dissipated by the
commonplace excitements of the heart and the serious quests and modes
of sympathy which are thus inevitable, may remain unknown to the world.

(_γ_) A time must, however, arrive for a soul of this type in which
it becomes uniquely affected at one definite point of attachment in
that inward worlds it concentrates the whole of its undivided powers
in one supreme form of emotion that dominates its life-current; it
adheres to this with a force that refuses to be diverted, and secures
happiness therein, or goes to ground from lack of support. To retain
a hold on life a man requires a constantly expanding breadth of
ethical sustenance, which alone supplies an objective stability. To
this type of character belong some of the most fascinating figures in
romantic art, whose full perfection of beauty we shall find among the
creations of Shakespeare. As an illustration we may take the Juliet
in his "Romeo and Juliet." It is possible at this moment to see a
reproduction of this play in this city[278]. It is well worth going
to. The picture we have given us there of this character is a moving,
lifelike, passionate, talented, highly finished and noble one. But for
all that it is possible to entertain a somewhat different conception
of the part. In other words, we may figure for ourselves a maiden in
the first instance simple as a child, of only fourteen or fifteen years
of age, who, it is quite clear, has as yet no self-knowledge or world
wisdom, no emotional activity, no strong inclination or wishes of the
heart, but has rather glanced into the motley show of the world as into
some _laterna magica_ without learning anything from it, or reflecting
upon what is seen there. All in a twinkling we behold the development
of the entire strength of this soul, of its artfulness[279], its
circumspection, its force; it is prepared to sacrifice everything and
to submit itself to the severest ordeals, so that in its entirety it
now suddenly appears to be the first breaking forth of the full rose
in all its petals and folds, an infinite outburst of the innermost
purity which gushes from the spring source of the soul, in which it
had held itself back previously as yet undiscerned, unmoulded and
undeveloped; which moreover, as the now existing creation of _one_
awakened interest, betrays itself unpremeditated in the fulness and
strength of its beauty from the previous seclusion of spirit. It is
a brand which one spark has kindled, a bud which at the first bare
touch of love breaks unawares before us in full bloom. And yet the
faster it unfolds the more rapidly it also sinks, and its petals
fall from it. An impetuous progress is still more conspicuous in the
case of Miranda. Brought up in seclusion we have her portrayed for
us by Shakespeare at the critical moment when she first makes the
acquaintance of manhood[280]. He depicts her in a few scenes, but in
those we get a picture that is complete and unforgettable. We may
also include Schiller's Thecla under the same type, despite the fact
that it is rather the creation of a reflective kind of poetry[281].
Though placed in the midst of a life of such amplitude and richness she
remains unaffected by it; she remains within it without vanity, without
reflection, purely absorbed by the one interest which alone dominates
her soul. And as a general rule it is chiefly the beautiful and noble
natures of women, in which the world and their own heart-life blossoms
for the first time in love, so that it is as though their spiritual
birth here takes its rise.

Under the same type of spiritual intensity, which is unable fully to
unfold itself, we may for the most part classify those folksongs, more
particularly our German ones, which, in the copious compactness of the
soul-life therein reflected, and however much such is displayed to
us as carried away by any one absorbing interest, are yet unable to
express the same except in broken flashes, and thereby fully reveal
just this very depth. It is a mode of artistic presentment, which in
its reserve is apt to fall back on the effects of symbolism. What it
offers us is not so much the open, transparent display of the entire
inward life as it is purely a _sign_ and indication of that life.
But we do not get, however, from it a symbol, the significance of
which, as was the case previously, remains a general abstraction, but
an expression the inward content of which is nothing more nor less
than this personal, living, and actual soul. In times like our own,
dominated by a critical reflectiveness, which lies so far removed from
a self-absorbed _naïveté_ of this kind, such presentations are of the
greatest difficulty, and if successful, are a sure proof of an original
creative genius. We have already seen that Goethe, more particularly in
his lyrics, has shown himself a master in this respect, namely, that he
can depict and unfold to us in a symbolical way, in other words with a
few simple, apparently external and insignificant traits, the entire
truth and infinite wealth of a soul. His poem, "The King of Thule," one
of his most lovely bits of poetical work, is of this class. The king
here makes us aware of his love by just one thing only, namely, the
drinking cup which the old man preserved as a gift of his beloved. The
old carouser stands up there on the point of death in his lofty palace
hall; his knights, his kingdom, his possessions are around him; and
he bequeaths them all to his heir, but the goblet he flings into the
waves; no one shall have that.

/$
     Er sah ihn stürzen, trinken,
     Und sinken tief in's Meer,
     Die Augen thäten ihm sinken,
     Trank nie ein Tropfen mehr[282].
$/

A soul, however profound and still of this kind, which retains its
energy of spirit pent up like the spark in the flint, unopened to
form, which does not elaborate its existence and reflection beyond its
own boundaries, has also failed to free itself by such expansion. It
remains exposed to the remorseless contradiction that, if the false
note of unhappiness ring through its life, it possesses no remedial
aptitude, no bridge as a way of passage between the heart and reality;
it is equally unable to ward off external conditions from itself, and
by so doing to preserve an independent ground of vantage in its own
self-reliance. When the collision comes therefore it is helpless; it
acts hastily and without circumspection, or bows passively to the
movement of events. So, for example, we have in Hamlet a beautiful
and noble soul; one not so much spiritually weak, but one that
wanders astray without a strong grasp of life's realities, moving in
an atmosphere of dejection, a sombre and half articulate melancholy.
Gifted with a finely intuitive sense he feels that all is not well with
him, that things are not as they should be though he has no external
sign, no single ground for suspicion; nevertheless he surmises the
atrocious deed that has been perpetrated. The ghost of his father
gives yet closer embodiment to his feelings. He is at once ready in
spirit to revenge, his sense of duty is always before him reflecting
the innermost craving of his heart, but he is not carried away with
the flood, as Macbeth; he cannot either kill, rage, or strike with the
directness of a Laertes; he persists in the inactivity of a beautiful,
introspective soul, which can neither realize its aims nor make itself
at home in the conditions of actual life. He dallies, seeks for more
positive certainty buoyed up by the fair integrity of his soul; he
can, however, come to no firm decision, much as he has sought it,
and permits himself to follow the course of external events. In this
atmosphere of unreality he goes yet further astray in matters that lie
directly in his path; he kills the old Polonius instead of the king;
he acts in a hurry where he should have been more circumspect, yet
persists in his self absorption, where decided action is essential;
until at length, without any action on his part, the fated _dénouement_
of the entire drama, including that of his own persistently
self-retiring personality, has unravelled itself on the broad highway
of Life's external incidents and accidents.

We are particularly presented with this attitude in modern times
among men of the lower levels of life, who are without an education
which extends to aims of universal significance, or are devoid of the
variety of objective interests. Consequently when some _particular_
aim of their life fails they are unable to secure any further stay of
their spiritual forces and a centre of control for their activities.
This lack of education tends to make reserved natures, in proportion
as it is undeveloped, adhere with the more rigidness and obstinacy to
that which, through its appeal to their entire individuality, makes
a claim upon them however limited in its range it may be. We find
pre-eminently such a monotonous attitude incidental to this class
of self-absorbed and speechless men among German characters, who
for this reason appear in their seclusion inclined to stubbornness,
ready to bristle up, crabbed, inaccessible, and in their dealings and
expressions wholly unreliable and contradictory. As a master in the
delineation and exposition of such obtuse characters of the poorer
classes we will mention but one example, Hippel, the author of "Life's
Careers in the Line of Ascent,"[283] one of our few German works
stamped with original humour. He keeps himself wholly removed from
Jean Paul's sentimentality and want of taste in plot construction,
and possesses moreover an astonishing individuality, freshness, and
vitality. He understands, in quite an exceptional way, and one that
seizes on our interest at once, how to depict the thickset type of
people who are unable to breathe freely and who consequently, when
they do give themselves the rein, do so with a violence that is
simply fearful. They put an end of their own accord to the infinite
contradiction of their spiritual life and the unhappy circumstances
in which they are involved in an appalling manner; and bring about by
such means that which is otherwise the result of an external fate, as
we find, for instance, in "Romeo and Juliet," where external accidents
mar all the wise and able offices of the holy father's intervention and
cause the death of the lovers.

(_c_) We find, then, that characters of this formal quality generally
either expose merely the infinite volitional force of the individual's
personality, which asserts itself frankly just as it is and storms
ahead in the bare impulse of the will; or, to take the further
aspect, present to us an essential self-contained[284], if not wholly
articulate soul, which, affected as it becomes by one specific aspect
of its spiritual experience, concentrates the entire breadth and
depth of its personality on this point, yet, owing to the fact of its
possessing no development externally, is unable to find its proper
place or to act with practical sense when it comes into collision
with that world. We have yet a _third_ point[285] to mention, which
consists in this, that when characters of this type, wholly one-sided
and restricted as they are in respect to their aims if at the same time
fully developed in mental power, awake in us not merely a _formal_,
but also a _substantial_ interest, we cannot fail to receive the
impression that this limitation of their personal life is itself only
a condition that is inevitable; in other words it is a result which
grows out of the particular way in which their character is defined
along with the profounder content of their personal life. Shakespeare
in fact enables us to see this depth and wealth in such characters.
He presents them to us as men of imaginative power and genius by
showing how their reflective faculty commands them and lifts them
above that which their condition and definite purpose would make them,
so that they are all the while as it were forced by the misfortune
of circumstances and the obstacles of their position into doing that
which they accomplish. At the same time we do not mean this to the
extent of asserting, for example, that the bad witches were to blame
for all that Macbeth dared after consulting them. These witches are
rather to be looked at as the reflex of his own obstinate will. All
that the characters of Shakespeare execute, that is the particular
purpose they propose, originates and finds the taproot of its force in
their own personality. But along with this they maintain in one and
the same individuality a loftiness, which brushes aside that which
they actually are, so far as their aims, interests, and actions are
concerned, and which amplifies them and exalts them above themselves.
In like manner Shakespeare's more vulgar characters, such as Stephano,
Trinculo, Pistol, and that hero among them all, Falstaff, though
saturated with their own debasement, assert themselves as fellows of
intelligence, whose genial quality is able to take in everything,
to possess a large and open atmosphere of its own, and in short
makes them all that great men are. In the tragedies of the French on
the contrary even the greatest and most worthy characters only too
frequently, if viewed critically, assert themselves as so many evil
offshoots of the brute creation, whose only intelligence consists in
this that it can furnish dialectical arguments in its vindication.
In Shakespeare we find neither vindication nor damnation, but merely
a review of the general condition of destiny, which inevitably places
such characters uncomplaining and unrepentant where they are, and from
the starting-point of which they see everything, themselves included;
and yet as independent spectators of themselves decline and fall.

In all these respects the realm which is peopled by such individual
characters is an infinitely rich one, a kingdom, however, which very
easily collapses in hollowness and dulness, so that only quite a few
masters have received the gifts of poetical and intuitional power
sufficient to enable them to reveal its truth.


2. THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE

Now that we have examined the aspect of the inward soul-life, which
may, at this stage of our inquiry, be presented by art, we must direct
our attention to that which lies without it, to the particularity
of circumstances and situations which affect character, also to the
collisions in which its development proceeds, and finally review the
entire collective form, which this inward life assumes within the
boundaries of concrete reality.

It is, as we have more than once pointed out, a fundamental determinant
of romantic art, that the spiritual sense, in other words, the soul
in its aspect of self-reflection, should constitute a whole, and
relates itself for this reason to the external world, not, in its own
reality, inter-penetrated by this world, but as though related to
something purely external and separated from it, which goes on its way
independently disjoined from Spirit, is thus evolved, and thus disposes
of itself as a finite and continuously fluid, changing, and complicate
object of contingent causality[286]. To the self-absorbed soul it is
as wholly a matter of indifference what particular circumstances it
confronts, as it is an affair of chance what those circumstances are
which appear before it. For in its action it is less a matter of
importance that it should carry out a work whose essential basis is
rooted in itself and owes its subsistency to its own character than
that it should generally make itself effective in action.

(_a_) We have, in short, before us here a process which we may from
one point of view describe as the rejection of the Divine from
Nature. Spirit has here withdrawn itself from the externality of
phenomena, which, for the reason that the inward life no longer sees
itself reflected in this sphere[287], is now independently clothed
on its part under a relation of indifference exterior to the subject
of consciousness. Relatively to its truth Spirit is, no doubt, in
its own medium mediated and reconciled with the Absolute: but in so
far as we now take up our position on the ground of self-subsistent
individuality, which proceeds from itself as it discovers itself in
its immediacy, this divesting of the Divine[288] affects character in
its active capacity. It moves forward, that is to say, with its own
contingent aims into a world equally subject to chance, with which
it fails to unite itself in an essentially harmonious whole. This
relative character of purpose in an environment which is relative,
whose determination and development does not subsist in the individual
mind, but is defined externally and contingently and is responsible for
collisions equally adventitious, which appear as offshoots that are
unexpectedly interwoven with it, creates that to which we give the name
of "the adventurous," which supplies the _fundamental type_ of romance
for the mode of its events and actions.

It is necessary that the action and dramatic event in so far as they
apply strictly to the Ideal and classic art, should be referable
to an essentially true or, in other words, independently explicit
and necessary end, in whose conformation that which is also the
determinating factor for the external form, for the particular type and
mode of execution, is an object of real existence. In the case of the
acts and events of romantic art this is not the case. For, although
essentially universal and substantive ends are also presented in their
manner of realization by this type, the definition of the action which
is referable to such ends, and the principle of co-ordination and
articulation which appears in its progress on its spiritual side[289]
is not the direct result of those ends themselves; this aspect of
realization is inevitably left independent and subject to the operation
of contingency.

(_α_) The romantic world had one and only _one absolute_ work to
accomplish, namely, the extension of Christendom, and the bringing into
manifest performance the spirit of the community[290]. Situated in the
midst of a hostile world consisting in part of the unbelieving ancient
_régime_, and in part of a human life which was barbarous and coarse,
the character of its actual accomplishment, in so far as it passed
from mere theory to deeds, was, in the main, the passive endurance of
pain and torture, the sacrifice of its own temporal existence for the
eternal salvation of the soul. A further product of its energies, which
is equally a portion of the same essential content, is, in the Middle
Ages, that carried out by Christian Chivalry, the driving forth of the
Moors, Arabs, and Mohammedans generally from Christian countries, and,
above all, along with it, the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre in the
Crusades. This, however, was not an object which affected man simply as
human[291], but one which a mere collection of isolated individuals had
to accomplish under conditions in which the individuals which composed
it streamed together at their own free will and pleasure as such. From
such a point of view we may call the Crusades the collective adventure
of the Christian Middle Ages; an adventure, which was essentially
subject to lapses[292], and fantastical, of a spiritual tendency, and
yet devoid of a truly spiritual aim, and in its relation to action and
character delusive. For in its relation to the processes of religion,
the supreme object of the Crusades is in the highest degree empty and
external. Christianity purported to secure its salvation solely in
Spirit, in Christ, who is raised to the right hand of God; it finds
its living reality and stay in Spirit, not in the grave of Spirit, or
in the sensuous, immediately present localities of its former temporal
abiding-place. The impulse and religious yearning of the Middle
Ages, however, was centred on the spot, the external locality of the
Passion and the Holy Sepulchre. In just the same direct contradiction
with the religious object we find that wholly worldly one which was
bound up with conquest; a possession, which in its relation to the
secular world, carried a totally different character to that of a truly
religious purpose. Men would fain win for themselves what was spiritual
and health to their souls, and they set before them as an aim a purely
material locality, from which Spirit had vanished; they strained after
a gain that was temporal, and united this which was of the world to the
pure substance of religion. It is this distraction which gives us the
discordant and fantastic note in such enterprises in which we find that
which is of the world confound the life of soul, or the latter prove
the confounding of the former instead of a harmony which is the result
of both. And for the same reason much that is contradictory appears in
the execution unresolved. Piety is carried to the point of rawness and
barbarous cruelty. And this rawness permits every kind of selfishness
and passion to break forth, or casts itself conversely once more upon
the eternal depths which either move or bruise the human spirit, and
which are, in truth, the heart and substance of the matter. In the
medley of elements so discrepant, there is also an absence of all unity
in the object proposed by the exploits and events themselves, or in
the consequential power of authority. The host of men is diverted and
split up in single adventures, victories, defeats, and a variety of
accidents; and the outcome of it all fails to correspond to the means
and enormous preparations which were involved. Nay, the object itself
is stultified in the execution. For the Crusades would once again bring
truth to the sentence: "Thou couldst not leave him in peace in the
grave, thou didst not suffer thy holy one to see corruption." But it
is precisely this longing to find Christ and spiritual content in such
places and spaces, even the grave itself, the place of death, which
is itself, whatever essential worth even a Chateaubriand may make out
of it, a corruption of Spirit, out of which Christianity must rise in
resurrection in order to return once more to the fresh and abundant
life of the concrete world.

An object of much the same kind, mystical from one point of view,
equally fantastical from another, and adventurous in its undertaking,
is the search of the Holy Grail.

(_β_) A more exalted emprise is that which every man has to go through
in his own domain, his life, in the course of which he determines
his eternal destiny. It is this object which Dante has, consistently
with the catholic standpoint, seized upon in his "Divine Comedy" as
he conducts us in turn through hell, purgatory, and paradise. In this
poem, too, despite the strenuous co-ordination of the whole, we have
abundant evidence of conceptions which are fantastic[293], aspects that
are suffused with the spirit of adventure, in so far, at any rate, as
this work in its blessing and cursing is not carried through merely in
the explicit form of universal statement, but as referable to an almost
innumerable company of distinct personalities, not to mention the fact
that the _poet_ takes upon himself the _fiat_ of his church, seizes
the keys of heaven in his hand, adjudicates both bliss and damnation,
and so constitutes himself the judge of the v world, who places the
best known individuals both of the ancient and Christian eras, whether
poets, citizens, cardinals, or popes, respectively in hell, purgatory,
or paradise.

(_γ_) The remaining material, on the basis of the _worldly_ life, which
leads up to action and event, consists in the infinitely manifold
and venturesome experiments of imaginative idea, all that element of
chance in what arises either without or within the soul from love,
honour, and fidelity. At one time we may see men thus affected box
the compass for their own reputation's sake, at another leap to help
persecuted innocence, carry out amazing exploits in defence of the
honour of their lady, or vindicate some right that is invaded with the
strength of their own arm, and the able use of their own weapons; and
this albeit the innocence which is delivered prove only a company of
knaves. In the majority of such cases there is absolutely no condition,
no situation, no conflict before us in virtue of which we can assert
that action follows as a _necessary_ result. The soul simply wills it
and _intentionally_ looks out for adventure. The exploits of love,
for instance, in such cases have for the most part, if we look at
their more specific content, no other real principle of determination
beyond the effort to give proof of the steadfastness, fidelity, and
constancy of love, to testify that all the surrounding world, together
with the entire complexus of its relations, is merely of value as so
much material in which love may be brought to light. For this reason
the specific act of such manifestation, since the only thing that
matters is the proof, is not determined by its own course, but is left
dependent on a freak of chance, the mood of the lady, the caprice of
external accidents. The same principle holds where the objects are
honour or bravery. They are proper to an individual who holds himself
far aloof from all further content of a more substantive character, who
is perfectly able to enter into any and every content as it may chance
to occur, to find himself the object of insult therein, or to look for
an opportunity in which he may display his courage and shrewdness.
As we have here absolutely no criterion as to what should or what
should not form part of this content, in the same way also we have no
principle in accordance with which we can fix what in each case is
really an attack upon honour or the true subject-matter of bravery. It
is just the same with the treatment of _right_, which is likewise an
object of chivalry. In other words, right and law are here not as yet
asserted as a condition and object which is of essentially independent
stability, or as a system which is continuously made more perfect in
accordance with law and its necessary content, but as themselves purely
the product of individual caprice, so that their interposition, no
less than the judgment passed upon that which in every particular case
is held to be right or wrong, is throughout relegated to the entirely
haphazard criteria of individual judgment.

(_b_) What we have before us generally, more particularly on the
secular field, in chivalry and the formalism of character above
indicated, is not merely, to a more or less degree, the contingency of
the circumstantial conditions of human action, but also that of the
soul in its attitude of volition. For individuals of this one-sided
characterization are capable of accepting as the substance of their
life that which is wholly contingent, conduct that is only sustained
by virtue of the energy of their character, and is carried out, or
fails in its contact with the inevitable collisions which the condition
of the world opposes to it. The same thing is true of the chivalry
which receives in honour, love, and fidelity a more lofty ground of
justification, and one entitled to rank with a truly ethical basis. On
the one hand, it is still emphatically a matter of chance on account of
the particular aspect of the circumstances on which it reacts; we find
that here the object is to carry out aims peculiar to some particular
person, instead of some work of general significance, and the modes
of its attachment with the rest of life fail to possess independent
stability. On the other hand, precisely at the point where we consider
such action as part of the personal life of individuals, we are aware
of the presence of caprice and illusion in respect to all that it
either projects, originates, or undertakes. The net result of such a
spirit of enterprise consequently, through all that it performs or
enters upon, no less than in its ultimate effects, is no other than a
world of events and fatalities which is self-dissolvent, a world of
comedy for this very reason.

This self-dissolution of Chivalry we find set before us and
artistically reproduced, pre-eminently and with unsurpassed adequacy,
by Ariosto and Cervantes, and, so far as it affects the fate of
such highly individual characters as those above described in their
isolation, by Shakespeare.

(_α_) In Ariosto, more particularly, an attempt is made to delight the
reader with the infinitely varied developments of personal destiny and
aims, the fabulous complexity of fantastic relations and ludicrous
situations over which the adventurous fancy of the poet plays to
the point of absolute frivolity. The heroes of these dramas are
seriously engaged in what is often unadulterated folly and the wildest
eccentricity. And, to note especial points, love is frequently degraded
from the Divine love of a Dante, or the romantic tenderness of a
Petrarca, to sensual tales and ludicrous collisions; or heroism appears
to be screwed up to a pitch that is so incredible it ceases to amaze,
and merely excites a smile over the fabulousness of such exploits. By
virtue, however, of this indifference in respect to the particular
manner in which dramatic situations are brought about, astonishing
complications and conflicts are introduced, broken off and once more
interwoven, chopped about, and finally resolved in a surprising way;
yet, despite his ludicrous treatment of chivalry, Ariosto is as able
to secure and display to us the true nobility and greatness which we
may find in chivalry, or the exhibition of courage, love, honour, and
bravery, as he can on occasion excellently depict other passions,
cunning, subtlety, presence of mind, and much else.

(_β_) Just as Ariosto inclines more to the _fabulous_ element in this
spirit of adventure, Cervantes develops that aspect of it which is
appropriate to _romantic_ fiction. We find in his Don Quixote a noble
nature in whose adventures chivalry goes mad, the substance of such
adventures being placed as the centre of a stable and well-defined
state of things whose external character is copied with exactness
from nature. This produces the humorous contradiction of a rationally
constituted world on the one hand, and an isolated soul on the other,
which seeks to create the same order and stability entirely through
his own exertions and the knight-errantry which could only destroy
it. Despite, however, this ludicrous confusion we have still in Don
Quixote that which we have already eulogized in Shakespeare. Cervantes
has created in his hero an original figure of noble nature endowed
with varied spiritual qualities, and one which at the same time
throughout retains our full interest. In all the madness of his mind
and his enterprise he is a completely consistent[294] soul, or rather
his madness lies in this, that he is and remains securely rooted in
himself and his enterprise. Without this unreflecting equanimity
respectively to the content and result of his actions he would fail
to be a truly romantic figure; and this self-assuredness, if we look
at the substantive character of his opinions, is throughout great and
indicative of his genius, adorned as it is with the finest traits of
character. And, further, the entire work is a satire upon the chivalry
of romance, ironical from beginning to end in the truest sense. In
Ariosto this genius of adventure is merely the butt of frivolous jest.
From another point of view, however, the exploits of Don Quixote are
merely the central thread around which a succession of genuinely
romantic tales are intertwined in the most charming way, in order
to unfold the true worth of that which the romance in other respects
scatters to the winds with the genius of comedy.

(_γ_) In somewhat the same way as we thus have seen chivalry, even
in respect to its most momentous interests, overturned in comedy,
Shakespeare, too, either places the characters and scenes of comedy in
juxtaposition to his downright and stable individualities, and tragic
situations and conflicts, or exalts the essential figures of his drama
through a profound humour above themselves and their uncouth, limited,
and false purposes. Falstaff, the fool in "Lear," the musician scene in
"Romeo and Juliet," will sufficiently illustrate the first alternative,
and Richard III the second.

(_c_) The dissolution of romance, in the sense we have hitherto
regarded it, introduces us finally and in the third place to the
spirit of the _novel_[295], in our modern sense of the term, which
historically the knight-errantry and pastoral romances precede. This
spirit of modern fiction is, in fact, that of chivalry, once more
taken seriously and receiving a true content. The contingent character
of external existence has changed to a stable, secure order of civic
society and state-life, so that now police administration, tribunals
of justice, the army and political government generally take the place
of those chimerical objects which the knight of chivalry proposed to
himself. For this reason the knightly character of the heroes who
play their parts in our modern novels is altered. Confronted by the
existing order and the ordinary prose of life they appear before us as
individuals with personal aims of love, honour, ambition, and ideals of
world reform, ideals in the path of which that order presents obstacles
on every side. The result is that personal desires and demands unroll
themselves[296] before this opposition to unfathomable heights. Every
man finds himself face to face with an enchanted world that is by no
means all that he asks for, which he must contend with for the reason
that it contends with himself, and in its tenacious stability refuses
to give way before his passions, but interposes as an obstacle the
will of some one else whoever it may be, his father's, his aunt's, or
social conditions generally. For the most part such a knighthood will
consist of young people, who feel it incumbent upon them to hew their
way through a world which makes for its own realization rather than
that of their ideals, and who hold it a misfortune that there should
be family ties, civic society, state laws, professions, and all the
rest of such things at all, because conditions of such solidity and so
inevitably restricted are so cruelly opposed to their ideal dreams and
the infinite claims of their souls. The main object now is to drive a
breach through this wall of facts, to change, to improve, or at least
carve for themselves in despite of it some little heaven on earth such
as they seek for, their ideal maiden, discover her, win her from the
clutches of her wicked relations or her evil circumstances, carry her
off and lay the balm of love on her wounds. Conflicts of this kind,
however, in our modern world are the apprentice years, the education of
individuality in the actual world; they have no further significance,
but the significance has, nevertheless, a real value. The object
and consummation of such apprenticeship consists in this, that the
individual drops his horns and finds his own place, together with his
wishes and opinions in social conditions as they are and the rational
order which belongs to them, that he enters, in short, upon the varied
field of life, and secures that position within it which is appropriate
to his powers. However soundly he may have rated the world and have
been shoved on one side, the day comes at last with the most of us
when the maiden is discovered and some kind of place in the world, he
marries, and is as much a Philistine as the rest of his neighbours. His
wife takes charge of his domestic arrangements; children do not fail to
put in an appearance; the adorable wife who was so unique, an angel,
acts very much as other wives do; the profession supplies its toils
and vexations, the married tie its domestic sorrows, and, in short, we
have the entire process of marital caterwauling once more illustrated.
In this history we may see the same old type of the adventurous spirit
with this distinction, that here that spirit discovers its real
significance, and all that is wholly fantastic in it receives its
necessary correction.


3. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ROMANTIC TYPE OF ART

The last point which we have to establish still more closely is
that relatively to which the romantic spirit, for the reason that
it already is _intrinsically_ the principle of the dissolution of
the classic Ideal, manifests, in fact, this _dissolution_ clearly as
such a process. In this connection it is of the first importance to
consider the ultimately complete contingent and external character
of the material, which the activity of the artist seizes on and
informs. In the plastic material of the plastic arts the spiritual
conception is so related to the external medium that this external
show is the embodiment which uniquely belongs to that spiritual
significance itself, and possesses no real independence apart from
it. In romantic art, on the contrary, in which we find the inwardness
of Spirit withdraws within its own domain, the entire content of the
_external_ world secures the freedom of unfettered independence and the
assured subsistency of its own peculiar character and particularity.
Conversely, as we have seen, if the personal life of soul forms the
essential feature in the artistic product, it is a question of similar
indifference with what specific content of external reality and the
spiritual world the soul is vitally connected. The romantic Idea can
therefore assert itself through _every_ sort of condition; can embrace
every conceivable position, circumstance, relation, aberration,
confusion, conflict, and means of satisfaction; it is simply its own
personal and self-subsistent mode of conformation, the expression and
receptive form of the soul rather than any objective independently
valid form which is the object of search and is made good. In the
representation of romantic art therefore everything has its due place,
all the departments and phenomena of life, the greatest and the least,
the highest and most insignificant, what is moral with that which
is immoral and evil. And we may further note in particular that the
more secular the art becomes, the more it amasses the finite wealth
of the world, the more it takes to it with, delight, bestows upon
it a validity that is without reserve and exists for the artist in
such a world under the sole condition that it is reproduced in its
naked reality, so much the more is art at home with itself. Thus we
may observe in Shakespeare, on account of the fact that with him the
action as a rule runs its course in the most realistic association
with objective life, and is isolated and broken up in a mass of purely
accidental relations, and conditions of every kind, the least important
and most incidental no less than the most sovereign flights and most
weighty interests of poetry are each and all substantiated. So in
"Hamlet" we have the sentry on watch no less than the royal court;
in "Romeo and Juliet" the domestic _ménage_; in other pieces, not to
mention clowns, swashbucklers, and all the vulgarities of ordinary
life, we have pot-houses, carriers, chamber-pots and fleas, much as
in the representations by romantic art of the birth of Christ and the
adoration of the kings we do not fail to find oxen and asses, mangers
and straw[297]. And this is the kind of thing throughout, that the
scriptural text may receive its fulfilment, too, in art, "they that are
of low estate shall be exalted." It is from out this contingent sphere
of its subject-matter, which in a measure asserts itself as merely the
environment of a content intrinsically more important and in part also
in absolute independence, that the _downfall_ of romantic art issues,
to which we have already above adverted. In other words we have, on the
one hand, objective reality placed before us in what is from the point
of view of the Ideal its _prosaic objectivity_, that is, the content of
everyday life, which is not grasped in the substantive form in which
it adumbrates what is both moral and divine, but rather in that which
is for ever changing and which as temporal passes away. And, in the
further aspect of it, it is also the _subjective condition_, which,
with its emotion and insight, with the principle and authority of its
wit or humour, is able to exalt itself in mastery over the entire world
of the real, a mastery which leaves nothing in the ordinary connections
and significance where the commonsense consciousness finds it, and
is not fully satisfied until it has proved that everything which is
a part of that world is, by virtue of the form and relative position
which it receives from the view of it, mood and supreme gifts of the
artist[298], itself intrinsically capable of being broken up, and, as
such, is for the artistic vision and feeling dissolved. We have now, in
this connection, first, to add a few words on the principle contained
in those very varied works of art whose level of representation
approximates closely to the ordinary appearance of objective or
external reality, what in common parlance is called the imitation of
Nature.

_Secondly_, we shall have to discuss humour as a personal quality
in the artist. It plays a very considerable part in modern art, and
is that which in the case of many poets distinctively supplies the
fundamental character of their work.

_Thirdly_, it remains for us to offer a few suggestions, in conclusion,
on the point of view from which it is still possible for the art of
to-day to find a field for its activities.


(_a_) _The Artistic Imitation of what is Immediately presented by
Nature_

The realm of subjects which may be included in this sphere v of
artistic activity may be extended indefinitely for the reason that Art
takes for its content here not that which is by its own inherent law
necessary[299], the range of which is essentially self-contained, but
the contingent phenomena of reality in their unlimited modifications
of form and relation, Nature and her kaleidoscopic play of separate
pictures, the everyday action and affairs of man in his dependence
on natural conditions and their means of his satisfaction, in his
accidental habits also, attitudes, activities of family life, his
business as a citizen, and, generally, the incalculable variety of
all that shifts and changes in the world around us. And for this
reason this art is not merely, in the broad sense that applies more
or less to the romantic spirit in all its manifestations, a type
of portraiture: rather it tends to lose itself completely in the
mode of its portrayal, whether it be in sculpture, painting, or in
the descriptions of poetry. The tendency is to return to the exact
imitation of Nature, in other words, to the intentional approach to
the contingent aspects of what is immediately before the vision and
independently thus presented, prosaic existence in all its ugliness no
less than its beauty. The question, therefore, at once suggests itself
whether productions of this character have any right to be called art
at all. No doubt, if we simply fix before our attention the notion of
artistic work which fully corresponds to the Ideal, work which from one
point of view it is of the first importance that their content shall
not be thus intrinsically accidental or evanescent, and from another
point of view that their mode of presentation must be adequate in all
respects to such a content, then such artistic productions as we are
now considering will unquestionably appear to fall short. On the other
hand, there is another fundamental aspect of art which assumes here
an exceptional importance. This is the conception and execution of a
work of art which are personal to the artist, the aspect, that is, of
an individual talent, which is able to remain true to the inherently
substantive life of Nature no less than the embodiments of spiritual
experience though carried to the very limits of contingent condition
with which they may be involved, and which is further competent through
the vividness of its truth to import a significance into that which
is by itself insignificant, no less than by the amazing ability of
the technical execution itself. We have consequently to consider here
the degree in which the soul, that is, the genius and vitality of the
artist, is able to enter into the very being of such objects--whether
we consider their dominant idea[300], or the purely external form
of their appearance--and thus makes them visible in his art to our
eyes. And if we look at it from this point of view it will be found
impossible to deny that such creations have a genuine claim to the name
of art-products.

If we approach such more closely we shall find that among the
particular arts poetry and painting are the ones which are most
occupied with their subject-matter. For, on the one hand, we see here
that it is that which is itself essentially particular which supplies
their content, and on the other hand it is the accidental though in
this type of art the genuine peculiarities of the objective appearance
which is sought for as the mode of the reproduction. Neither the arts
of architecture, sculpture, or music are adapted to the fulfilment of
such a task.

(_α_) In poetry it is ordinary domestic life--the main source, that is,
of the probity, commonsense spirit, and the morality of everyday[301]
life--which is presented by art in the usual developments of civic
life, in scenes and characters selected from the middle and lower
classes. Among the French Diderot stands out conspicuous for the way
in which he has thus insisted on natural effects and the imitation
of the bluntness of fact. Among Germans it was Goethe and Schiller
who, with more lofty aim, struck out a path somewhat similar in their
youth, but rather, within this naturalness of life itself and its
particular detail, sought after a profounder content and conflicts
of essential significance. And in contrast to them we have Kotzebue
and Iffland, both of whom, in their several ways, the first with a
superficial rapidity of conception and execution, the second with a
more conscientious accuracy of detail and a homely kind of morality,
gave us the counterfeit of the daily life of their time in the prosaic
picture of its more limited aspects, with but a limited sense, either
of them, for genuine poetry. And generally, we may say, that it is
German art more than any other, and particularly that of our own times,
which has fastened with delight on this kind of treatment till it has
reached a sort of. virtuosity in it. In fact for a long period back Art
was more or less something of a stranger and a guest in our country,
not the child of our own loins.

Further, we may observe that in this attraction to the reality that
lies actually before us it is essential that the material assimilated
by such an art be cognate with such reality and at home in it[302];
it must be the national life of the poet and his immediate public.
It is on this very point of the kind of appropriation suited to an
art such as our own, which carried the purpose both in its content
and its methods of representation of making us feel at home in it,
even to the extent of sacrificing both beauty and ideality, that the
impulse originated which led to such a type of artistic production.
Other nations have been inclined to reject such material with scorn,
or only in more recent times have taken a more vital interest in such
opportunities as the ordinary course of human life offers.

(_β_) If we desire, however, to see what is most worthy of our
admiration in such productions, we must turn our attention to the later
genre-painting of the Dutch. We have already in the first part of this
work, when examining the intrinsic character of the Ideal, indicated,
so far as the general spirit of it is concerned, what we take to be
the substantial basis of such work[303]. That contentment in life
under its presentment of direct experience down to the most ordinary
and most insignificant detail is mainly due to the fact that this
people was obliged to work out for itself only after severe struggles
and hard labour that which Nature supplies with far less reserve to
other peoples. Further, circumscribed as it is by local conditions,
it has become great in this very concern for and appreciation of the
least things. From another point of view it is a people of fishermen,
sailors, citizens, and peasants, and for this reason is forced from
the start to rate highly all that may be useful and necessary both in
matters of greatest and least importance which it knows how to secure
with the most assiduous industry. As a further essential feature of its
development the religion of this Dutch folk was Protestantism, and it
is an exclusive characteristic of this form of religion that it seeks
to find a home in the prose of life and suffers the same to remain
just as it is by itself, and independently of religious associations,
and to retain its forms of growth in unrestricted freedom. It would
be quite impossible for any other nation, situated in other external
conditions, to create works of art of such pre-eminent quality from
the kind of material which we have placed before us in the Dutch
school of painting. And, moreover, despite the peculiar nature of this
artistic interest, the Dutch have not by any means discovered their
whole life-in what was necessitous or barren in the conditions of their
existence and what tended to oppress their vitality: on the contrary,
they have reformed their church itself, have overcome a religious
despotism precisely as they overcame the world-power and majesty of
Spain, and have finally through their exertions, their industry, their
bravery and thrift secured for themselves, in the consciousness of
their self-attained liberty, prosperity, comfort, rectitude, courage,
joviality, nay, even a superabundant sense of the joys of ordinary
existence. Herein lies the vindication of the typical subject-matter of
their art. The material of such an art will not, however, satisfy that
profounder significance which is due to a content that is essentially
true. If, however, neither our emotional nor our critical faculties
are wholly content with it the more we consider it closely the more
we shall feel reconciled to such defects. It is an essential part of
the art of painting and the man who paints that they should please and
carry us away with that sense of pleasure. And, to put it bluntly, if
we would really know what painting is, in looking at any particular
canvas we must be, at least, able to say of the master in question:
"Ah, this man can paint." The main point, therefore, does not turn on
the question how far the artist in his work is able to give us an exact
transcription of the object he presents before us. We have already the
completest vision of grapes, flowers, stags, sand-hills, sea, sun,
sky, the finery and decoration of ordinary life, horses, warriors,
peasants, smokers, teeth-extraction, and every kind of domestic scene.
We have only to go to Nature for such things and others like them. What
ought to captivate us is not the content in its bare reality. Rather
it is the appearance, which in comparison with the object is wholly
without interest[304]. This appearance is, moreover, by itself fixed
independently of the beautiful[305], and art consists in the mastery
of its reproduction of all the mysteries of the ever self-deepening
appearance of external phenomena[306]. And, above all, the function of
art consists in this that, armed with an exceptionally fine sense for
such things, it lies in ambush for the momentary and wholly transient
traits which it finds upon the surrounding world observed in its
individual aspects of life, aspects which, however, completely coincide
with the universal laws that dominate the appearance, and can retain
true and secure the most fading apparition. A tree, a landscape, is
something of independent and permanent stability. But to seize upon the
flash of a metal, the gleam of light through the grape, a vanishing
glance of the moon or the sun, a smile, the expressions of spiritual
life which are no sooner seen than they vanish, or ludicrous movements,
situations, and attitudes, to master such evanescent material as this
is the difficult task of this type of work. If classic art in its
Ideal has essentially confined its embodiment to that which is purely
substantive so here we have opened to our vision the changes of Nature
in their fleeting forms of expression, a stream of water, a waterfall,
waves of foam on the sea, still life with the accidental flashes of
glass, plate, and things of like nature, the outward appearance of man
in the most exceptional situations, a wife, for instance, threading her
needle by candle-light, a halt of robbers suddenly surprised, the most
instantaneous fraction of some human posture, the smile or sneer of a
peasant, all the things, in fact, in which men like Ostade, Teniers,
or Steen are masters. It is the triumph of art over the Past, in which
the substantive is likewise filched of its power over that which is
accidental and transitory.

And just as the appearance simply as such reflects the real content
of objects, so we may say that Art, in giving a permanent form to
the evanescent show of things, goes a step further. In other words,
quite apart from the objective realization, the means adopted in the
reproduction are themselves independently an end, in the sense that
the individual ability of the artist, and his use of the means his
art supplies, may itself rank as one of the objects aimed at by the
art product. In quite the early days of the school the artists of the
Netherlands studied profoundly the qualities of colour in its relation
to material substances[307]. Van Eyck, Hemling, and Schoreel[308] were
all of them capable of imitating in the most realistic way the sheen
of gold and silver, the varied light effects of jewels, silk, velvet,
and fur-stuffs. A mastery of this kind which, by the magic of colour
and the mysteries of its enchantment, is able to bring about artistic
results so entirely surprising requires no further vindication; it
justifies itself. As Spirit in thought and in its grasp of the world
by means of ideas and thoughts reproduces itself, so what is most
important here is the individual recreation of the external world,
independently of the bare object itself, in the sensuous medium, of
colours under effects of light and shade. It is in fact a kind of
objective music, a system of colour tones. In music the single tone is
of no value and only produces the musical effect in its relation to
some other, in its opposition, concord, modulation, and unison. It is
precisely the same thing with the music of colour. If we consider the
appearance of painted colour closely such as the gleam of gold or the
flash from the steel of battle we shall only see a number of white or
yellow dashes, points, coloured surfaces. The single colour alone does
not possess this gleam which we gather from the picture. It is only
by its association with other tints that we get the effect of glitter
and flash. Take for example the Atlas of Terburg; every individual
strip of colour here alone is simply a dull gray, more or less whitish,
bluish, or inclining to yellow: only when we take in the entire effect
from a distance, which gives us the relative contrast of each part to
the rest, dawns upon us the beautiful soft sheen which is true of the
genuine Atlas. And it is just the same with our velvet effect, play
of light, exhalation of cloud and so on through all pictorial effect
whatsoever. It is not so much the reflex of the artist's mood[309],
which, as is no doubt frequently the case with landscape, transfers
itself to the objects delineated, as it is the entire ability of the
artist, which seeks to make itself felt in this objective way as the
use of the means at his disposal in such a vital interaction that they
themselves straightway of their own cunning bring to birth a world of
objects.

(_γ_) And consequently the interest in the objects delineated tends to
revert to the fact that it is the unique powers of the artist himself
which are thus consciously displayed, and for which the embodiment of
a work of art, independently complete and self-composed, is not of so
much importance as a production in which the creative artist unveils
to us simply his genius. In so far as this _personal_ aspect is no
longer concerned with the external means of presentation but affects
the _content_ itself of the work, the art becomes thereby the art of
caprice and humour.


(_b_) _The Humour of Personality_[310]

In humour it is the personality of the artist, which so reproduces
itself both in its particular idiosyncrasies and profounder content,
that the main thing of importance is the spiritual value of this
personality.

(_α_) Inasmuch as humour does not so much propose to itself the task
of unfolding and informing an objective content according to its own
essential character, and, by artistic means, of articulating and
rounding it off in such a self-evolved process, as it consists in the
artist's own self-manifestation in the material, he will be mainly
concerned to let everything which tends to become an object and to
secure the rigid lines of reality, or which appears in the external
world, fall away and dissolve under the powerful solvent of his own
fancies, flashes of thought and arresting modes of conception. By this
means every appearance of self-subsistency in such a content, the
embodiment of which is secured in its coalescence through means of a
given fact, is entirely destroyed, and the product is now simply a play
with certain objects, a derangement or a turning upside down of a given
material, the enterprise of a rover throughout such, the interwoven
woof of the artist's own expression; views and moods, through which
he gives free scope to himself quite as much as to his immediate
subject-matter.

(_β_) The illusion which readily springs from such a type of art
consists in this, that though it is a very easy matter to make either
oneself or the object given the butt of drollery and wit, and for this
reason the form of humorous composition is that frequently adopted,
yet quite as often as not we find that the humour is dull enough when
our artist gives free rein to any chance conceits or jest which may
occur, which in their loose and patchy connections range to excess
beyond all reasonable limits, and with intentional eccentricity bind
up frequently together the most alien matter. Some nations have
proved themselves indulgent to such artistic experiments, others are
more severe. Among the French such attempts at humorous composition
have not as a rule been successful; we Germans have done better, and
we are more tolerant to the defects of such a style. Jean Paul, for
instance, is a much admired humourist among us; and yet it would be
difficult to point to any writer who is more eccentric in the way he
brings to the common fund what is most remote from his subject, and
patches together an incredibly motley assemblage of subjects, whose
sole bond of relationship is one of the artist's own fancy. The story,
the matter and progress of events are the features of least interest
in his romances. The main attraction throughout is the sportive
procession of his humour which uses everything in its course as a means
to establish his own triumph as a humourist. In this subordination
to itself and concatenation of every conceivable stuff that can be
raked out of the four quarters of the world, or the realm of the real,
the material of humour approximates once more to that of symbolism,
wherein significance and conformity likewise are disjoined, with this
difference, however, that in the former it is purely the personality
of the poet which commands the material no less than the significance,
co-ordinating them according to his own caprice[311]. Such a series
of freaks and fancies soon tires us, more particularly when we are
expected to live as best we can in the not unfrequently barely
decipherable combinations which have passed somehow or another in the
clouds of the poet's brain. With Jean Paul, as with scarce another, one
metaphor, sally of wit, drollery, or simile proves the death of its
neighbour. Nothing grows; there is an explosion, that is all. A plot,
however, which purports to have a _dénouement_ must first be unfolded
and prepared for such solution. From another point of view, when the
artist in question is essentially devoid of the solid core and support
of a mind and heart overflowing with the real actualities of existence,
his humour very readily lapses into what is sentimental and morbid.
And in this respect Jean Paul is no less an example.

(_γ_) In a humour of the best kind, which keeps itself aloof from
such excrescences, we must therefore have a genuinely spiritual
depth and wealth, able to exalt that which issues as the emanation
of a personality to the rank of real expression, and capable of
making that which is truly substantive arise from that which the
chance suggestions, the mere caprices of the artist, dictate. The
self-abandonment of the poet in the course of his exposition must
be, as it is with humourists such as Sterne or Hippel, a wholly
unembarrassed, easy-going, scarce perceptible kind of saunter[312],
which, insignificant though it appear, manages precisely by that means
to strike at the root of the main idea; and, for the reason that what
thus bubbles up in haphazard fashion are matters of detail, it is
essential that the conception, which binds the whole ideally together,
should have the deeper foundation, and that such detail should simply
flash forth the focal spark of genius.

We have now arrived at the point where romantic art itself for the
present terminates. It is the standpoint of our most modern outlook,
whose distinctive characteristic we shall find to be mainly this, that
the individual personality[313] of the artist stands supreme above both
the material he informs and his creation. He is no longer dominated by
the conditions of an essentially restricted sphere, in which he must
accept as given both the content and form of his work; it now lies in
his power to choose either as he wills, and to retain both on similar
terms.

(_c_) _The End of the Romantic Type of Art_

Art, in so far as it has hitherto been the subject of our inquiry, had
for its fundamental basis the unity of significance and form, and, as a
further type of it, the unity of the personality of the artist with the
work he embodies and creates[313]. More closely defined we may say that
it was the specific type of this union, which supplied the content and
its appropriate artistic presentment with the substantive and directive
principle running through all the images therein.

We found at the commencement of our inquiry with reference to the
origins of art that in the Eastern world Spirit was not as yet
independently free. It still sought that which it conceived to be the
Absolute in the domain of Nature, and apprehended the natural as itself
essentially Divine. At a further stage the outlook of classical art
set before itself the vision of the Greek Pantheon as unconstrained
and inspired beings, but still in all essential features formed as our
humanity, as individuals charged with a positive physical process[314].
Finally it was romantic art which first permitted Spirit to penetrate
the depths of its own world, in contrast to which flesh, the external
reality and frame of this world generally, albeit the fact that the
spiritual and absolute could alone manifest itself in this world, in
the first instance was divested of all claim to reality[315], but for
all that afterwards asserted such a positive claim with increasing
strength and urgency.

(_α_) These distinctive views of the world process constitute religion,
the substantive Spirit or genius of peoples and eras; they not merely
influence art, but are threads of life which permeate every other
domain or province of the living present to which they belong. As
every man, in every sphere of activity, whether it be on the field of
politics, religion, art, or science, is a child of his own age, and
receives the task to elaborate the essential content and consequently
the inevitable plastic form of that age, so, too, the aim that
determines the content of art is no other than that of finding in its
own medium and resources some adequate expression for the spirit of a
nation. So long as the artist is in immediate identity and unshaken
faith inextricably one with the determinate content of such a view of
the world and the religion where it culminates, to that extent this
content and the mode of its presentation will call forth his most
_serious_ powers; in other words this content remains for him the
infinite substance and truth of his own consciousness, a content,
with which he lives, down to the inmost recesses of his spiritual
nature, in original unity; and, moreover, the embodied presence in
which he reveals the same is for him as such an artist[316] the final,
necessary, and highest type of such a form, namely that of bringing
before the aesthetic sense the absolute being[317] and the ideal
significance[318] of the subject-matter of his art. It is through
that aspect of his material which is no other than his own immanent
substance[319] that he finds that which binds him to the specific
mode of his exposition. For the material, and with it the form that
appertains to it, carries the artist directly into himself[320], as
being the real essence of his determinate being, which he does not
imagine but rather actually is, and consequently has only to make this
essential part of him an objective fact to himself, to conceive and
elaborate such in a vital form from his own resources. Only under such
conditions is the enthusiasm of the artist fully awakened for either
the content or manifestation of his art; only thus his creations become
no mere product of caprice, but spring up within him, out of him,
out of this living field of his substance, this spiritual capital,
whose content never ceases to be active, until, through the efforts
of the master, it has attained a defined form adequate to its own
ideal notion. When, however, we of to-day would seek to make a Greek
god or, as our own Protestants try to do, a Virgin Mary the object of
a piece of sculpture or a picture, it is impossible for us to treat
such a material with entire seriousness. It is the faith of our inmost
heart which fails us here, albeit even in ages of absolute belief the
artist was by no means necessarily what is commonly understood as a
pious mart, any more than at any time artists generally come in an
exceptional sense under that category. The demand is rather simply
this that in the view of the artist his content should be no other
than the substantive significance, the most spiritual truth of its
own conscious life, and that it should unfold the necessary laws of
its mode of presentation. For an artist is, in his creative activity,
a child of Nature; his ability is in one aspect a talent he receives
from _her._ His method of working is not the pure activity of rational
apprehension, which places itself in direct opposition to its material,
and unites with it in the medium of free thoughts and pure thinking.
Rather, as one not yet released from the natural aspect, it[321]
coalesces immediately with the object, in full faith, and is identical
with it heart and soul. The artistic personality reposes frankly in the
object, the work of art proceeds in like manner absolutely from the
unimpaired spiritual depth and power of genius; the product is _ferme_,
unwavering, and its entire intensive effect preserved. And this it is
which supplies the fundamental condition of the final demand that Art
be presented us in its flawless totality.

(_β_) The situation, however, has entirely changed in view of the
position we have been forced to indicate as that occupied by Art in
this its final stage of evolution. We have, however, no reason to
regard this simply as a misfortune which the chance of events has
made inevitable, one, that is to say, by which art has been overtaken
through the pressure of the times, the prosaic outlook and the dearth
of genuine interests. Rather it is the realization and progress of art
itself, which, by envisaging for present life the material in which
it actually dwells, itself materially assists on this very path, in
each step of its advance, to make itself free of the content that
is presented. In the very fact that we have an object set before
our ocular or spiritual vision, whether it be by Art or the medium
of Thought, with a completeness which practically exhausts it, so
that we have emptied it, and nothing further remains for our eyes to
discover or our souls to explore, in that alone the vital interest
disappears. Our interest only continues where our faculties are kept
fresh and alive. Spirit only concerns itself actively with objects so
long as there is still a mystery unsolved, a something unrevealed.
And this is so so long as the material remains identical with our
own substance. A time comes, however, when Art has displayed, in all
their many aspects, these fundamental views of the world, which are
involved in its own notion, no less than every province of the content
that is bound up with such world-views: when that time arrives such
art is necessarily cast loose of that which has been its previous
specific content for any particular people or age; in such a case the
renewed craving for material to work upon only fully awakes when it
is accepted as inevitable that we must first bid farewell to all that
its activity has previously substantiated: just as in Greece, for
example, Aristophanes opposed a resolute face to his age, and Lucian to
the entire historical Past of his country; or in Italy and Spain, in
the decline of the Middle Ages, both Ariosto and Cervantes opened the
attack on Chivalry.

In opposition to the age, then, in which the artist, by virtue of
the concrete content of his nationality and times, stands within
a definite outlook upon the world and its modes of embodiment, we
become aware of a point of view diametrically antagonistic, which, so
far as its complete enunciation is concerned, has only in the most
modern times received its due significance. It is only in our own days
that we find the artist no less than the man of science among pretty
nearly all civilized nations, has mastered the cultivation of his
reflective faculty, the art of criticism, and among us Germans the
absolute freedom of thought, and has made this critical apparatus,
both relatively to the material and the form of its production, having
already run through all the necessary phases or types of romantic art,
a kind of _tabula rasa._[322] The specific mode of association for any
particular context, and a manner of presentment exclusively pertinent
to that and no other material, are things which the artist of to-day
looks upon as obsolete. Art has become a free instrument which is
qualified to exercise itself relatively to every content, no matter
what kind it may be, agreeably to the principles or criteria of the
artist's own peculiar craftsmanship. The artist stands superior to all
specific modes and conformations, however much hallowed in the usage,
and moves forward free and independent, untrammelled by either form or
presentment such as previously have brought before man's vision and
mind the one holy and eternal substance. No content, no form is any
longer identical directly with the inmost soul of the artist[323],
his nature, his unaware[324] and substantive essence; every material
he may treat with indifference, if he only keep true to the formal
principle that he make his work consonant with beauty and a really
artistic execution. There is, in short, no material nowadays which we
can place on its own independent merits as superior to this law of
relativity; and even if there is one thus sublimely placed beyond it
there is at least no absolute necessity that it should be the object
of _artistic_ presentation. For these reasons the artist is situated
relatively to the content of his work much as the dramatist who places
before us and develops other and alien characters. It is quite true
that even our poet of to-day interposes the atmosphere of his genius
within his delineations, and the warp that he weaves is in fact that
of his own substance; but this only applies to what is universal there
or wholly accidental. The closer traits of individualization are not
his own, but rather he makes use of in this respect his stores of
images, modes of metaphor, earlier types of art, which by themselves he
does not care for, and whose significance is exclusively dependent on
the fact that they turn out to be the most suitable for this or that
matter in hand. In most of the arts, and particularly in the plastic
types, the subject-matter is, apart from this, supplied from outside
to the artist. He works to order, and when occupied with whatever
tales, scenes, and portraits thus come in his way, whether sacred or
profane, has merely to look to it that he can make something out of
them. For, however much he leaves the impress of his genius on a given
content, it remains throughout for all that a material which is not
itself directly the substance of his own conscious life. Nor is it of
any real assistance to him, that he further appropriates, so to speak,
with his soul and substance views of the world that belong to the Past,
in other words, tries to root himself in one of such, and, let us say,
turns Roman Catholic, as not a few have done in recent times for Art's
sake, in order to give their soul some secure foundation, and enable
the definite lines of their artistic product to become themselves
something which shall appear to have an independently valid growth. It
is not a prime condition of the artistic state that the artist should
come completely to terms with his own soul, or should be obliged to
look after his own salvation. What is important is that his soul in
its greatness and freedom should from the first, before it thinks of
creating, both know and possess that whereof it is, should stand fast
by it and reliant within it; and, above all, is it indispensable that
the spirit and mind of the great artist of to-day should have a liberal
education, one in which every kind of superstition and belief which
remains limited to circumscribed forms of outlook and presentment,
should receive their proper subordination as merely aspects or phasal
moments of a larger process; aspects which the free human spirit has
already mastered when it once for all sees that they can furnish
it with no conditions of exposition and creative effort which are,
independently for their own sake, sacrosanct; and only ascribes to them
value in virtue of the loftier content, which itself, as creator and
worker, he reposes in them, making them thus what they ought to be[325].

It is somewhat in this way nowadays that any and every form and
material may prove of service to and under the control of the artist
whose executive talents and genius have been liberated in their
independence from the former limitation to a specific mode of artistic
work.

(_γ_) If we ask, then, in conclusion what are the content and the
modes which may be considered _peculiar_ to the present sphere of our
inquiry, the result will be approximately as follows.

The universal types of art were pre-eminently related to the absolute
truth to which Art attains, and they discovered the source of their
differentiation in the specific grasp they respectively supplied of
that which passed for the Absolute in the human consciousness, and
which itself carried the principle of its manner of embodiment. In
this respect we have already seen in symbolism Nature's significances
pass before us as content, and her facts and human personification as
the mode of presentation; similarly in the classical type, we have
passed in review spiritual individuality, but as bodily presence which
carried no memory with it[326], and over which the abstract necessity
of Fate stood paramount. In the romantic the intellectual being of the
personal consciousness was asserted inherent in its own substance, and
for the inmost content of which the external form remained entirely
contingent. In this concluding type as in the earlier ones the object
of art was the Divine in its explicitly unfolded nature. This Divine
had however to make itself an object, to define itself, and in the
process to pass from its own immediate substance to the secular content
of the personal consciousness. In the first instance the infinite
essence of personality was reposed in honour, love, and fidelity;
after that in the particular individuality, the specific character
which happened to coalesce with the particular mode of human life in
question. This coalescence, together with the specific limitation of
content appropriate to such, was finally put an end to by humour,
which proved itself capable of dissolving or making pliable to its
purpose any or every line of stable definition, and by so doing made
it possible for art to transcend its own limitations. In this passing
away of Art beyond itself, however, Art is quite as truly the return
of man upon himself, a descent into his own soul-depths, by which
process art strips off from itself every secure barrier set up by a
determinate range of content and conception, and unfolds within our
common humanity[327] its new holy of holies, in other words the depths
and heights of the human soul simply, the universal shared of all men
in joy and suffering, in endeavour, action, and destiny. From this
point onwards it is from himself that the artist receives his content,
is in truth the Spirit of man assigning to himself his own boundaries,
contemplating, experiencing and giving utterance to the infinitude of
his emotions and situations, a spirit to which nothing is any more
alien which can possibly emanate as life from the human soul. A
content of this nature is one which cannot persist under the defined
modes of art independent and apart from the activity of the artist.
Rather the definition of content and its elaboration is transferred by
it to the caprice of his invention. But, despite of this, it excludes
no vital interest, because Art is no longer under constraint to
represent that, and only that, which is completely at home in one of
its specific grades. Everything is now possible as its subject-matter,
in which man, on whatever plane of life he may be, possesses either the
need or the capacity of making his abode.

Confronted with a material of such a wide range and multiplicity, it is
above all of first importance that in respect to the mode of artistic
treatment the Spirit that is now active in our present life should
throughout declare itself as such. Our modern artist may no doubt join
the company of ancients and elders. It is a fine thing to be one of
the Homerides, though we stand last of the line; pictures, too, that
reflect for us once again the atmosphere of romantic art in the Middle
Ages will have a worth of their own. But this universal sufficiency,
depth, and unique suitability of a given material such as we above
described is another thing altogether, and equally so its mode of
presentation. Neither Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Ariosto, nor Shakespeare
can reappear in our times. What has been sung so greatly, what has been
expressed with such freedom, has been sung and expressed once for all.
Only the Present blows fresh; all else is faded and more faded. In the
matter of history we must fain make it something of a reproach to the
French, and we may add to it a criticism on the score of beauty, that
they have presented on their stage Greek and Roman heroes, Chinese, and
Peruvians as so many French princes and princesses, and moreover have
given them the motives and views peculiar to the age of Louis XIV or
Louis XV. Yet, after all, had these very motives and opinions only been
intrinsically deeper and more beautiful than they are we should have
had little fault to find in the fact that the Past is here translated
into Art's present life. On the contrary all material whatsoever, it
matters not from what age or nation it hails, only retains its truth
for art as part of this vital and actual Present, in which it floods
the human heart with the reflected image of its own life, and brings
truth home to man's senses and mind. It is just this revelation and
renewed activity of that humanity which is immortal in all its varied
significance and infinite reconstruction, which, in this its receptacle
of human situations and emotions, forms the possible no less than the
absolute content of the art of our time.

If we now take a glance back, having established in a general way the
content which distinguishes the subject-matter of this portion of
our inquiry, at that which we finally considered to be the modes of
romantic art's dissolution, we may recall the fact that we then defined
them under a term applicable to all, as the falling to pieces of Art,
a process which, in one of its aspects, was due to an imitation of the
objects of Nature in all the detail of their contingent appearance,
and in another was referable to humour, that unfettered activity of
the individual soul in all its capricious mastery. In conclusion,
we may still draw attention to a further way of fixing on our minds
that _terminus_ of romantic art without prejudice to our previous
remarks upon it. In other words, just as in our advance from symbolism
to classical art, we considered the transitional forms of image,
simile, and epigram, we have also here in romantic art a form somewhat
similar worthy of attention. In those previous modes of conception the
important thing was the falling asunder of the spiritual significance
and the external form, a severation which in part was cancelled by
the activity of the artist's own mind, and in the exceptional case
of the epigram could possibly be converted into complete identity.
Romantic art was from the beginning the profounder disunion of that
inmost soul-life which finds its satisfaction in its own wealth, which,
moreover, for the reason that generally the objective world does not
completely satisfy the demand of Spirit essentially as such, persisted
in its discordance with or indifference to it. This opposition in the
evolution of romantic art finally led us perforce to the point where
we found that the interest was exclusively centered on the contingent
aspects of externality, or the equally capricious activity of the soul.
When, however, this exclusive attention to either side, whether it be
the externality or purely personal presentment, agreeably to the main
principle of romantic art, is carried so far that it becomes a real
penetration of the soul within the object, and the aspect of humour in
its relation to the object and its embodiment within the sphere of its
own individual reaction[328] assumes a real importance, in that case
we are face to face with what is a coalescence[329] with the object,
and is nothing less than an _objective_ humour. Such a coalescence,
however, can only be of limited range, and find expression merely, say,
within a lyric, or at most in but a portion of a larger composition.
For if its boundaries widened, and it was carried throughout the
object-matter in question, it would necessarily become identical
with the action and event, become, in short, a completely objective
representation. What we have to consider here is rather a sensitive
self-abandonment of the artist's soul in his object, which no doubt is
unfolded in some kind of process, but nevertheless remains a movement
of the imagination and heart indicative rather of _individual_ genius;
a caprice in some sort, and yet not entirely capricious or intentional,
but rather a sympathetic expansion of the artist's genius, which
devotes itself solely to its subject-matter, and makes it exclusively
its interest and content.

We may usefully compare with such a spirit the last blooms of the
ancient Greek epigram, in which this type appears in its first and
simplest features. The mode we have here in our mind is in the first
instance apparent when the reference to the object is not a mere
statement of fact, is not merely an inscription or transcript which
states what the object is, but is associated with a deeper emotion,
a sleight of witticism, an ingenious fancy, or a real flash of
imaginative power, any or all of which through their poetical grasp
give life to and expand the minutest detail. Poems of this description,
it matters little what their subject-matter may be, whether a tree, a
mill-stream, spring, dead things or alive, are of infinite variety and
may be found in the literature of all nations. They are, however, a
subordinate grade of poetry, and very readily come off halting. For at
least in a country of cultivated speech and reflection there are few
objects and conditions, indeed, which will not offer some further link
of association to every man. And just as the average man thinks himself
qualified to write a letter he will rate his capacity to express such
ideas. One is very easily tired of a universal spirit of sing-song such
as this, even though a stray novelty of touch may be here and there
thrown in. The importance of such a class of composition, therefore,
depends almost entirely on the question how far the artist's soul,
with its full intensity of life, and with a spiritual and intellectual
wealth that is both profound and extensive, has without reserve entered
vitally into such conditions, situations, and so forth; has made a home
there, and from the object in question created something unseen before,
something beautiful, something essentially worth our attention.

To this end the Persians and Arabians pre-eminently in the oriental
splendour of their images, in the unfettered enjoyment of their
imagination, which enters into the being of its subject-matter in the
purest spirit of contemplation, offer, even for present times and our
own intensity of spiritual penetration, a glorious exemplar. Both the
Spaniards and Italians, too, have done excellent things in the same
direction. It is true that Klopstock says of Petrarch:

/$
                   --Laura besang Petrarca in Liedern,
     Zwar dem Bewunderer schön, aber dem Liebenden nicht[330].
$/

but Klopstock's own love-odes are themselves full of moral reflections,
troubled yearning and passion that is for ever writhing after
immortality of happiness. What we admire most in Petrarch is the
free atmosphere of essentially noble emotion, which, however much it
expresses the longing for the beloved, can none the less repose on its
own heart. For this kind of longing, indeed sensual desire itself, is
far from being absent in the range of the art we now are considering,
when the subject is restricted to wine and love, the tavern and the
glass; the excessive voluptuousness of the images of Persian writers
themselves are in fact an illustration of this; but in this case the
imagination, in the interest it possesses for the intelligence, removes
the object entirely from the sphere of desire which has a practical
aim. It possesses an interest merely in the realm of its own exuberant
activity, finding its delight freely in its own countless freaks and
fancies, and making joys and griefs alike the subject of its sport
Among our modern poets the two who preeminently combine a similar
buoyancy of genius with a more intimate and spiritually searching depth
of imagination are Goethe in his "Westöstlicher Divan" and Rückert.
The essential contrast between Goethe's poetry in the "Divan" and his
more early efforts is quite remarkable. In his "Welcome and Farewell,"
for instance, the language and description are no doubt fine in
their way, true feeling is there. In other respects the situation is
commonplace, the climax is poor, and of imagination in the full and
free sense there is no further trace. The poem in the "Divan" entitled
"Recovery"[331] is composed in a totally different spirit. Love is here
wholly absorbed in the imagination, and the movement, happiness, and
bliss of the latter are throughout predominant. And, to speak generally
of artistic productions of this class, we may affirm that we find
in them no personal craving, no indications of enamourment, no mere
desire, but a pure delight in the objects delineated, an inexhaustible
self-absorption of imagination, an innocent play, a free surrender to
the coquettish humours even of rhyme and ingenious versification; and
withal an intense jubilation of the soul in its own free movement, a
spirit, which, by means of this very exhilaration induced by artistic
form[332] lifts the soul high above all its painful perplexity into the
ordered limits of the real.

And here we must close our consideration of the particular types
according to which the Ideal of art throughout its process is
self-differentiated. We have made these several modes the subject of
a more extensive inquiry, with a view to unfolding the content of the
same, a content from which the proper modes of artistic presentment
are themselves also deducible. For in Art, too, as in all other human
production, it is the content which is finally decisive. In fact Art,
if we consider the true notion of it, has one and only one supreme
function. It has to set forth in adequate form, within the grasp of our
actual senses, what is itself essential content; and the Philosophy of
Art should consequently regard it as its main business to comprehend
in Thought what this abundance of content and its beautiful mode of
manifestation verily is.

[Footnote 256: _Subjektivität._]

[Footnote 257: _Für andere_, that is for other spiritual beings than
the absolute Spirit as such.]

[Footnote 258: _Die Innigkeit._]

[Footnote 259: _Aus dem Innern exzeugten._]

[Footnote 260: _Sich in sich hineinbildend._ That is by continually
supplying new modes to the subjective spiritual content--until we
arrive at the almost purely spiritual mode of music.]

[Footnote 261: _Die innere Auflösung._]

[Footnote 262: The phenomenal world of Nature.]

[Footnote 263: _Die Verwickelungen._]

[Footnote 264: _Die Abentheuerlichkeit._ Hegel means that it is like
the result of an adventure--unforeseen rather than "fantastic."]

[Footnote 265: _Ein individuelles Subjekt._]

[Footnote 266: That which supplies its own justification.]

[Footnote 267: Lit., unenclosed, that is open indefinitely and so
undefined, unsounded.]

[Footnote 268: That is, it is open to extraneous causes that cannot be
predicted from the mere essential notion of them.]

[Footnote 269: I presume this is the meaning of the expression _das
Aussergöttliche_ and _das partikulär Menschliche._]

[Footnote 270: _Pralle_--stiff, metallic in its steeply rigidity.]

[Footnote 271: Act I, sc. 5.]

[Footnote 272: _Miserabilität._ One of Hegel's own coinage.]

[Footnote 273: An unknown work to me.]

[Footnote 274: _Ein inneres Werden._]

[Footnote 275: One is reminded of the Mohammedan fatalism. It is Allah.]

[Footnote 276: _In einfacher Gedrungenheit._ Hegel means that it is
tightly self-sealed, that and nothing more.]

[Footnote 277: _Hineingelegtseyn._ The reference of the whole being to
one object.]

[Footnote 278: This was the representation which took place in Berlin
in 1820, with Mademoiselle Erelinger as Juliet.]

[Footnote 279: _List_, usually in depreciatory sense, here otherwise.]

[Footnote 280: With the exception, of course, of her presumed father
Prospero.]

[Footnote 281: That is, a poetry based rather on the reflective faculty
than the creative imagination.]

[Footnote 282:

/$
     "He saw it plunge, drink boldly,
     Then sink in sea-depths lost;
     And what his eyes saw loosed him,
     No drop the king drank more."
$/
]

[Footnote 283: _Lebensläufe in aufsteigender Linie._]

[Footnote 284: _In sich totales, unbeschränktes Gemüth._ The
expressions would appear to contradict one another, but the emphasis is
on the unity of a whole which is itself not fully defined.]

[Footnote 285: It is not so much a third type as a way of looking at
the previous ones.]

[Footnote 286: It is contingent, of course, to the individual. Hegel
does not mean that it is without causality.]

[Footnote 287: The sphere of objective fact.]

[Footnote 288: From Nature, that is.]

[Footnote 289: _Ihres inneren Verlaufs._ I suppose Hegel means
action under the aspect in which it forms a part of the individual
development--regarded in its relation to will and consciousness.]

[Footnote 290: That is, the Christian community.]

[Footnote 291: _Den Menschen als Menschheit_, that is in his generally
secular aspect.]

[Footnote 292: I presume this is the sense of _gebrochen_ here. But
lower down it would mean apparently _discordant._]

[Footnote 293: By "fantastic" Hegel seems to me to mean that which is
based on a fancy or imagination that is wholly personal to the artist,
and so adventitious in its results.]

[Footnote 294: _Sicheres Gemüth_--"consistent" both in its literal and
metaphorical senses--one that holds together and is thus self-assured.]

[Footnote 295: _Das Romanhafte._ I cannot think of an English
expression which exactly corresponds.]

[Footnote 296: _Sich schrauben_, like the winding smoke from a
bottle--the corkscrew---ironical of course.]

[Footnote 297: One of the finest illustrations of such a universality
of interest may be found in Ruskin's description of Tintoret's
"Adoration of the Magi."]

[Footnote 298: _Genialität_ and _genial_ mean a good deal more than our
English words geniality and genial--they refer directly to genius.]

[Footnote 299: _Das in sich Nothwendige._ The reference is mainly to
the stricter principles of classical art.]

[Footnote 300: _Nach ihrer ganzen Inneren._]

[Footnote 301: Lit., "Which possesses for its substantial content
(_Substanz_) the integrity (_Rechtschaffenheit_), world-wisdom [here I
think no more is meant than "good sense"] and the morale of daily life
(_des Tages_)."]

[Footnote 302: Lit., "That the material, so far as art appropriates it,
be immanent and at home in that reality." _Immanent_ must I think refer
back to _die vorliegende Werklichkeit._]

[Footnote 303: Vol. I, pp. 229, 230.]

[Footnote 304: That is it has no interest _quâ_ a natural object.]

[Footnote 305: _Scheinen_ must mean here natural rather than artistic
appearance. Natural appearance is not _necessarily_ beautiful.]

[Footnote 306: _Des sick in sich vertiefenden Scheinens._ It is
self-deepening in proportion to the _feiner Sinn_ below mentioned.]

[Footnote 307: I think this is the meaning of the expression _das
Physikalische der Farbe_--not so much the material constituents of
colour as the effect of colour on physical substances. But either
interpretation makes sense.]

[Footnote 308: An artist unknown to me.]

[Footnote 309: _Gemüth_. I think Hegel uses the word here in the
narrower sense rather than "soul" generally.]

[Footnote 310: _Der subjektive Humor._]

[Footnote 311: Lit., "And arranges them side by side in an alien
order." That is, under a principle of co-ordination which does not lie
in the subject-matter.]

[Footnote 312: _Unscheinbares Fortschlendern._]

[Footnote 313: _Die Subjektivität des Kunstlers._ The expression
as used here and below implies, of course, not so much the formal
personality or character as the individual spirit and its resources.]

[Footnote 314: I presume this is the meaning of _von einem affirmativen
Momente._]

[Footnote 315: Lit., "Was at first posited as naught."]

[Footnote 316: That is, as an artist for whom it is _wahrhafter Ernst._]

[Footnote 317: _Das Absolute_ here is, I think, referable to the
subject-matter of art rather than to be taken as "the Absolute" simply.]

[Footnote 318: _Die Seele._ Perhaps "vital principle" would be better.]

[Footnote 319: That is, Spirit or mind.]

[Footnote 320: There is an uncorrected misprint here, _der_ should be
_den_ and _tragen_ would be an improvement on _trägt._]

[Footnote 321: I am not certain whether the subject is here the artist
himself, or his mode of working. The context would suggest the latter,
the better sense the former.]

[Footnote 322: Reflection has destroyed the _necessity_ of any
particular form.]

[Footnote 323: That is the life of Spirit. _Das Heilige und Ewige._]

[Footnote 324: _Bewusstlosen._ His spiritual nature in its unexplored
universality is, I presume, the sense.]

[Footnote 325: _Als ihnen gemäss._ As adequate to their completely
explicit nature.]

[Footnote 326: _Aber als leibliche unerinnerte Gegenwart._ I am not
sure that I know precisely the sense here, unless it amounts to
this that the Greek gods were without an historical memory. Their
immortality swallowed up in its repose the sense of beings in time, and
assumed to be in human bodily shape.]

[Footnote 327: _Zu ihrem neuen Heiligen den Humanus macht_, an uncommon
phrase.]

[Footnote 328: _Innerhalt seines subjektiven Reflexes._ That is, the
synthetic activity of humour's reflection.]

[Footnote 329: _Verinnigung_, a stronger word than _Vereinigung._]

[Footnote 330: "Petrarch sang songs of his Laura. To him who wonders at
beautiful songs they are beautiful, to the lover they are not so."]

[Footnote 331: "_Wiederfinden_."]

[Footnote 332: I am not quite sure that _die Heiterkeit des Gestaltens_
does not mean "the buoyancy of the created form."]


END OF VOL. II