(_c_) It is a fact that art does include this formal side, in that it

has power to present every possible subject-matter in artistic dress,

before perception and feeling, just exactly as argumentative[80]

reflection has the power of manipulating all possible objects and modes

of action, and of furnishing them with reasons and justifications.

But when we admit so great a variety of content we are at once met

by the remark that the manifold feelings and ideas, which art aims

at provoking or reinforcing, intersect and contradict, and by mutual

interference cancel one another. Indeed, in this aspect, in so far

as art inspires men to directly opposite emotions, it only magnifies

the contradiction of our feelings and passions, and either sets them

staggering like Bacchantes, or passes into sophistry and scepticism,

in the same way as argumentation.[81] This diversity of the material

of art itself compels us, therefore, not to be content with so

formal[82] an aim for it, seeing that rationality forces its way into

this wild diversity, and demands to see the emergence of a higher

and more universal purpose from these elements in spite of their

self-contradiction, and to be assured of its being attained. Just in

the same way the State and the social life of men are, of course,

credited with the purpose that in them _all_ human capacities and _all_

individual powers are to be developed and to find utterance in _all_

directions and with _all_ tendencies. But in opposition to so formal a

view there at once arises the question in what _unity_ these manifold

formations must be comprehended, and what _single end_ they must have

for their fundamental idea and ultimate purpose.

As such an end, reflection soon suggests the notion that art has the

capacity and the function of mitigating the fierceness of the desires.

([Greek: a]) In respect to this first idea, we have only to ascertain

in what feature peculiar to art it is that the capacity lies of

eliminating brutality and taming and educating the impulses,

desires, and passions. Brutality in general has its reason in a

direct selfishness of the impulses, which go to work right away,

and exclusively for the satisfaction of their concupiscence. Now,

desire is most savage and imperious in proportion as, being isolated

and narrow, it occupies the _whole man_, so that he does not retain

the power of separating himself as a universal being from this

determinateness, and becoming aware of himself as universal. Even if

the man in such a case says, "The passion is stronger than I," it is

true that the abstract I is then separated for consciousness from

the particular passion; but still only in a formal way, inasmuch as

this separation is only made in order to pronounce that, against the

power of the passion, the I as such is of no account whatever. The

savageness of passion consists, therefore, in the oneness of the I

as universal with the limited content of its desires, so that the

man has no will outside this particular passion. Now, such brutality

and untamed violence of passion is softened through art, to begin

with, by the mere fact that it brings before the man as an idea what

in such a state he feels and does. And even if art restricts itself

to merely setting up pictures of the passions before the mind's eye,

or even if it were actually to flatter them, still this is by itself

enough to have a softening power, inasmuch as the man is thereby at

least _made aware_, of what, apart from such presentation, he simply

_is_. For then the man observes his impulses and inclinations, and

whereas before they bore him on without power of reflection, he now

sees them outside himself, and begins already to be free from them, in

so far as they form an object which he contrasts with himself. Hence

it may frequently be the case with the artist that when attacked by

grief he softens and weakens the intensity of his own feelings in its

effect on his own mind by representing it in art. Tears, even, are

enough to bring comfort; the man, who to begin with is utterly sunk

and concentrated in grief, is able thus, at any rate, to utter in a

direct fashion this his inner state. Still more of a relief however,

is the utterance of what is within in words, images, pictures, sounds,

and shapes. For this reason it was a good old custom at deaths and

funerals to appoint wailing women, in order to bring the grief before

the mind in its utterance. Manifestations of sympathy, too, hold up

the content of a man's misfortune to his view; when it is much talked

about he is forced to reflect upon it, and is thereby relieved. And

so it has always been held that to weep or to speak one's fill is a

means to obtain freedom from the oppressive weight of care, or at least

to find momentary relief for the heart. Hence the mitigation of the

violence of passion has for its universal reason that man is released

from his immediate sunkenness[83] in a feeling, and becomes conscious

of it as of something external to him, towards which he must now enter

into an _ideal_ relation. Art, by means of its representations, while

remaining within the sensuous sphere, delivers man at the same time

from the power of sensuousness. Of course we may often hear those

favourite phrases about man's duty being to remain in immediate oneness

with nature, but such oneness in its abstraction is simply and solely

coarseness and savagery; and art, in the very process of dissolving

this oneness for man, is raising him with gentle hand above and away

from mere sunkenness in nature. Man's mode of occupying himself with

works of art is always purely contemplative,[84] and educates thereby,

in the first place, no doubt, merely attention to the representations

themselves, but then, going beyond this, it cultivates attention to

their significance, the power of comparison with other contents, and

receptivity for the general consideration of them, and for the points

of view which it involves.

([Greek: b]) To the above there attaches itself in natural connection

the second characteristic which has been ascribed to art as its

essential purpose, viz. the _purification_ of the passions, instruction

and _moral_ perfecting. For the characteristic that art was to bridle

savageness and educate the passions remained quite abstract and

general, so that a question must again arise about a _determinate_ kind

and an essential _end_ of this education.

([Greek: aa]) The doctrine of the purification of passion suffers

indeed under the same defect as the above doctrine of the mitigation of

the desires; yet, when more closely looked at, it at any rate arrives

at the point of accentuating the fact that the representations of art

may be held to lack a standard by which their worth or unworthiness

could be measured. This standard simply means their effectiveness in

separating pure from impure in the passions. It therefore requires

a content that has capacity to exercise this purifying power, and,

in as far as the production of such an effect is taken to constitute

the substantive end of art, it must follow that the purifying content

must be brought before consciousness in its _universality_ and

_essentiality_.

([Greek: bb]) In this latter aspect the end of art has been pronounced

to be that it should _teach_. Thus, on the one side, the peculiar

character of art would consist in the movement of the emotions and in

the satisfaction which lies in this movement, even in fear, compassion,

in painful pathos and shock--that is to say, in the satisfying

engagement of the emotions and passions, and to that extent in a

complacency, entertainment, and delight in the objects of art, in their

representation and effect; but, on the other side, this purpose (of

art) is held to find its higher standard only in its instructiveness,

in the _fabula docet_,[85] and thus in the useful influence which the

work of art succeeds in exerting on the subject.[86] In this respect

the Horatian saw,[87] "Et prodesse volunt et delectare poetæ," ("Poets

aim at utility and entertainment alike") contains, concentrated in

a few words, all that has subsequently been elaborated in infinite

degrees, and diluted into the uttermost extreme of insipidity as a

doctrine of art. As regards such instruction we have, then, to ask,

whether it is meant to be directly or indirectly, explicitly or

implicitly contained in the work of art.

If, speaking generally, we are concerned about a purpose which is

universal and not contingent, it follows that this purpose, considering

the essentially spiritual nature of art, cannot but be itself

spiritual, and indeed, moreover, one which is not contingent,[88] but

actual in its nature and for its own sake. Such a purpose in relation

to teaching could only consist in bringing before consciousness,

by help of the work of art, a really and explicitly significant

spiritual content. From this point of view it is to be asserted that

the higher art ranks itself, the more it is bound to admit into

itself such a content as this, and that only in the essence of such

a content can it find the standard which determines whether what is

expressed is appropriate or inappropriate. Art was, in fact, the first

_instructress_ of peoples.

But the purpose of instruction may be treated as _purpose_, to such a

degree that the universal nature of the represented content is doomed

to be exhibited and expounded directly and obviously as abstract

proposition, prosaic reflection, or general theorem, and not merely

in an indirect way in the concrete form of a work of art. By such a

severance the sensuous plastic form, which is just what makes the

work of art a work of _art_, becomes a mere otiose accessory, a husk

which is expressly pronounced to be mere husk, a semblance expressly

pronounced to be mere semblance. But thereby the very nature of the

work of art is distorted. For the work of art ought to bring a content

before the mind's eye, not in its generality as such, but with this

generality made absolutely individual, and sensuously particularized.

If the work of art does not proceed from this principle, but sets in

relief its generalized aspect with the purpose of abstract instruction,

then the imaginative and sensuous aspect is only an external and

superfluous adornment, and the work of art is a thing divided against

itself,[89] in which form and content no longer appear as grown into

one. In that case the sensuously individual and the spiritually

general are become external to one another.

And further, if the purpose of art is limited to this _didactic_

utility, then its other aspect, that of pleasure, entertainment, and

delight, is pronounced to be in itself _unessential_, and ought to have

its substance merely in the utility of the teaching on which it is

attendant. But this amounts to pronouncing that art does not bear its

vocation and purpose in itself, but that its conception is rooted in

something else, to which it is a _means_. Art is, in this case, only

one among the several means which prove useful and are applied for

the purpose of instruction. This brings us to the boundary at which

art is made no longer to be an end on its own merits, seeing that

it is degraded into a mere toy of entertainment or a mere means of

instruction.

([Greek: gg]) This boundary becomes most sharply marked when a question

is raised, in its turn, about a supreme end and aim for the sake of

which the passions are to be purified and men are to be instructed.

This aim has often, in modern times, been declared to be _moral_

improvement, and the aim of art has been placed in the function of

preparing the inclinations and impulses for moral perfection, and

of leading them to this goal. This idea combines purification with

instruction, inasmuch as art is, by communicating an insight into

genuine moral goodness--that is, by instruction,--at the same time

to incite to purification, and in this way alone to bring about the

improvement of mankind as its useful purpose and supreme goal.

Regarding art in reference to moral improvement, the same has _prima

facie_ to be said as about the didactic purpose. We may readily grant

that art must not as a principle take for its aim the immoral and its

furtherance. But it is one thing to take immorality for the express

aim of representation, and another to abstain from taking morality.

Every genuine work of art may have a good moral drawn from it, but, of

course, in doing so much depends on interpretation and on him who draws

the moral. Thus one may hear the most immoral representations defended

by saying that we must know evil, or sin, in order to act morally; and,

conversely, it has been said that the portrayal of Mary Magdalene,

the beautiful sinner who afterwards repented, has seduced many into

sin, because art makes it look so beautiful to repent, and you must

sin before you can repent. But the doctrine of moral improvement, if

consistently carried out, goes in general yet further. It would not be

satisfied with the possibility of extracting a moral from a work of art

by interpretation, but it would, on the contrary, display the moral

instruction as the substantive purpose of the work of art, and, indeed,

would actually admit to portrayal none but moral subjects, moral

characters, actions, and incidents. For art has the choice among its

subjects, in contradistinction to history or the sciences which have

their matter fixed for them.

In order that we may be able to form a thoroughly adequate estimate of

the idea that the aim of art is moral from this point of view, we must

inquire first of all for the definite standpoint of the morality on

which this doctrine is based. If we look closely at the standpoint of

morality as we have to understand it in the best sense at the present

day, we soon find that its conception does not immediately coincide

with what apart from it we are in the habit of calling in a general

way virtue, respectability,[90] uprightness, etc. To be respectable

and virtuous is not enough to make a man moral.[91] Morality involves

_reflection_ and the definite consciousness of that which duty

prescribes, and acting out of such a prior consciousness. Duty itself

is the law of the will, which man nevertheless lays down freely out of

his own self, and then is supposed to determine himself to this duty

for duty's and its fulfilment's sake, by doing good solely from the

conviction which he has attained that it is the good. Now this law, the

duty which is chosen for duty's sake to be the guide of action, out

of free conviction and the inner conscience, and is then acted upon,

is, taken by itself,[92] the abstract universal of the will, and is the

direct antithesis of nature, the sensuous impulses, the self-seeking

interests, the passions, and of all that is comprehensively entitled

the feelings[93] and the heart. In this antagonism the one side is

regarded as _negativing_ the other; and, seeing that both are present

as antagonists within the subject (person), he has, as determining

himself out of himself, the choice of following the one or the other.

But, according to the view under discussion, a _moral_ aspect is

acquired by such a decision, and by the act performed in accordance

with it, only through the free conviction of duty on the one hand, and,

on the other hand, through the conquest, not only of the particular or

separate will, of the natural motives, inclinations, passions, etc.,

but also through that of the nobler emotions and the higher impulses.

For the modern moralistic view starts from the fixed antithesis

of the will in its spiritual universality to its sensuous natural

particularity,[94] and consists not in the completed reconciliation of

these contrasted sides, but in their conflict with one another, which

involves the requirement that the impulses which conflict with duty

ought to yield to it.

This antithesis does not merely display itself for our consciousness,

in the limited region of moral action; but also emerges as a

fundamental distinction and antagonism between that which is real

essentially and in its own right,[95] and that which is external

reality and existence. Formulated in the abstract, it is the contrast

of the universal and particular, when the former is explicitly fixed

over against the latter, just as the latter is over against the former;

more concretely, it appears in nature as the opposition of the abstract

law against the abundance of individual phenomena, each having its

own character; in the mind, as the sensuous and spiritual in man, as

the battle of the spirit against the flesh, of duty for duty's sake,

the cold command, with the individual interest, the warm feelings,

the sensuous inclinations and impulses, the individual disposition

as such; as the hard conflict of inward freedom and of natural

necessity; further, as the contradiction of the dead conception--empty

in itself--compared with full concrete vitality, or of theory and

subjective thought contrasted with objective existence and experience.

These are antitheses which have not been invented, either by the

subtlety of reflection or by the pedantry of philosophy, but which

have from all time and in manifold forms preoccupied and disquieted

the human consciousness, although it was modern culture that

elaborated them most distinctly, and forced them up to the point of

most unbending contradiction. Intellectual culture and the modern

play of understanding create in man this contrast, which makes him an

amphibious animal, inasmuch as it sets him to live in two contradictory

worlds at once; so that even consciousness wanders back and forward

in this contradiction, and, shuttle-cocked from side to side, is

unable to satisfy itself _as_ itself on the one side as on the other.

For, on the one side, we see man a prisoner in common reality and

earthly temporality, oppressed by want and poverty, hard driven by

nature, entangled in matter, in sensuous aims and their enjoyments;

on the other side, he exalts himself to eternal ideas, to a realm of

thought and freedom, imposes on himself as a _will_ universal laws and

attributions, strips the world of its living and flourishing reality

and dissolves it into abstractions, inasmuch as the mind is put upon

vindicating its rights and its dignity simply by denying the rights

of nature and maltreating it, thereby retaliating the oppression and

violence which itself has experienced from nature. Such a discrepancy

in life and consciousness involves for modern culture and its

understanding the demand that the contradiction should be resolved.

Yet the understanding cannot release itself from the fixity of these

antitheses. The solution, therefore, remains for consciousness a mere

_ought_, and the present and reality only stir themselves in the

unrest of a perpetual to and fro, which seeks a reconciliation without

finding it. Then the question arises, whether such a many-sided and

fundamental opposition which never gets beyond a mere ought and a

postulated solution, can be the genuine and complete[96] truth, and,

in general, the supreme purpose. If the culture of the world[97] has

fallen into such a contradiction, it becomes the task of philosophy to

undo or cancel it, _i.e._ to show that neither the one alternative in

its abstraction nor the other in similar one-sidedness possesses truth,

but that they are essentially self-dissolving; that truth only lies in

the conciliation and mediation of the two, and that this mediation is

no mere postulate, but is in its nature and in reality accomplished

and always self-accomplishing. This intuition agrees directly with the

natural faith and will, which always has present to the mind's eye

precisely this resolved antithesis, and in action makes it its purpose

and achieves it. All that philosophy does is to furnish a reflective

insight into the essence of the antithesis in as far as it shows that

what constitutes truth is merely the resolution of this antithesis, and

that not in the sense that the conflict and its aspects in any way

_are not_, but in the sense that they _are_, _in reconciliation_.

(_d_) Now, as an ultimate aim implied a higher standpoint in the case

of moral improvement, we shall have to vindicate this higher standpoint

for art no less than for morals. Thereby we at once lay aside the

false position, which has already been remarked upon, that art has to

serve as a means for moral ends, and to conduce to the moral end of

the world, as such, by instruction and moral improvement, and thereby

has its substantive aim, not in itself, but in something else. If,

therefore, we now continue to speak of an aim or purpose, we must, in

the first instance, get rid of the perverse idea, which, in asking

"What is the aim?" retains the accessory meaning of the question,

"What is the _use_?". The perverseness of this lies in the point that

the work of art would then be regarded as aspiring to something else

which is set before consciousness as the essential and as what ought

to be; so that then the work of art would only have value as a useful

instrument in the realization of an end having substantive importance

_outside_ the sphere of art. Against this it is necessary to maintain

that art has the vocation of revealing _the truth_ in the form of

sensuous artistic shape, of representing the reconciled antithesis

just described, and, therefore, has its purpose in itself, in this

representation and revelation. For other objects, such as instruction,

purification, improvement, pecuniary gain, endeavour after fame and

honour, have nothing to do with the work of art as such, and do not

determine its conception.

It is from this point of view, into which _reflective_ consideration

of the matter resolves itself, that we have to apprehend the idea of

art in its inner necessity, as indeed it was from this point of view,

historically speaking, that the true appreciation and understanding

of art took its origin. For that antithesis, of which we spoke, made

itself felt, not only within general reflective culture, but no less in

philosophy as such, and it was not till philosophy discovered how to

overcome this antithesis absolutely, that it grasped its own conception

and, just in as far as it did so, the conception of nature and of art.

Hence this point of view, as it is the re-awakening of philosophy

in general, so also is the re-awakening of the science of art; and,

indeed, it is this re-awakening to which alone æsthetic as a science

owes its true origin, and art its higher estimation.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORICAL DEDUCTION OF THE TRUE IDEA OF ART IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

I Shall touch briefly upon the historical side of the transition above

alluded to, partly for its historical interest, partly because, in

doing so, we shall more closely indicate the critical points which

are important, and on the foundation of which we mean to continue

our structure. In its most general formulation, this basis consists

in recognizing artistic beauty as one of the means which resolve and

reduce to unity the above antithesis and contradiction between the

abstract self-concentrated mind and actual nature, whether that of

external phenomena, or the inner subjective feelings and emotions.

1. The Kantian philosophy led the way by not merely feeling the lack

of this point of union, but attaining definite knowledge of it, and

bringing it within the range of our ideas.[98] In general, Kant

treated as his foundation for the intelligence as for the will, the

self-related rationality or freedom, the self-consciousness that

finds and knows itself in itself as infinite.[99] This knowledge of

the absoluteness of reason in itself which has brought philosophy to

its turning-point in modern times, this absolute beginning, deserves

recognition even if we pronounce Kant's philosophy inadequate, and

is an element in it which cannot be refuted. But, in as far as Kant

fell back again into the fixed antithesis of subjective thought and

objective things, of the abstract universality and the sensuous

individuality of the will, it was he more especially who strained to

the highest possible pitch the above-mentioned contradiction called

morality,[100] seeing that he moreover exalted the practical side of

the mind above the theoretical. In presence of this fixed antithesis,

with its fixity acknowledged by the understanding, he had no course

open but to propound the unity merely in the form of subjective

ideas of the reason to which no adequate reality could be shown to

correspond, or again, to treat it as consisting in postulates which

might indeed be deduced from the practical reason, but whose essential

nature[101] was not for him knowable by thought, and whose practical

accomplishment remained a mere ought deferred to infinity. Thus, then,

Kant no doubt brought the reconciled contradiction within the range

of our ideas, but he succeeded neither in scientifically unfolding its

genuine essence nor in presenting it as the true and sole reality. Kant

indeed pressed on still further, inasmuch as he recognized the required

unity in what he called the _intuitive understanding_; but here,

again, he comes to a standstill in the contradiction of subjectivity

and objectivity, so that although he suggests in the abstract a

solution of the contradiction of concept and reality, universality

and particularity, understanding and sense, and thereby points to the

Idea, yet, on the other hand, he makes this solution and reconciliation

itself a purely _subjective_ one, not one which is true and actual in

its nature and on its own merits.[102] In this respect the Critique

of the power of judgment, in which he treats of the æsthetic and

teleological powers of judgment, is instructive and remarkable. The

beautiful objects of nature and art, the rightly adapted products

of nature, by connecting which Kant is led to a closer treatment of

organic and animated beings, are regarded by him only from the point of

view of the reflection which subjectively judges of them. Indeed Kant

defines the power of judgment generally as "the power of thinking the

particular as contained under the universal;" and he calls the power

of judgment _reflective_ "when it has only the particular given to it,

and has to find the universal under which it comes." To this end it

requires a law, a principle, which it has to impose upon itself; and

Kant suggests as this law that of _Teleology_. In the idea of freedom

that belongs to the practical reason, the accomplishment of the end

is left as a mere "ought," but in the teleological judgment dealing

with animated beings, Kant hits on the notion of regarding the living

organism in the light that in it the idea, the universal, contains

the particulars as well. Thus in its capacity as end, it determines

the particular and external, the structure of the limbs, not from

without, but from within, and in the sense that the particular conforms

to the end _spontaneously_. Yet even in such a judgment, again, we

are supposed not to know the objective nature of the thing, but only

to be enunciating a subjective mode of reflection. Similarly, Kant

understands the _æsthetic_ judgment as neither proceeding from the

understanding as such _qua_ the faculty of ideas, nor from sensuous

perception as such with its manifold variety, but from the free play of

the understanding and of the imagination. It is in this free agreement

of the faculties of knowledge, that the thing is related to the subject

or person, and to his feeling of pleasure and complacency.

(_a_) Now this complacency is, in the first place, to be devoid of any

interest, i.e., _devoid of relation to our appetitive faculty_. If

we have an interest, by way of curiosity for instance, or a sensuous

interest on behalf of our sensuous want, a desire of possession and

use, then the objects are not important to us for their own sake, but

for the sake of our want. In that case, what exists has a value only

with reference to such a want, and the relation is of such a kind that

the object is on the one side, and on the other stands an attribution

which is distinct from the object, but to which we relate it. If, for

instance, I consume the object in order to nourish myself by it, this

interest lies only in me, and remains foreign to the object itself.

Now, what Kant asserts is, that the relation to the beautiful is not

of this kind. The æsthetic judgment allows the external existence

to subsist free and independent, giving licence to the object to

have its end in itself. This is, as we saw above, an important

consideration.[103]

(_b_) The beautiful, in _the second place_, says Kant, is definable

as that which, without a conception, _i.e._ without a category of the

understanding, is perceived as the object of a _universal_ delight.

To estimate the beautiful requires a cultivated mind; the natural

man[104] has no judgment about the beautiful, seeing that this judgment

claims universal validity. The universal is, indeed to begin with,

_as such_ an abstraction; but that which in itself and on its own

merits[105] is true, bears in itself the attribution and the claim

to be valid even universally. In this sense the beautiful, too, ought

to be _universally_ recognized, although the mere conceptions of the

understanding are competent to no judgment thereupon. The good, that,

for instance, which is right in particular actions, is subsumed under

universal conceptions, and the act passes for good when it succeeds

in corresponding to these conceptions. Beauty, on the other hand,

according to the theory, should awaken a universal delight directly,

without any such relation. This amounts to nothing else than that, in

contemplating beauty, we are not conscious of the conception and of the

subsumption under it, and do not permit to take place the severance

of the individual object and of the universal conception which in all

other cases is present in the judgment.

(_c_) In the _third_ place, the beautiful (Kant says) has the form of

teleology,[106] in as far as a teleological character is perceived in

the object without the idea of an end. At bottom this only repeats the

view which we have just discussed. Any natural production, _i.e._ a

plant or an animal, is organized teleologically, and is so immediately

a datum to us in this its teleology that we have no separate abstract

idea of the end, distinct from its given reality. It is in this way

that even _the beautiful_ is to be displayed to us as teleological.

In finite teleology[107] end and means remain external to one another,

inasmuch as the end stands in no essential inner relation to the

material medium of its accomplishment. In this case, the idea of the

end in its abstraction[108] distinguishes itself from the object in

which the end appears as realized. The beautiful, on the other hand,

exists as teleological in itself, without means and end revealing

themselves in it as distinct aspects. For instance, the purpose of

the limbs of an organism is the vitality which exists as actual in

the limbs themselves; separately they cease to be limbs. For in the

living thing the end and the material medium of the end are so directly

united, that the existing being only exists so long as its purpose

dwells in it. The beautiful, Kant maintains, when considered from this

point of view, does not wear its teleology as an external form attached

to it; but the teleological correspondence of the inner and outer is

the immanent nature of the beautiful object.

(_d_) Lastly, Kant's treatment determines the beautiful, in the

_fourth_ place, as being recognized, without a conception, as object

of a _necessary_ delight. Necessity is an abstract category, and

indicates an inner essential relation of two aspects; _if_ the one is,

and _because_ the one is, _then_ (_and therefore_) the other is. The

one in its nature involves the other as well as itself, just as cause,

_e.g._, has no meaning without effect. The delight which the beautiful

involves is such a necessary consequence, wholly without relation to

conceptions, _i.e._ to categories of the understanding. Thus, for

instance, we are pleased no doubt by what is symmetrical, and this

is constructed in accordance with a conception of the understanding.

But Kant requires, to give us pleasure, even more than the unity and

equality that belong to such a conception of the understanding.

Now, what we find in all these Kantian laws is a non-severance of

that which in all other cases is presupposed in our consciousness to

be distinct. In the beautiful this severance finds itself cancelled,

inasmuch as universal and particular, end and means, conception

and object thoroughly interpenetrate one another. And thus, again,

Kant regards the beautiful in _art_ as an agreement in which the

particular itself _is_ in accordance with the conception. Particulars,

as such, are _prima facie_ contingent, both as regards one another

and as regards the universal, and this very contingent element,

sense, feeling, temper, inclination, is now in the beauty of art not

merely _subsumed_ under universal categories of the understanding

and _controlled_ by the conception of feeling in its abstract

universality, but so united with the universal that it reveals itself

as inwardly and in its nature and realization[109] adequate thereto.

By this means the beauty of art becomes embodiment of a thought, and

the material is not externally determined by this thought, but exists

itself in its freedom. For in this case the natural, sensuous, the

feelings and so forth have _in themselves_ proportion, purpose, and

agreement; while perception and feeling are exalted into spiritual

universality, and thought itself, not content with renouncing its

hostility to nature, finds cheerfulness therein. Thus feeling,

pleasure, and enjoyment are justified and sanctified, so that nature

and freedom, sensuousness and the idea, find their warrant and

their satisfaction all in _one_. Yet even this apparently complete

reconciliation is ultimately inferred[110] to be, nevertheless,

merely subjective in respect of our appreciation as in respect of our

production, and not to be the naturally and completely true and real.

These we may take as the main results of the Kantian Criticism, so far

as they have interest for us in our present inquiry. This criticism

forms the starting-point for the true conception of artistic beauty.

Yet this conception had to overcome the Kantian defects before it could

assert itself as the higher grasp of the true unity of necessity and

freedom, of the particular and the universal, of the sensuous and the

rational.

2. And so it must be admitted that the artistic sense of a profound,

and, at the same time, philosophic mind was beforehand with philosophy

as such, in demanding and enunciating the principle of totality and

reconciliation as against that abstract endlessness of reflective

thought, that duty for duty's sake, that intelligence devoid of plastic

shape, which apprehend nature and reality, sensation and feeling as

a mere _limit_, and as an absolutely hostile element. For _Schiller_

must be credited with the great merit of having broken through the

Kantian subjectivity and abstractness of thought, and having dared

the attempt to transcend these limits by intellectually grasping the

principles of unity and reconciliation as the truth, and realizing

them in art. Schiller, in his æsthetic discussions, did not simply

adhere to art and its interest without concerning himself about its

relation to philosophy proper, but compared his interest in artistic

beauty with the principles of philosophy; and it was only by starting

from the latter, and by their help that he penetrated the profounder

nature and notion of the beautiful. Thus we feel it to be a feature in

one period of his works that he has busied himself with thought--more

perhaps than was conducive to their unsophisticated beauty as works of

art. The intentional character of abstract reflection and even the

interest of the philosophical idea are noticeable in many of his poems.

This has been made a ground of censure against him, especially by way

of blaming and depreciating him in comparison with Goethe's agreeable

straightforwardness[111] and objectivity. But in this respect Schiller,

as poet, did but pay the debt of his time; and the reason lay in a

perplexity which turned out only to the honour of that sublime soul and

profound character, and to the profit of science and cognition.

At the same epoch the same scientific stimulus withdrew Goethe,

too, from poetry, his proper sphere. Yet just as Schiller immersed

himself in the study of the inner depths of the _mind_, so Goethe's

idiosyncrasy led him to the _physical_ side of art, to external nature,

to animal and vegetable organisms, to crystals, to cloud formation,

and to colour. To such scientific research Goethe brought the power of

his great mind, which in these regions put to rout[112] the science

of mere understanding with its errors, just as Schiller, on the other

side, succeeded in asserting the idea of the free totality of beauty

against the understanding's science of volition and thought. A whole

set of Schiller's productions is devoted to this insight of his into

the nature of art, especially the "Letters upon Æsthetic Education."

In these letters the central point from which Schiller starts is that

every individual human being has within him the capacity of an ideal

humanity. This genuine human being, he says, is represented by the

State,[113] which he takes to be the objective, universal, or, so to

speak, normal form in which the diversity of particular subjects or

persons aims at aggregating and combining itself into a unity. There

were, then, he considered, two imaginable ways in which the human

being in time (in the actual course of events) might coincide with the

human being in the Idea: on the one hand, by the State, _qua_ genus

or class-idea of morality,[114] law, and intelligence, destroying

individuality; on the other hand, by the individual raising himself

to the level of his genus, _i.e._ by the human being that lives in

time ennobling himself into the human being of the Idea. Now reason,

he thinks, demands unity as such, the generic character, but nature

demands diversity and individuality; and both these legislative

authorities have simultaneous claims on man. In presence of the

conflict between these antagonistic elements, æsthetic education simply

consists in realizing the requirement of mediation and reconciliation

between them. For the aim of this education is, according to Schiller,

to give such form to inclination, sensuousness, impulse, and heart,

that they may become rational in themselves, and by the same process

reason, freedom, and spirituality may come forward out of their

abstraction, and uniting with the natural element, now rationalized

throughout, may in it be invested with flesh and blood. Beauty is thus

pronounced to be the unification of the rational and the sensuous, and

this unification to be the genuinely real.

This notion of Schiller's may be readily recognized in the general

views of "Anmuth und Würde,"[115] and in his poems more particularly

from the fact that he makes the praise of women his subject matter;

because it was in their character that he recognized and held up to

notice the spontaneously present combination of the spiritual and

natural.

Now this _Unity_ of the universal and particular, of freedom and

necessity, of the spiritual and the natural, which Schiller grasped

from a scientific point of view as the principle and essence of art,

and laboured indefatigably to evoke into actual existence by help of

art and æsthetic culture, was considered, by a further advance, _as

the Idea itself_, and was thus constituted the principle of knowledge

and of existence, while the Idea in this sense was recognized as the

sole truth and reality. By means of this recognition, science, in

Schelling's philosophy, attained its absolute standpoint, and although

art had previously begun to assert its peculiar nature and dignity in

relation to the highest interests of humanity, yet it was now that

the actual _notion_ of art and its place in scientific theory were

discovered. Art was now accepted, even if erroneously in one respect,

which this is not the place to discuss, yet in its higher and genuine

vocation. No doubt before this time so early a writer as Winckelmann

had been inspired by his observation of the ideals of the ancients in a

way that led him to develop a new sense for the contemplation of art,

to rescue it from the notions of commonplace aims and of mere mimicry

of nature, and to exert an immense influence in favour of searching out

the idea of art in the works of art and in its history. For Winckelmann

should be regarded as one of the men who have succeeded in furnishing

the mind with a new organ and new methods of study in the field of art.

On the theory, however, and the scientific knowledge of art his view

has had less influence.

3. To touch briefly on the further course of the subject, A. W. and

Friedrich von Schlegel, in proximity to the renaissance of philosophy,

being covetous of novelty and with a thirst for what was striking and

extraordinary, appropriated as much of the philosophical idea as

their natures, which were anything but philosophical, and essentially

of the critical stamp, were capable of absorbing. Neither of them can

claim the reputation of a speculative thinker. But it was they who,

armed with their critical understanding, set themselves somewhere near

the standpoint of the Idea, and with great plainness of speech and

audacity of innovation, though with but a poor admixture of philosophy,

directed a clever polemic against the traditional views. And thus they

undoubtedly introduced in several branches of art a new standard of

judgment in conformity with notions which were higher than those that

they attacked. As, however, their criticism was not accompanied by the

thorough philosophical comprehension of their standard, this standard

retained a character of indefiniteness and vacillation, with the result

that they sometimes did too much and sometimes too little. No doubt

they are to be credited with the merit of bringing afresh to light

and extolling in a loving spirit much that was held obsolete and was

inadequately esteemed by their age, e.g. the work of the older painters

of Italy and the Netherlands, the "Nibelungen Lied," etc.; and, again,

they endeavoured with zeal to learn and to teach subjects that were

little known, such as the Indian poetry and mythology. Nevertheless,

they attributed too high a value to the productions of such epochs,

and sometimes themselves fell into the blunder of admiring what was

but mediocre, _e.g._ Holberg's comedies, and attaching a universal

importance to what had only relative value, or even boldly showing

themselves enthusiasts for a perverse tendency and subordinate

standpoint as if it were something supreme.

Out of this tendency, and especially out of the sentiments[116] and

doctrines of Fried. von Schlegel, there further grew in all its

manifold shapes the so-called _Irony_. This idea had its deeper root,

if we take it in one of its aspects, in Fichte's philosophy, in so

far as the principles of his philosophy were applied to art. Fried.

von Schlegel, as also Schelling, started from Fichte's point of view;

Schelling, to pass wholly beyond it, Fried. von Schlegel to develop it

in a peculiar fashion, and to tear himself loose from it. As regards

the intimate connection of Fichte's principles with one tendency

(among others) of the irony, we need only lay stress on the following

point, that Fichte establishes the =I= as the absolute principle of

all knowledge, of all reason and cognition; and that in the sense of

the =I= which is, and is no more than, utterly abstract and formal.

For this reason, in the second place, this =I= is in itself absolutely

simple, and, on the one hand, every characteristic, every attribute,

every content is negated therein--for every positive matter is

annihilated by absorption into this abstract freedom and unity; on the

other side, every content which is to be of value for the =I=, is given

position and recognition only by favour of the =I=. Whatever is, is

only by favour of the =I=,[117] and what is by my favour =I= am in turn

able to annihilate.

Now, if we abide by these utterly empty forms which have their origin

in the absoluteness of the abstract =I=, then nothing has value in

its real and actual nature, and regarded[118] in itself, but only as

produced by the subjectivity of the =I=. But if so, it follows that

the =I= is able to remain lord and master of everything, and in no

sphere of morality or legality, of things human or divine, profane or

sacred, is there anything that would not have to begin by being given

position by the =I=, and that might not, therefore, just as well be in

turn annihilated thereby. This amounts to making all that is actual in

its own right[119] a mere _semblance_, not true and real for its own

sake and by its own means, but a mere appearance due to the =I=, within

whose power and caprice it remains, and at its free disposal. To admit

it or to annihilate it stands purely in the pleasure of the =I= which

has attained absoluteness in itself and simply as =I=.

In the third place,[120] then, the =I= is a _living_, active

individual, and its life consists in bringing its individuality to its

own consciousness as to that of others, in uttering itself and taking

shape in phenomena. For every human being while he lives, seeks to

realize himself, and does realize himself. With respect to beauty and

art this receives the meaning of living as artist and forming one's

life _artistically_. But, according to the principle before us, =I=

live as artist when all my action and utterance in general, whenever it

has to do with any content, is for me on the level of mere _semblance_,

and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. So =I= am not really

in _earnest_, either about this content, or generally, about its

utterance and realization. For genuine earnest comes into being only

by means of a substantial interest, a matter that has something in

it, truth, morality, and so forth; by means of a content which, as

such (without my help) is enough to have value for me as something

essential, so that =I= myself only become essential in my own eyes

in as far as =I= have immersed myself in such a matter and have come

to be in conformity with it in my whole knowledge and action. At the

standpoint according to which the artist is the =I= that binds and

looses[121] of its own power, for whom no content of consciousness

counts as absolute and as essentially real, but only as itself an

artificial and dissoluble semblance, such earnest can never come into

being, as nothing has validity ascribed to it but the formalism of the

=I=. By others, indeed, my self-display in which =I= present myself to

them may be taken seriously, inasmuch as they interpret me as though I

were really concerned about the matter in hand; but therein they are

simply deceived, poor _borné_ creatures, without talent and capacity to

apprehend and to attain my standpoint. And this shows me that not every

one is so free (_formally_[122] free, that is) as to see in all that

usually has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind, simply a product

of his own power of caprice, whereby he is able to set his seal on the

value of such matters, and to determine himself and obtain a content by

their means, or not. And then this skill in living an ironical artist

life apprehends itself as a _God-like geniality_,[123] for which every

possible thing is a mere dead creature, to which the free creator,

knowing himself to be wholly unattached, feels in no way bound, seeing

that he can annihilate as well as create it. He who has attained such

a standpoint of God-like geniality looks down in superiority on all

mankind besides, for they are pronounced _borné_ and dull in as far as

law, morality, and so forth retain for them their fixed, obligatory,

and essential validity. And the individual who thus lives his artist

life assigns himself indeed relation to others, lives with friends,

mistresses, etc., but as genius he sets no value on this relation to

his determinate reality and particular actions, or to what is universal

in its own right; that is, he assumes an ironical attitude towards it.

This is the universal import of the genial God-like irony, as that

concentration of the =I= into itself for which all bonds are broken,

and which will only endure to live in the bliss of self-enjoyment.[124]

This irony was the invention of Herr Fried. von Schlegel, and many

followed him in prating about it then, or are prating of it afresh just

now.

The proximate form of this negativity which displays itself as irony

is, then, on the one hand the futility[125] of all that is matter of

fact, or moral and of substantive import in itself; the nothingness of

all that is objective, and that has essential and actual value. If the

=I= remains at this point of view, all appears to it as nothing worth

and as futile, excepting its own subjectivity, which thereby becomes

hollow and empty, and itself mere conceit.[126] But on the other hand,

the reverse may happen, and the I may also find itself unsatisfied

in its enjoyment of itself, and may prove insufficient to itself, so

as in consequence to feel a craving for the solid and substantial,

for determinate and essential interests. Out of this there arises

misfortune and antinomy, in that the subject desires to penetrate into

truth and has a craving for objectivity, but yet is unable to abandon

its isolation and retirement into itself, and to strip itself free of

this unsatisfied abstract inwardness (of mind), and so has a seizure

of sickly yearning[127] which we have also seen emanate from Fichte's

school. The discontent of this quiescence and feebleness,--which does

not like to act or to touch anything for fear of surrendering its

inward harmony, and, for all its craving after the absolute, remains

none the less unreal and empty, even though pure in itself,--is the

source of morbid saintliness[128] and yearning. For a true saintly soul

acts and is a reality. But all that craving is the feeling of the

nullity of the empty futile[129] subject or person, which lacks the

strength to escape this its futility,[129] and to fill[130] itself with

something of substantial value.

In so far, however, as the Irony was treated as a form of art, it did

not content itself with conferring artistic shape upon the life and

particular individuality of the artist. In addition to the works of art

presented by his own actions, etc., the artist was bound to produce

external works of art as creations of his fancy. The principle of these

productions, which for the most part can only come to the birth in

poetical form, is, in due course, the representation of the Divine as

the Ironical. The ironical, as "genial" individuality, consists in the

self-annihilation of what is noble, great, and excellent; and thus even

the objective shapes of art will have to represent the mere principle

of absolute subjectivity, by displaying what has value and nobleness

for man as null in its self-annihilation. This implies, not merely that

we are not to be serious about the right, the moral, and the true, but

that the highest and best of all has nothing in it, inasmuch as in its

exhibition through individuals, characters, and actions, it refutes

and annihilates itself, and so is irony at its own expense. This mode,

taken in the abstract, borders closely on the principle of comedy; but

yet within this affinity the comic must be essentially distinguished

from the ironical. For the comic must be limited to bringing to nothing

what is in itself null, a false and self-contradictory phenomenon;

for instance, a whim, a perversity, or particular caprice, set over

against a mighty passion; or even a _supposed_ reliable principle or

rigid maxim may be shown to be null. But it is quite another thing

when what is in reality moral and true, any substantial content as

such, exhibits itself as null in an individual and by his means. Such

an individual is then null and despicable in character, and weakness

and want of character are thus introduced into the representation. In

this distinction between the ironical and the comic it is therefore

an essential question what import that has which is brought to

nothing. In the case supposed they are wretched worthless subjects,

persons destitute of the power to abide by their fixed and essential

purpose, but ready to surrender it and let it be destroyed in them.

The "Irony" loves this irony of the characterless. For true character

involves on the one hand an essential import in its purpose; on the

other hand, adherence to that purpose, such that the individuality

would be robbed of its whole existence if forced to desist from and

to abandon it. This stability and substance constitute the keynote of

character. _Cato_ can live only as Roman and as republican. Now, if

Irony is taken as the keynote of the representation, this means that

the supremely inartistic is taken as the true principle of the work of

art. For the result is in part insipid figures; in part shapes void

of import and of conduct,[131] seeing that their substantive nature

turns out to be a nullity; and in part, finally, those yearning moods

and unresolved contradictions of the heart that attach themselves to

such conceptions. Representations of this kind can awake no genuine

interest. And for this reason it is from the Irony that we have eternal

lamentations over the lack of profound feeling, artistic insight, and

genius in the public, inasmuch as it does not understand these heights

of Irony. That is to say, the public does not like all this mediocrity,

half grotesque and half characterless. And it is well that these

unsubstantial languishing natures afford no pleasure; it is a comfort

that such insincerity and hypocrisy are not approved, and that, on the

contrary, man has a desire no less for full and genuine interests than

for characters which remain true to the weighty purposes of their lives.

It may be added as an historical remark that those who more

particularly adopted irony as the supreme principle of art were Solger

and Ludwig Tieck.

This is not the place to speak of Solger at the length which is due to

him, and I must content myself with a few observations. Solger was

not like the others, satisfied with superficial philosophical culture,

but the genuine speculative need of his innermost nature impelled him

to descend into the depths of the philosophic idea. And therein he hit

upon the dialectical element of the Idea, the point to which I give the

name of "infinite absolute negativity," the activity of the idea in

that it negates itself as the infinite and universal, so as to become

finiteness and particularity, and just as really cancels this negation

in turn, establishing thereby the universal and infinite in the finite

and particular. Solger got no further than this negativity, and it is

no doubt an element in the speculative idea, but yet when conceived

as this mere dialectic unrest and dissolution both of infinite and of

finite _no more than_ an element; not, as Solger maintains, _the entire

Idea_. Unhappily Solger's life was too soon interrupted for him to

have achieved the concrete development of the philosophical Idea. And

so he never got beyond this aspect of negativity, which has affinity

with the dissolution that Irony effects of what is determinate and of

what has substantive value in itself, a negativity in which he saw the

principle of artistic activity. Yet in his actual life, considering the

solidity, seriousness, and strength of his character, he neither was

himself, in the sense above depicted, an ironical artist, nor was his

profound feeling for genuine works of art, developed in protracted art

studies, in this respect of an ironical nature. So much in vindication

of Solger, whose life, philosophy, and art merit to be distinguished

from the previously mentioned apostles of irony.

As regards Ludwig Tieck, his culture, too, dates from that period

in which for some time Jena was the literary centre.[132] Tieck and

others of these distinguished people display great familiarity with the

phrases in question, but without telling us what they mean by them.

Thus, Tieck no doubt always says there ought to be Irony; but when he

himself approaches the criticism of great works of art, though his

recognition and portrayal of their greatness is excellent, yet, if we

fancy that now is the best opportunity to explain where the Irony is,

_e.g._ in such a work as "Romeo and Juliet," we are taken in--for we

hear no more about the Irony.

CHAPTER V

DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.

1. After the above introductory remarks, it is now time to pass to

the study of our object-matter. But we are still in the introduction,

and an introduction cannot do more than lay down, for the sake of

explanation, the general sketch of the entire course which will be

followed by our subsequent scientific considerations. As, however, we

have spoken of art as proceeding from the absolute Idea, and have even

assigned as its end the sensuous representation of the absolute itself,

we shall have to conduct this review in a way to show, at least in

general, how the particular divisions of the subject spring from the

conception of artistic beauty as the representation of the absolute.

Therefore we must attempt to awaken a very general idea of this

conception itself.

It has already been said that the content of art is the Idea, and that

its form lies in the plastic use of images accessible to sense. These

two sides art has to reconcile into a full and united totality. The

_first_ attribution which this involves is the requirement that the

content, which is to be offered to artistic representation, shall show

itself to be in its nature worthy of such representation. Otherwise

we only obtain a bad combination, whereby a content that will not

submit to plasticity and to external presentation, is forced into that

form, and a matter which is in its nature prosaic is expected to find

an appropriate mode of manifestation in the form antagonistic to its

nature.

The _second_ requirement, which is derivable from this first, demands

of the content of art that it should not be anything abstract in

itself. This does not mean that it must be concrete as the sensuous

is concrete in contrast to everything spiritual and intellectual,

these being taken as in themselves simple and abstract. For everything

that has genuine truth in the mind as well as in nature is concrete

in itself, and has, in spite of its universality, nevertheless, both

subjectivity and particularity within it. If we say, _e.g._, of God

that he is simply _One_, the supreme Being as such, we have only

enunciated a lifeless abstraction of the irrational understanding. Such

a God, as he himself is not apprehended in his concrete truth, can

afford no material for art, least of all for plastic art. Hence the

Jews and the Turks have not been able to represent their God, who does

not even amount to such an abstraction of the understanding, in the

positive way in which Christians have done so. For God in Christianity

is conceived in His truth, and therefore, as in Himself thoroughly

concrete, as a person, as a subject,[133] and more closely determined,

as mind or spirit. What He is as spirit unfolds itself to the religious

apprehension as the Trinity of Persons, which at the same time in

relation with itself is _One_. Here is essentiality, universality, and

particularity, together with their reconciled unity; and it is only

such unity that constitutes the concrete. Now, as a content in order to

possess truth at all must be of this concrete nature, art demands the

same concreteness, because a mere abstract universal has not in itself

the vocation to advance to particularity and phenomenal manifestation

and to unity with itself therein.

If a true and therefore concrete content is to have corresponding to it

a sensuous form and modelling, this sensuous form must, in the third

place, be no less emphatically something individual, wholly concrete

in itself, and one. The character of concreteness as belonging to both

elements of art, to the content as to the representation, is precisely

the point in which both may coincide and correspond to one another; as,

for instance, the natural shape of the human body is such a sensuous

concrete as is capable of representing spirit, which is concrete in

itself, and of displaying itself in conformity therewith. Therefore we

ought to abandon the idea that it is a mere matter of accident that an

actual phenomenon of the external world is chosen to furnish a shape

thus conformable to truth. Art does not appropriate this form either

because it simply finds it existing or because there is no other. The

concrete content itself involves the element of external and actual,

we may say indeed of sensible manifestation. But in compensation this

sensuous concrete, in which a content essentially belonging to mind

expresses itself, is in its own nature addressed to the inward being;

its external element of shape, whereby the content is made perceptible

and imaginable, has the aim of existing purely for the heart and mind.

This is the only reason for which content and artistic shape are

fashioned in conformity with each other. The _mere_ sensuous concrete,

external nature as such, has not this purpose for its exclusive ground

of origin. The birds' variegated plumage shines unseen, and their

song dies away unheard, the _Cereus_[134] which blossoms only for a

night withers without having been admired in the wilds of southern

forests, and these forests, jungles of the most beautiful and luxuriant

vegetation, with the most odorous and aromatic perfumes, perish

and decay no less unenjoyed. The work of art has not such a naïve

self-centred being, but is essentially a question, an address to the

responsive heart, an appeal to affections and to minds.

Although the artistic bestowal of sensuous form is in this respect

not accidental, yet on the other hand it is not the highest mode

of apprehending the spiritually concrete. Thought is a higher mode

than representation by means of the sensuous concrete. Although in a

relative sense abstract, yet it must not be one-sided but concrete

thinking, in order to be true and rational. Whether a given content

has sensuous artistic representation for its adequate form, or in

virtue of its nature essentially demands a higher and more spiritual

embodiment, is a distinction that displays itself at once, if, for

instance, we compare the Greek gods with God as conceived according to

Christian ideas. The Greek god is not abstract but individual, and is

closely akin to the natural human shape; the Christian God is equally a

concrete personality, but in the mode of pure spiritual existence, and

is to be known as _mind_[135] and in mind. His medium of existence is

therefore essentially inward knowledge and not external natural form,

by means of which He can only be represented imperfectly, and not in

the whole depth of His idea.

But inasmuch as the task of art is to represent the idea to direct

perception in sensuous shape, and not in the form of thought or of pure

spirituality as such, and seeing that this work of representation has

its value and dignity in the correspondence and the unity of the two

sides, _i.e._ of the Idea and its plastic embodiment, it follows that

the level and excellency of art in attaining a realization adequate to

its idea,[136] must depend upon the grade of inwardness and unity with

which Idea and Shape display themselves as fused into one.

Thus the higher truth is spiritual being that has attained a shape

adequate to the conception of spirit. This is what furnishes the

principle of division for the science of art. For before the mind can

attain the true notion of its absolute essence, it has to traverse

a course of stages whose ground is in this idea itself; and to

this evolution of the content with which it supplies itself, there

corresponds an evolution, immediately connected therewith, of the

plastic forms of art, under the shape of which the mind as artist

presents to itself the consciousness of itself.

This evolution within the art-spirit has again in its own nature two

sides. In the _first_ place the development itself is a spiritual[137]

and universal one, in so far as the graduated series of definite

_conceptions of the world_ as the definite but comprehensive

consciousness of nature, man and God, gives itself artistic shape;

and, in the _second_ place, this _universal_ development of art is

obliged to provide itself with external existence and sensuous form,

and the definite modes of the sensuous art-existence are themselves a

totality of necessary distinctions in the realm of art--which are _the

several arts_. It is true, indeed, that the necessary kinds of artistic

representation are on the one hand _qua_ spiritual of a very general

nature, and not restricted to any one material;[138] while sensuous

existence contains manifold varieties of matter. But as this latter,

like the mind, has the Idea potentially for its inner soul, it follows

from this that particular sensuous materials have a close affinity

and secret accord with the spiritual distinctions and types of art

presentation.

In its completeness, however, our science divides itself into three

principal portions.

_First_, we obtain a _general part_. It has for its content and object

the universal Idea of artistic beauty--this beauty being conceived as

the Ideal--together with the nearer relation of the latter both to

nature and to subjective artistic production.

_Secondly_, there develops itself out of the idea of artistic beauty a

_particular_ part, in as far as the essential differences which this

idea contains in itself evolve themselves into a scale _particular_

plastic[139] forms.

In the _third_ place there results a _final_ part, which has for its

subject the individualization of artistic beauty, that consists in

the advance of art to the sensuous realization of its shapes and its

self-completion as a system of the several arts[140] and their genera

and species.

2. With respect to the first part, we must begin by recalling to

mind, in order to make the sequel intelligible, that the Idea _qua_

the beautiful in art is not the Idea as such, in the mode in which

a metaphysical logic apprehends it as the absolute, but the Idea as

developed into concrete form fit for reality, and as having entered

into immediate and adequate unity with this reality. For the _Idea

as such_, although it is the essentially and actually true, is yet

the truth only in its generality which has not yet taken objective

shape; but the _Idea_ as the _beautiful in art_ is at once the Idea

when specially determined as in its essence individual reality, and

also an individual shape of reality essentially destined to embody

and reveal the Idea. This amounts to enunciating the requirement that

the Idea, and its plastic mould as concrete reality, are to be made

completely adequate to one another. When reduced to such form the Idea,

as a reality moulded in conformity with the conception of the Idea,

is the _Ideal_. The problem of this conformity might, to begin with,

be understood in the sense that any Idea would serve, so long as the

actual shape, it did not matter what shape, represented this particular

Idea and no other. But if so, the required truth of the Ideal is

confounded with mere correctness, which consists in the expression of

any meaning whatever in appropriate fashion so that its import may be

readily recognized in the shape created. The Ideal is not to be thus

understood. Any content whatever may attain to being represented quite

adequately, judged by the standard of its own nature, but it does not

therefore gain the right to claim the artistic beauty of the Ideal.

Compared indeed with ideal beauty, even the presentation will in such

a case appear defective. From this point of view we must remark to

begin with, what cannot be proved till later, that the defects of a

work of art are not to be regarded simply as always due, for instance,

to individual unskillfulness. _Defectiveness of form_ arises from

_defectiveness of content_. So, for example, the Chinese, Indians,

and Egyptians in their artistic shapes, their forms of deities, and

their idols, never got beyond a formless phase, or one of a vicious

and false definiteness of form, and were unable to attain genuine

beauty; because their mythological ideas, the content and thought of

their works of art, were as yet indeterminate in themselves, or of a

vicious determinateness, and did not consist in the content that is

absolute in itself. The more that works of art excel in true beauty of

presentation, the more profound is the inner truth of their content and

thought. And in dealing with this point, we have not to think merely

perhaps of the greater or lesser skill with which the natural forms as

given in external reality are apprehended and imitated. For in certain

stages of art-consciousness and of representation, the distortion and

disfigurement of natural structures is not unintentional technical

inexpertness and want of skill, but intentional alteration, which

emanates from the content that is in consciousness, and is required

thereby. Thus, from this point of view, there is such a thing as

imperfect art, which may be quite perfect, both technically and in

other respects, _in its determinate_ sphere, yet reveals itself to be

defective when compared with the conception of art as such, and with

the Ideal. Only in the highest art are the Idea and the representation

genuinely adequate to one another, in the sense that the outward shape

given to the Idea is in itself essentially and actually the true

shape, because the content of the Idea, which that shape expresses,

is itself the true and real content. It is a corollary from this,

as we indicated above,[141] that the Idea must be defined in and

through itself as concrete totality, and thereby possess in itself the

principle and standard of its particularization and determination in

external appearance. For example, the Christian imagination will be

able to represent God only in human form and with man's intellectual

expression, because it is herein that God Himself is completely known

in Himself as mind. Determinateness is, as it were, the bridge to

phenomenal existence. Where this determinateness is not totality

derived from the Idea itself, where the Idea is not conceived as

self-determining and self-particularizing, the Idea remains abstract

and has its determinateness, and therefore the principle that dictates

its particular and exclusively appropriate mode of presentation, not

in itself but external to it. Therefore, the Idea when still abstract

has even its shape external, and not dictated by itself. The Idea,

however, which is concrete in itself bears the principle of its mode of

manifestation within itself, and is by that means the free process of

giving shape to itself. Thus it is only the truly concrete Idea that

can generate the true shape, and this correspondence of the two is the

Ideal.

3. Now because the Idea is in this fashion concrete unity, it follows

that this unity can enter into the art-consciousness only by the

expansion and reconciliation of the particularities of the Idea, and

it is through this evolution that artistic beauty comes to possess a

_totality of particular stages and forms_. Therefore, after we have

studied the beauty of art in itself and on its own merits, we must see

how beauty as a whole breaks up into its particular determinations.

This gives, as our _second part_, _the doctrine of the types of art_.

These forms find their genesis in the different modes of grasping the

Idea as artistic content, whereby is conditioned a difference of the

form in which it manifests itself. Hence the types of art are nothing

but the different relations of content and shape, relations which

emanate from the Idea itself, and furnish thereby the true basis of

division for this sphere. For the principle of division must always be

contained in _that_ conception whose particularization and division is

in question.

We have here to consider _three_ relations of the Idea to its outward

shaping.[142]

[Greek: a]. First, the Idea gives rise to the beginning of Art when,

being itself still in its indistinctness and obscurity, or in vicious

untrue determinateness, it is made the import of artistic creations.

As indeterminate it does not yet possess in itself that individuality

which the Ideal demands; its abstractness and one-sidedness leave its

shape to be outwardly bizarre and defective. The first form of art is

therefore rather a mere search after plastic portrayal than a capacity

of genuine representation. The Idea has not yet found the true form

even within itself, and therefore continues to be merely the struggle

and aspiration thereafter. In general terms we may call this form the

_Symbolic_ form of art. In it the abstract Idea has its outward shape

external to itself[143] in natural sensuous matter, with which the

process of shaping begins, and from which, _qua_ outward expression,

it is inseparable.

Natural objects are thus primarily left unaltered, and yet at the same

time invested with the substantial Idea as their significance, so that

they receive the vocation of expressing it, and claim to be interpreted

as though the Idea itself were present in them. At the root of this

is the fact that natural objects have in them an aspect in which they

are capable of representing a universal meaning. But as an adequate

correspondence is not yet possible, this reference can only concern _an

abstract attribute_, as when a lion is used to mean strength.

On the other hand, this abstractness of the relation brings to

consciousness no less strongly the foreignness of the Idea to

natural phenomena; and the Idea, having no other reality to express

it, expatiates in all these shapes, seeks itself in them in all

their unrest and disproportion, but nevertheless does not find them

adequate to itself. Then it proceeds to exaggerate the natural shapes

and the phenomena of reality into indefiniteness and disproportion,

to intoxicate itself in them, to seethe and ferment in them, to do

violence to them, to distort and explode them into unnatural shapes,

and strives by the variety, hugeness, and splendour of the forms

employed[144] to exalt the phenomenon to the level of the Idea. For

the Idea is here still more or less indeterminate and non-plastic, but

the natural objects are in their shape thoroughly determinate.

Hence, in view of the unsuitability of the two elements to each other,

the relation of the Idea to objective reality becomes a _negative_

one, for the former, as in its nature inward,[145] is unsatisfied with

such an externality, and as being its inner universal substance[146]

persists in exaltation or _Sublimity_ beyond and above all this

inadequate abundance of shapes. In virtue of this sublimity the natural

phenomena and the human shapes and incidents are accepted, and left as

they were, though at the same time understood to be inadequate to their

significance, which is exalted far above every earthly content.

These aspects may be pronounced in general terms to constitute the

character of the primitive artistic pantheism of the East, which

either charges even the meanest objects with the absolute import, or

again coerces nature with violence into the expression of its view.

By this means it becomes bizarre, grotesque, and tasteless, or turns

the infinite but abstract freedom of the substantive Idea disdainfully

against all phenomenal being as null and evanescent. By such means the

import cannot be completely embodied in the expression, and in spite

of all aspiration and endeavour the reciprocal inadequacy of shape

and Idea remains insuperable. This may be taken as the first form of

art,--Symbolic art with its aspiration, its disquiet,[147] its mystery

and its sublimity.

([Greek: b]) In the second form of art, which we propose to call

"_Classical_," the double defect of symbolic art is cancelled. The

plastic shape of symbolic art is imperfect, because, in the first

place, the Idea in it only enters into consciousness in _abstract_

determinateness or indeterminateness, and, in the second place, this

must always make the conformity of shape to import defective, and in

its turn merely abstract. The classical form of art is the solution

of this double difficulty; it is the free and adequate embodiment of

the Idea in the shape that, according to its conception, is peculiarly

appropriate to the Idea itself. With it, therefore, the Idea is capable

of entering into free and complete accord. Hence, the classical type

of art is the first to afford the production and intuition of the

completed Ideal, and to establish it as a realized fact.

The conformity, however, of notion and reality in classical art must

not be taken in the purely _formal_ sense of the agreement of a

content with the external shape given to it, any more than this could

be the case with the Ideal itself. Otherwise every copy from nature,

and every type of countenance, every landscape, flower, or scene, etc.,

which forms the purport of any representation, would be at once made

classical by the agreement which it displays between form and content.

On the contrary, in classical art the peculiarity of the content

consists in being itself concrete idea, and, as such, the concrete

spiritual; for only the spiritual is the truly inner self. To suit such

a content, then, we must search out that in Nature which on its own

merits belongs to the essence and actuality of the mind. It must be the

absolute[148] notion that _invented_ the shape appropriate to concrete

mind, so that the _subjective_ notion--in this case the spirit of

art--has merely _found_ it, and brought it, as an existence possessing

natural shape, into accord with free individual spirituality.[149] This

shape, with which the Idea as spiritual--as individually determinate

spirituality--invests itself when manifested as a temporal phenomenon,

is _the human form_. Personification and anthropomorphism have often

been decried as a degradation of the spiritual; but art, in as far as

its end is to bring before perception the spiritual in sensuous form,

must advance to such anthropomorphism, as it is only in its proper body

that mind is adequately revealed to sense. The migration of souls is

in this respect a false abstraction,[150] and physiology ought to have

made it one of its axioms that life had necessarily in its evolution

to attain to the human shape, as the sole sensuous phenomenon that

is appropriate to mind. The human form is employed in the classical

type of art not as mere sensuous existence, but exclusively as the

existence and physical form corresponding to mind, and is therefore

exempt from all the deficiencies of what is merely sensuous, and from

the contingent finiteness of phenomenal existence. The outer shape

must be thus purified in order to express in itself a content adequate

to itself; and again, if the conformity of import and content is to

be complete, the spiritual meaning which is the content must be of

a particular kind. It must, that is to say, be qualified to express

itself completely in the physical form of man, without projecting

into another world beyond the scope of such an expression in sensuous

and bodily terms. This condition has the effect that Mind is by it at

once specified as a particular case of mind, as human mind, and not

as simply absolute and eternal, inasmuch as mind in this latter sense

is incapable of proclaiming and expressing itself otherwise than as

intellectual being.[151]

Out of this latter point arises, in its turn, the defect which brings

about the dissolution of classical art, and demands a transition into a

third and higher form, viz. into the _romantic_ form of art.

([Greek: g]) The romantic form of art destroys the completed union

of the Idea and its reality, and recurs, though in a higher phase,

to that difference and antagonism of two aspects which was left

unvanquished by symbolic art. The classical type attained the highest

excellence, of which the sensuous embodiment of art is capable; and

if it is in any way defective, the defect is in art as a whole,

_i.e._ in the limitation of its sphere. This limitation consists in

the fact that art as such takes for its object Mind--the conception

of which is _infinite_ concrete universality--in the shape of

_sensuous_ concreteness, and in the classical phase sets up the perfect

amalgamation of spiritual and sensuous existence as a Conformity of

the two. Now, as a matter of fact, in such an amalgamation Mind cannot

be represented according to its true notion. For mind is the infinite

subjectivity of the Idea, which, as absolute inwardness,[152] is not

capable of finding free expansion in its true nature on condition of

remaining transposed into a bodily medium as the existence appropriate

to it.

As _an escape from such a condition_ the romantic form of art in its

turn dissolves the inseparable unity of the classical phase, because

it has won a significance which goes beyond the classical form of art

and its mode of expression.[153] This significance--if we may recall

familiar ideas--coincides with what Christianity declares to be true of

God as Spirit, in contradistinction to the Greek faith in gods which

forms the essential and appropriate content for classical art. In

Greek art the concrete import is potentially, but not explicitly, the

unity of the human and divine nature; a unity which, just because it

is purely _immediate_[154] and _not explicit_, is capable of adequate

manifestation in an immediate and sensuous mode. The Greek god is the

object of naive intuition and sensuous imagination. His shape is,

therefore, the bodily shape of man. The circle of his power and of his

being is individual and individually limited. In relation with the

subject,[155] he is, therefore, an essence and a power with which the

subject's inner being is merely in latent unity, not itself possessing

this unity as inward subjective knowledge. Now the higher stage is

the _knowledge_ of this _latent_ unity, which as latent is the import

of the classical form of art, and capable of perfect representation

in bodily shape. The elevation of the latent or potential into

self-conscious knowledge produces an enormous difference. It is the

infinite difference which, _e.g._, separates man as such from the

animals. Man is animal, but even in his animal functions he is not

confined within the latent and potential as the animal is, but becomes

conscious of them, learns to know them, and raises them--as, for

instance, the process of digestion--into self-conscious science. By

this means Man breaks the boundary of merely potential and immediate

consciousness, so that just for the reason that he knows himself

to be animal, he ceases to be animal, and, as _mind_, attains to

self-knowledge.

If in the above fashion the unity of the human and divine nature,

which in the former phase was potential, is raised from an _immediate_

to a _conscious_ unity, it follows that the true medium for the

reality of this content is no longer the sensuous immediate existence

of the spiritual, the human bodily shape, but _self-conscious

inward intelligence_.[156] Now, Christianity brings God before our

intelligence _as spirit_, or mind--not as particularized individual

spirit, but as absolute, in _spirit_ and in truth. And for this

reason Christianity retires from the sensuousness of imagination into

intellectual inwardness, and makes this, not bodily shape, the medium

and actual existence of its significance. So, too, the unity of the

human and divine nature is a conscious unity, only to be realized by

_spiritual_ knowledge and in _spirit_. Thus the new content, won by

this unity, is not inseparable from sensuous representation, as if that

were adequate to it, but is freed from this immediate existence, which

has to be posited[157] as negative, absorbed, and reflected into the

spiritual unity. In this way, romantic art must be considered as art

transcending itself, while remaining within the artistic sphere and in

artistic form.

Therefore, in short, we may abide by the statement that in this third

stage the object (of art) is _free_, concrete intellectual being, which

has the function of revealing itself as spiritual existence for the

inward[158] world of spirit. In conformity with such an object-matter,

art cannot work for sensuous perception. It must address itself to the

inward mind, which coalesces with its object simply and as though

this were itself,[159] to the subjective inwardness, to the heart, the

feeling, which, being spiritual, aspires to freedom within itself,

and seeks and finds its reconciliation only in the spirit within. It

is this _inner_ world that forms the content of the romantic, and

must therefore find its representation as such inward feeling, and

in the show or presentation of such feeling. The world of inwardness

celebrates its triumph over the outer world, and actually in the sphere

of the outer and in its medium manifests this its victory, owing to

which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.

But, on the other hand, this type of Art,[160] like every other, needs

an external vehicle of expression. Now the spiritual has withdrawn

into itself out of the external and its immediate oneness therewith.

For this reason, the sensuous externality of concrete form is accepted

and represented, as in Symbolic art, as something transient and

fugitive. And the same measure is dealt to the subjective finite mind

and will, even including the peculiarity or caprice of the individual,

of character, action, etc., or of incident and plot. The aspect of

external existence is committed to contingency, and left at the mercy

of freaks of imagination, whose caprice is no more likely to mirror

what is given _as_ it is given, than to throw the shapes of the outer

world into chance medley, or distort them into grotesqueness. For this

external element no longer has its notion and significance, as in

classical art, in its own sphere, and in its own medium. It has come

to find them in the feelings, the display of which is _in themselves_

instead of being in the external and _its_ form of reality, and which

have the power to preserve or to regain their state of reconciliation

with themselves, in every accident, in every unessential circumstance

that takes independent shape, in all misfortune and grief, and even in

crime.

Owing to this, the characteristics of symbolic art, in difference,

discrepancy, and severance of Idea and plastic shape, are here

reproduced, but with an essential difference. In the sphere of the

romantic, the Idea, whose defectiveness in the case of the symbol

produced the defect of external shape, has to reveal itself in the

medium of spirit and feelings as perfected in itself. And it is because

of this higher perfection that it withdraws itself from any adequate

union with the external element, inasmuch as it can seek and achieve

its true reality and revelation nowhere but in itself.

This we may take as in the abstract the character of the symbolic,

classical, and romantic forms of art, which represent the three

relations of the Idea to its embodiment in the sphere of art. They

consist in the aspiration after, and the attainment and transcendence

of the Ideal as the true Idea of beauty.

4. The third part of our subject, in contradistinction to the two just

described, presupposes the conception of the Ideal, and the general

types of art, inasmuch as it simply consists of their realization in

particular sensuous media. Hence we have no longer to do with the

inner development of artistic beauty in conformity with its general

fundamental principles. What we have to study is how these principles

pass into actual existence, how they distinguish themselves in their

external aspect, and how they give actuality to every element contained

in the idea of beauty, separately and by itself _as a work of art_, and

not merely as a general type. Now, what art transfers into external

existence are the differences[161] proper to the idea of beauty and

immanent therein. Therefore, the general types of art must reveal

themselves in this third part, as before, in the character of the

fundamental principle that determines the arrangement and definition

of the _several arts_; in other words, the species of art contain in

themselves the same essential modifications as those with which we

become acquainted as the general types of art. External objectivity,

however, to which these forms are introduced through the medium of a

sensuous and therefore _particular_ material, affects these types in

the way of making them _separate_ into independent and so particular

forms embodying their realization. For each type finds its definite

character in some one definite external material, and its adequate

actuality in the mode of portrayal which that prescribes. But,

moreover, these types of art, being for all their determinateness, its

_universal_ forms, break the bounds of _particular_ realization by a

determinate form of art, and achieve existence in other arts as well,

although in subordinate fashion. Therefore, the particular arts belong

each of them specifically to _one_ of the general types of art, and

constitute _its adequate_ external actuality; and also they represent,

each of them after its own mode of external plasticity, the totality of

the types of art.[162]

Then, speaking generally, we are dealing in this third principal

division with the beautiful of art, as it unfolds itself in the several

arts and in their creations into a _world_ of actualized beauty. The

content of this world is the beautiful, and the true beautiful, as

we saw, is spiritual being in concrete shape, the Ideal; or, more

closely looked at, the absolute mind, and the truth itself. This

region, that of divine truth artistically represented to perception

and to feeling, forms the centre of the whole world of art. It is the

independent, free, and divine plasticity, which has thoroughly mastered

the external elements of form and of medium, and wears them simply as

a means to manifestation of itself. Still, as the beautiful unfolds

itself in this region in the character of _objective_ reality, and

in so doing distinguishes within itself its individual aspects and

elements, permitting them independent particularity, it follows that

this centre erects its extremes, realized in their peculiar actuality,

into its own antitheses. Thus one of these extremes comes to consist

in an objectivity as yet devoid of mind, in the merely natural vesture

of God. At this point the external element takes plastic shape as

something that has its spiritual aim and content, not in itself, but in

another.[163]

The other extreme is the divine as inward, as something known, as

the variously particularized _subjective_ existence of the Deity;

it is the truth as operative and vital in sense, heart, and mind of

individual subjects, not persisting in the mould of its external

shapes, but as having returned into subjective, individual inwardness.

In such a mode, the Divine is at the same time distinguished from its

first manifestation as Deity, and passes thereby into the diversity

of particulars which belongs to all subjective knowledge--emotion,

perception, and feeling. In the analogous province of religion,

with which art at its highest stage is immediately connected, we

conceive this same difference as follows. _First_, we think of the

earthly natural life in its finiteness as standing on one side; but,

then, _secondly_, consciousness makes God its object, in which the

distinction of objectivity and subjectivity is done away. And at

last, _thirdly_, we advance from God as such to the devotion of the

community, that is, to God as living and present in the subjective

consciousness. Just so these three chief modifications present

themselves in the world of art in independent development.

([Greek: a]) The _first_ of the particular arts with which, according

to their fundamental principle, we have to begin, is architecture

considered as a fine art.[164] Its task lies in so manipulating

external inorganic nature that it becomes cognate to mind, as an

artistic outer world. The material of architecture is matter itself in

its immediate externality as a heavy mass subject to mechanical laws,

and its forms do not depart from the forms of inorganic nature, but

are merely set in order in conformity with relations of the abstract

understanding, _i.e._ with relations of symmetry. In this material and

in such forms, the ideal as concrete spirituality does not admit of

being realized. Hence the reality which is represented in them remains

contrasted with the Idea, as something external which it has not

penetrated, or has penetrated only to establish an abstract relation.

For these reasons, the fundamental type of the fine art of building

is the _symbolical_ form of art. It is architecture that pioneers the

way for the adequate realization of the God, and in this its service

bestows hard toil upon existing nature, in order to disentangle it from

the jungle of finitude and the abortiveness of chance. By this means it

levels a space for the God, gives form to his external surroundings,

and builds him his temple as a fit place for concentration of spirit,

and for its direction to the mind's absolute objects. It raises an

enclosure round the assembly of those gathered together, as a defence

against the threatening of the storm, against rain, the hurricane, and

wild beasts, and reveals the will to assemble, although externally, yet

in conformity with principles of art. With such import as this it has

power to inspire its material and its forms more or less effectively,

as the determinate character of the content on behalf of which it sets

to work is more or less significant, more concrete or more abstract,

more profound in sounding its own depths, or more dim and more

superficial. So much, indeed, may architecture attempt in this respect

as even to create an adequate artistic existence for such an import

in its shapes and in its material. But in such a case it has already

overstepped its own boundary, and is leaning to sculpture, the phase

above it. For the limit of architecture lies precisely in this point,

that it retains the spiritual as an inward existence over against the

external forms of the art, and consequently must refer to what has soul

only as to something other than its own creations.

[Greek: b] Architecture, however, as we have seen, has purified the

external world, and endowed it with symmetrical order and with affinity

to mind; and the temple of the God, the house of his community, stands

ready. Into this temple, then, in the _second_ place, the God enters in

the lightning-flash of individuality, which strikes and permeates the

inert mass, while the infinite[165] and no longer merely symmetrical

form belonging to mind itself concentrates and gives shape to the

corresponding bodily existence. This is the task of _Sculpture_. In

as far as in this art the spiritual inward being which architecture

can but indicate makes itself at home in the sensuous shape and its

external matter, and in as far as these two sides are so adapted to

one another that neither is predominant, sculpture must be assigned

the _classical form of art_ as its fundamental type. For this reason

the sensuous element itself has here no expression which could not

be that of the spiritual element, just as, conversely, sculpture can

represent no spiritual content which does not admit throughout of being

adequately presented to perception in bodily form. Sculpture should

place the spirit before us in its bodily form and in immediate unity

therewith at rest and in peace; and the form should be animated by the

content of spiritual individuality. And so the external sensuous matter

is here no longer manipulated, either in conformity with its mechanical

quality alone, as a mass possessing weight, nor in shapes belonging

to the inorganic world, nor as indifferent to colour, etc.; but it is

wrought in ideal forms of the human figure, and, it must be remarked,

in all three spatial dimensions.

In this last respect we must claim for sculpture, that it is in it that

the inward and spiritual are first revealed in their eternal repose

and essential self-completeness. To such repose and unity with itself

there can correspond only that external shape which itself maintains

its unity and repose. And this is fulfilled by shape in its abstract

spatiality.[166] The spirit which sculpture represents is that which

is solid in itself, not broken up in the play of trivialities and of

passions; and hence its external form too is not abandoned to any

manifold phases of appearance, but appears under this one aspect only,

as the abstraction of space in the whole of its dimensions.

([Greek: g]) Now, after architecture has erected the temple, and

the hand of sculpture has supplied it with the statue of the God,

then, in the third place, this god present to sense is confronted in

the spacious halls of his house by the _community_. The community

is the spiritual reflection into itself of such sensuous existence,

and is the animating subjectivity and inner life which brings about

the result that the determining principle for the content of art, as

well as for the medium which represents it in outward form, comes to

be particularization [dispersion into various shapes, attributes,

incidents, etc.], individualization, and the subjectivity which they

require.[167] The solid unity which the God has in sculpture breaks up

into the multitudinous inner lives of individuals, whose unity is not

sensuous, but purely ideal.[168]

It is only in this stage that God Himself comes to be really and

truly spirit--the spirit in His (God's) community; for He here

begins to be a to-and-fro, an alternation between His unity within

himself and his realization in the individual's knowledge and in

its separate being, as also in the common nature and union of the

multitude. In the community, God is released from the abstractness

of unexpanded self-identity, as well as from the simple absorption

in a bodily medium, by which sculpture represents Him. And He is

thus exalted into spiritual existence and into knowledge, into the

reflected[169] appearance which essentially displays itself as inward

and as subjectivity. Therefore the higher content is now the spiritual

nature, and that in its absolute shape. But the dispersion of which

we have spoken reveals this at the same time as particular spiritual

being, and as individual character. Now, what manifests itself in

this phase as the main thing is not the serene quiescence of the God

in Himself, but appearance as such, being which is _for_ another,

self-manifestation. And hence, in the phase we have reached, all the

most manifold subjectivity in its living movement and operation--as

human passion, action, and incident, and, in general, the wide realm

of human feeling, will, and its negation,--is for its own sake the

object of artistic representation. In conformity with this content, the

sensuous element of art has at once to show itself as made particular

in itself and as adapted to subjective inwardness. Media that fulfil

this requirement we have in colour, in musical sound, and finally in

sound as the mere indication of inward perceptions and ideas; and as

modes of realizing the import in question by help of these media we

obtain painting, music, and poetry. In this region the sensuous medium

displays itself as subdivided in its own being and universally set down

as ideal.[170] Thus it has the highest degree of conformity with the

content of art, which, as such, is spiritual, and the connection of

intelligible import and sensuous medium develops into closer intimacy

than was possible in the case of architecture and sculpture. The unity

attained, however, is a more inward unity, the weight of which is

thrown wholly on the subjective side, and which, in as far as form and

content are compelled to particularize themselves and give themselves

merely ideal existence, can only come to pass at the expense of the

objective universality of the content and also of its amalgamation with

the immediately sensuous element.[171]

The arts, then, of which form and content exalt themselves to ideality,

abandon the character of symbolic architecture and the classical ideal

of sculpture, and therefore borrow their type from the romantic form

of art, whose mode of plasticity they are most adequately adapted to

express. And they constitute a _totality_ of arts, because the romantic

type is the most concrete in itself.[172]

i. The articulation of this _third sphere_ of the individual arts may

be determined as follows. The _first_ art in it, which comes next to

sculpture, is painting. It employs as a medium for its content and for

the plastic embodiment of that content visibility as such in as far as

it is specialized in its own nature, _i.e._ as developed into colour.

It is true that the material employed in architecture and sculpture is

also visible and coloured; but it is not, as in painting, visibility

as such, not the simple light which, differentiating itself in virtue

of its contrast with darkness, and in combination with the latter,

gives rise to colour.[173] This quality of visibility, made subjective

in itself and treated as ideal, needs neither, like architecture,

the abstractly mechanical attribute of mass as operative in the

properties of heavy matter, nor, like sculpture, the complete sensuous

attributes of space, even though concentrated into organic shapes.

The visibility and the rendering visible which belong to painting

have their differences in a more ideal form, in the several kinds of

colour, and they liberate art from the sensuous completeness in space

which attaches to material things, by restricting themselves to a plane

surface.

On the other hand, the content also attains the most comprehensive

specification. Whatever can find room in the human heart, as feeling,

idea, and purpose; whatever it is capable of shaping into act--all this

diversity of material is capable of entering into the varied content of

painting. The whole realm of particular existence, from the highest

embodiment of mind down to the most isolated object of nature, finds

a place here. For it is possible even for finite nature,[174] in its

particular scenes and phenomena, to make its appearance in the realm

of art, if only some allusion to an element of mind endows it with

affinity to thought and feeling.

ii. The _second_ art in which the romantic type realizes itself is

contrasted with painting, and is music. Its medium, though still

sensuous, yet develops into still more thorough subjectivity and

particularization. Music, too, treats the sensuous as ideal, and does

so by negating,[175] and idealizing into the individual isolation of a

single point, the indifferent externality[176] of space, whose complete

semblance is accepted and imitated by painting. The single point, _qua_

such a negativity (excluding space) is in itself a concrete and active

process of positive negation[177] within the attributes of matter, in

the shape of a motion and tremor of the material body within itself and

in its relation to itself. Such an inchoate ideality of matter,[178]

which appears no longer as under the form of space, but as temporal

ideality,[179] is sound, the sensuous set down as negated, with its

abstract visibility converted into audibility, inasmuch as sound, so to

speak, liberates the ideal content from its immersion in matter. This

earliest inwardness of matter and inspiration of soul into it furnishes

the medium for the mental inwardness--itself as yet indefinite,--and

for the soul[180] into which mind concentrates itself; and finds

utterance in its tones for the heart with its whole gamut of feelings

and passions. Thus music forms the centre of the romantic arts, just

as sculpture represents the central point between architecture and

the arts of romantic subjectivity. Thus, too, it forms the point of

transition between abstract spatial sensuousness, such as painting

employs, and the abstract spirituality of poetry. Music has within

itself, like architecture, a relation of quantity conformable to the

understanding, as the antithesis to emotion and inwardness; and has

also as its basis a solid conformity to law on the part of the tones,

of their conjunction, and of their succession.

iii. most spiritual mode of representation of the romantic art-type,

we must look for it in _poetry_. Its characteristic peculiarity lies

in the power with which it subjects to the mind and to its ideas the

sensuous element from which music and painting in their degree began

to liberate art. For sound, the only external matter which poetry

retains, is in it no longer the feeling of the sonorous itself, but is

a _sign_, which by itself is void of import. And it is a sign of the

idea which has become concrete in itself and not merely of indefinite

feeling and of its _nuances_ and grades. This is how sound develops

into the _Word_, as voice articulate in itself, whose import it is

to indicate ideas and notions. The merely negative point up to which

music had developed now makes its appearance as the completely concrete

point, the point which is mind, the self-conscious individual, which,

producing out of itself the infinite space of its ideas, unites it

with the temporal character of sound. Yet this sensuous element,

which in music was still immediately one with inward feeling, is in

poetry separated from the content of consciousness. In poetry the

mind determines this content for its own sake, and apart from all

else, into the shape of ideas, and though it employs sound to express

them, yet treats it solely as a symbol without value or import. Thus

considered, sound may just as well be reduced to a mere letter, for the

audible, like the visible, is thus depressed into a mere indication of

mind.[181] For this reason the proper medium of poetical representation

is the poetical imagination and intellectual portrayal itself. And as

this element is common to all types of art, it follows that poetry runs

through them all and develops itself independently in each. Poetry is

the universal art of the mind which has become free in its own nature,

and which is not tied to find its realization in external sensuous

matter, but expatiates exclusively in the inner space and inner time

of the ideas and feelings. Yet just in this its highest phase art

ends by transcending itself, inasmuch as it abandons the medium of a

harmonious embodiment of mind in sensuous form, and passes from the

poetry of imagination into the prose of thought.

5. Such we may take to be the articulated totality of the particular

arts, viz. the external art of architecture, the objective art of

sculpture, and the subjective art of painting music and poetry.

Many other classifications have been attempted, for a work of art

presents so many aspects, that, as has often been the case, first one

and then another is made the basis of classification. For instance,

one might take the sensuous medium. Thus architecture is treated as

crystallization; sculpture, as the organic modelling of the material in

its sensuous and spatial totality; painting, as the coloured surface

and line; while in music, space, as such, passes into the point of

time possessed of content within itself, until finally the external

medium is in poetry depressed into complete insignificance. Or, again,

these differences have been considered with reference to their purely

abstract attributes of space and time. Such abstract peculiarities of

works of art may, like their material medium, be consistently explored

in their characteristic traits; but they cannot be worked out as the

ultimate and fundamental law, because any such aspect itself derives

its origin from a higher principle, and must therefore be subordinate

thereto.

This higher principle we have found in the types of art--symbolic,

classical, and romantic--which are the universal stages or

elements[182] of the Idea of beauty itself. For _symbolic art_

attains its most adequate reality and most complete application in

_architecture_, in which it holds sway in the full import of its

notion, and is not yet degraded to be, as it were, the inorganic

nature dealt with by another art. The _classical_ type of art, on the

other hand, finds adequate realization in sculpture, while it treats

architecture only as furnishing an enclosure in which it is to operate,

and has not acquired the power of developing painting and music as

absolute[183] forms for its content. The _romantic_ type of art,

finally, takes possession of painting and music, and in like manner

of poetic representation, as substantive and unconditionally adequate

modes of utterance. Poetry, however, is conformable to all types of the

beautiful, and extends over them all, because the artistic imagination

is its proper medium, and imagination is essential to every product

that belongs to the beautiful, whatever its type may be.

And, therefore, what the particular arts realize in individual works

of art, are according to their abstract conception simply the universal

types which constitute the self-unfolding Idea of beauty. It is as the

external realization of this Idea that the wide Pantheon of art is

being erected, whose architect and builder is the spirit of beauty as

it awakens to self-knowledge, and to complete which the history of the

world will need its evolution of ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] New York, Appleton and Co.

[2] Chicago, Griggs and Co., 1885.

[3] Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1886.

[4] Of these, Chapter III. is subdivided into two Parts, because of the

disproportionate length of the division in the original to which it

corresponds.

[5] Preface to "Sordello."

[6] "Endless duration makes good no better, nor white any whiter," is

one of Aristotle's comments on Plato's "eternal" ideas, and is just,

unless "eternal" conveys a difference of kind.

[7] Whewell, I think, misinterprets Plato's language about astronomy

in this sense. Plato is not decrying observation, but demanding a

theoretical treatment of the laws of motion,--a remarkable anticipation

of modern ideas.

[8] "A Year with the Birds," by an Oxford Tutor.

[9] See note above, p. xii.

[10] The fusion of these meanings in the German "Geist" gives a force

to his pleading which English cannot render. He appeals, _e.g._,

triumphantly to "God is a Spirit," _i.e._ not "a ghost" but "mind."

[11] See Tennyson's "Higher Pantheism," especially the fine lines--

"Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet,

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."

[12] In Baumgarten's "Æsthetica," 1750. See Lotze's "Æsthetik in

Deutschland," p. 4, and Scherer's "Hist. of German Literature," Engl.

Transl., ii. 25.

[13] _Aus dem Geiste_--allusion to "born of water and of the Spirit."

[14] Not in the sense of fancying what you please, but in the technical

sense of having separate existence; detached, so to speak, from the

general background of things, not a mere concurrence of other elements.

[15] Has no power of distinguishing itself from other things.

[16] "_Das Schöne--in dem Scheine._"

[17] "_Gesetzmässigkeit._"

[18] "_Raisonnement_"--a disparaging term in Hegel.

[19] "Particular"--different unconnected matters, considered as merely

thrown together in an aggregate, or occurring in a series; opposed to

parts or cases united by an essential principle.

[20] "_Das Göttliche._"

[21] "_Schiene und erschiene._"

[22] The life in which we treat common circumstances and sensations as,

in their degree, realities.

[23] "_Das An--und Fürsichseyende._"

[24] "_Explication._"

[25] "_Material_," _e.g._ colour, sound, heavy matter, etc.

[26] "_Element_:" perhaps more especially any mental function entering

into art--sense, imagination, understanding, etc.

[27] "Philosophy," "_Wissenschaft_."

[28] "_Haltpunkte_:" ultimate points that the matter of art must not

leave hold of, leading ideas that must somehow dominate it.

[29] "_Gestaltung_:" shaping, as if arrangement of shapes.

[30] "_Kunstkenntniss._"

[31] "_Gelehrsamkeit._"

[32] "_Paränetischen Lehren._"

[33] "_Bildenden Künste._" I am not sure if I have given the best

rendering. It is wider than _Plastik_, because it includes painting and

architecture.

[34] _Die Horen_--the monthly magazine whose establishment by Schiller,

in 1795, first brought Schiller and Goethe into contact. It only

existed for three years. See Scherer, Eng. Trans., ii. 173.

[35] That is, not a caprice of nature or art, but the perfection of the

object _after its kind_.

[36] "_Individualität._"

[37] "_Helldunkel._"

[38] "_Drama_," Gr. [Greek: drama] = _Handlung_, "action."

[39] "_Erscheinung._"

[40] "_Bestimmung._"

[41] "_Bestimmend._"

[42] "_Begeistet wird_"--"Is spiritualized."

[43] I have no doubt he means Shakespeare, who was unpopular in Germany

before Goethe's time. _Vide_ "Wilhelm Meister."

[44] "_Das Wahre sehen nicht die einzelnen_," etc.

[45] The exhibition of particulars as contained in the principle, and

of the principle as contained in particulars.

[46] "_Machen._"

[47] "_Nach-machen._"

[48] See Appendix to Eng. Trans. of Scherer, ii. 347. Goethe's "Götz

von Berlichingen" appeared in 1773; Schiller's "Raüber" in 1781.

[49] The "Iphigenie" was completed in Goethe's thirty-eighth year,

fourteen years later than "Götz." The bulk of his great works are of

the same date as the "Iphigenie," or later. See Scherer, ii. 152,

and Appendix, 1. c. Schiller's "Wallenstein" was completed after his

thirty-fifth year.

[50] Free from irrelevancies.

[51] _i.e._ it requires a definite or determinate answer, depending on

a number of ideas which cannot be explained in an introduction.

[52] _i.e._ considered generally, apart from the wishes and, perhaps,

selfish aims of individual artists.

[53] "_Fursichsein._"

[54] Reality derivative from his own reality.

[55] He means as in attitude, bearing, gentle movement, etc.

[56] "_Bildung._"

[57] "_Bedurfniss zur Kunst._"

[58] _i.e._ you cannot describe it or picture it definitely, like a

thing with attributes, although you feel it in yourself.

[59] _i.e._ you may be afraid of anything; the fact that you are afraid

does not in itself indicate what you are afraid of.

[60] My private feeling is compared to a small circle, in which

morality, justice, etc., may _be_, but have not room to show their

nature. Feeling allows of no definition.

[61] _All_ its positive aspects or relations, age, phase, artist's

history, etc.

[62] Its sensuous aspect has no independent warrant or justification,

as that, for example, of an animal has in its own separate life. So it

must simply be such as is enough to appeal to man's mind, _e.g._ mere

surface painting.

[63] _i.e._ person.

[64] Nothing can be tasted which is not dissolved in a liquid.

[65] "_Anschauungen._"

[66] Abstract forms, which are to reality as a diagram to a picture.

[67] Lit. "figure," _Gestalt_.

[68] "_Handgriffen._"

[69] "_Eines geistreichen._"

[70] General, abstract, as much applicable to one thing as to another.

[71] "_Heuchelei_," lit. "hypocrisy."

[72] "_Kunststück._"

[73] _i.e._ _mere_ copying, devoting one's-self to the one-sided

purpose of making a thing over again, without putting any life or

meaning into it.

[74] Which says that the business of art is to imitate.

[75] Of imitation.

[76] "_Phantastischen._" "Fantastic" means "odd or wild." Hegel only

means "original," "creative."

[77] Mechanical, without origination.

[78] "_Nüancen._" Context seems to forbid referring it to colour. I

suspect it of meaning character of outline.

[79] "_Erschüttern._"

[80] "_Raisonnirende_;" a term of disparagement in Hegel, applied to

proofs, _pro_ and _con_, which do not rest on a thorough conception of

the fundamental nature of what is being discussed.

[81] "_Raisonnement._"

[82] "Formal" means here as usual, empty, or general; _i.e._ not taking

account of varieties in the matter to which it is applied.

[83] "_Befangensein._"

[84] "_Theoretisch._" I have no doubt that it has here the meaning

of [Greek: Theôrein] without a trace of allusion to "theory." It is

opposed to "destructive," or "appetitive."

[85] The moral.

[86] Person, _i.e._, here, audience or spectator.

[87] "_Kernspruch._"

[88] "Contingent" means, not so much "what may or may not exist," as

the trivial, which makes no difference whether it exists or not.

[89] "_In ihm selbst gebrochenes._" I do not suppose there is an

allusion to the words I use.

[90] "_Sittlichkeit_" almost = morality in the English sense. It means

the habit of virtue, without the reflective aspiration after goodness

as an ideal.

[91] "_Moralität_" almost = conscientiousness or scrupulosity. The

above sentence is hardly true with the English word "moral."

[92] "_Für sich_," is often used where there is no notion of

development, and seems very like "an sich."

[93] "_Gemüth._"

[94] As _e.g._ if we suppose that an act done at the bidding of natural

affection cannot also be a fulfilment of the command of duty. The

"reconciliation" would be in supposing the natural affection, _e.g._

for parents, to operate as a moral motive, being transformed by a

recognition of its sacred or spiritual character.

[95] "_An und für sich._"

[96] "_An und für sich Wahre._"

[97] "_Allgemeine Bildung._"

[98] "_Vorstellung._"

[99] See Pref. Essay, p. xix.

[100] Or conscientiousness--what was above described as the moralistic

view.

[101] "_An sich._"

[102] "_An und für sich wahrem und wirklichem._"

[103] See p. 68, _supra_.

[104] "_Der mensch wie er geht und steht._"

[105] "_An und für sich._"

[106] "_Zweck-mässigkeit._"

[107] _i.e._ in any means which we adopt in order to effect an end

which we have distinctly before us as an idea. A knife does not include

cutting, nor a spade digging, although their construction is relative

to these ends. But a man does include living, _i.e._ he is not a man if

he ceases to live.

[108] "_Für sich._"

[109] "_An und für sich._"

[110] By Kant.

[111] "_Unbefangenheit._"

[112] On Goethe's discoveries in morphology and errors in optics, see

Helmholtz's "Popular Lectures," series i., lecture ii.; but compare

Schopenhauer, "Werke," vol. i., "_Ueber das Sehn und die Farben_."

[113] Compare Browning's "Luria:"--

"A people is but the attempt of many

To rise to the completer life of one."

[114] Or "Of the moral, etc., man."

[115] "_Ueber Anmuth und Würde_," "Of Grace and Dignity," a work of

Schiller that appeared in 1793.

[116] "_Gesinnungen._"

[117] The Baccalaureus' speech in Faust (Part 2) "Die Welt, sie war

nicht, eh' ich sie erschuf," etc., appears to be a parody of Fichte's

ideas in this aspect.

[118] I think the order of the German must be a misprint. "_So ist

nichts an und für sich und in sich selbst werthvoll betrachtet._"

[119] "_An und für sich seyende._"

[120] The three points are, (i.) The I is abstract. (ii.) Everything is

a semblance for it. (iii.) Its own acts, even, are a semblance.

[121] Not literal. "_Das alles an sich setzende und auflösende Ich._"

[122] _Formal_ freedom is detachment from everything, or the (apparent)

capacity of alternatives; it is opposed to _real_ freedom, which

is identification of one's-self with something that is capable of

satisfying one.

[123] "_Genialität_:" the character or state of mind in which genius is

dominant--here, the mere self-enjoyment of genius.

[124] "_Selbstgenuss._" I do not think it means self-indulgence, but

the above-described enjoyment of reposing in the superiority of the ego.

[125] "_Eitelkeit_," also = "conceit;" which is the other side of this

attitude. Hegel uses it on purpose.

[126] "_Eitle._"

[127] "_Sehnsuchtigkeit._"

[128] "_Krankhafte Schönseligkeit._" _Schönseligkeit_ seems to be

really a word formed like _Redselig_, etc., but to be given an

equivocating reference to "_Schöne Seele_," which I have rendered in

the next sentence by "saintly soul."

[129] "_Eitlen_," "_Eitelkeit._"

[130] This recurring phrase may be used etymologically, as a

reminiscence of the Platonic [Greek: plêrousthai].

[131] _Haltung_: "bearing" in general, and more especially _the_

bearing of one who bears himself nobly by reason of a principle.

[132] See Scherer, Eng. Transl., ii. 248.

[133] It is natural for a reader to ask in _what_ person or subject God

is conceived to have reality. On this see below, p. 165. It appears

certain to me that Hegel, when he writes thus, is referring to the

self-consciousness of individual human beings as constituting, and

reflecting on, an ideal unity between them. This may seem to put a

non-natural meaning on the term "person" or "subject," as if the common

element of a number of intelligences could be a single person. It is

obvious that the question hinges on the degree in which a unity that

is not sensuous but ideal can be effective and actual. I can only say

here, that the more we consider the nature of ideal unity the higher we

shall rate its capabilities. See Prefatory Essay, p. xiv.

[134] _Fackeldistel_ = "Torch thistle," a plant of the genus _Cereus_,

Nat. Order _Cactaceæ_.

[135] Or "as spirit and in spirit."

[136] The idea of art.

[137] The two evolutions are, speaking roughly, (i.) that of the

subject-matter; (ii.) that of the particular mode of art: (i.)

_e.g._ you have Egyptian, Greek, Christian religion, etc., with the

corresponding views and sentiments, each in its own relation to

art; (ii.) you have, as a cross division to the former, the several

arts--sculpture, music, poetry, etc., each having its special ground

and warrant.

[138] He is asking himself why sound or paint, etc., should correspond

to one type of art as theoretically defined--this being intellectual,

not sensuous, at root--and answers that these media _qua_ natural

objects have, though more latent than in works of art, an import and

purpose of their own, which reveals itself in their suitability to

particular forms of art.

[139] "_Gestaltungsformen._" I use "plastic" all through in a

pregnant sense, as one speaks of plastic fancy, etc.; meaning ideally

determinate, and fit for translating into pictures, poetry, etc. These

"plastic forms" are the various modifications of the subject-matter of

art. See note, p. 139, above.

[140] See note, p. 139, above.

[141] See p. 134, above.

[142] "_Gestaltung._" I do not think this means the process of shaping,

but the shapes taken collectively.

[143] _i.e._ not in a separate ideal shape devoted to it. He means that

man takes a stock or stone as representation or symbol of the divine,

and as there is no real connection between divinity and the stone, it

may either be left untouched and unshaped, or be hewn into any bizarre

or arbitrary shape that comes to hand: see next paragraph.

[144] This description is probably directed, in the first place, to

the Indian representation of deities, and would apply to those of

many barbaric religions. But its truth may be very simply verified in

daily observation of the first attempts of the uneducated at plastic

presentation of their ideas, where costliness, ingenuity, labour, or

size take the place of beauty.

[145] "_Sie als Inneres._"

[146] _i.e._ an idea or purpose which gives these partial and defective

representations all the meaning they have, although they are incapable

of really expressing it.

[147] "_Gährung_," lit. "fermentation."

[148] "_Der ursprüngliche Begriff_," lit. "the original notion."

[149] _i.e._ God or the Universe _invented_ man to be the expression of

mind; art _finds_ him, and adapts his shape to the artistic embodiment

of mind as concentrated in individual instances.

[150] Because it represents the soul as independent of an appropriate

body--the human soul as capable of existing in a beast's body.

[151] "_Geistigkeit._" "The nature of thought, mind, or spirit." It

cannot be here rendered by mind or spirit, because these words make us

think of an isolated individual, a mind or soul, and neglect the common

spiritual or intellectual nature, which is referred to by the author.

[152] It is the essence of mind or thought not to have its parts

outside one another. The so-called terms of a judgment are a good

instance of parts in thought which are inward to each other.

[153] Compare Browning's "Old Pictures in Florence."

[154] _i.e._ in the form of feeling and imagination--not reflected upon.

[155] Subject, _i.e._ conscious individual person.

[156] "_Innerlichkeit_," lit. "inwardness."

[157] Taken, considered as or determined to be negative.

[158] "Inward," again, does not mean merely inside our heads, but

having the character of spirit in that its parts are not external to

one another. A judgment is thus "inward."

[159] _i.e._ does not keep up a distinction between percipient and

object, as between things in space. Goodness, nobleness, etc., are not

felt to be other than or outside the mind.

[160] The romantic.

[161] _i.e._ species, modifications naturally arising out of a

principle.

[162] Thus _e.g._ Sculpture is _the_ art which corresponds _par

excellence_ to the general type called Classical Art; but there is _a_

Symbolic kind of sculpture, and I suppose _a_ Romantic or modern kind

of sculpture, although neither of these types are exactly fitted to the

capabilities of Sculpture.

[163] Architecture as relative to the purposes of life and of religion.

See below, p. 162.

[164] "_Die schöne Architectur._"

[165] In the sense "self-complete," "not primarily regarded as

explained by anything outside," like a machine or an animal contrasted

with a wheel or a limb, which latter are finite, because they demand

explanation and supplementation from without, _i.e._ necessarily draw

attention to their own limit.

[166] _i.e._ shape taken simply as an object filling space.

[167] The terms used in the text explain themselves if we compare,

_e.g._, a Teniers with a Greek statue, or again, say, a Turner with the

same. "Subjectivity" means that the work of art appeals to our ordinary

feelings, experiences, etc. Music and poetry are still stronger cases

than painting, according to the theory. Poetry especially can deal with

_everything_.

[168] The unity of the individuals forming a church or nation is not

visible, but exists in common sentiments, purposes, etc., and in the

recognition of their community.

[169] An expression constantly applied to consciousness, because it can

look at itself. _Cf._:--

"'Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?'

'No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself

But by reflection, by some other things.'"

_Julius Cæsar._

[170] Posited or laid down to be ideal; almost = pronounced or made

_to be_ in the sense of _not being_; e.g. musical sound is "ideal" as

existing, _qua_ work of art, in memory only, the moment in which it

is actually heard being fugitive; a picture, in respect of the third

dimension, which has to be read into it; and poetry is almost wholly

ideal, _i.e._ uses hardly any sensuous element, but appeals almost

entirely to what exists _in the mind_. "Subdivided," "_besondert_,"

like "_particularisirt_" above; because of the variety and diversity

present in the mere material of colours, musical sounds, and ideas.

[171] Again, the subject of a Turner or Teniers is not objectively

universal, in the simplest sense; not something that is actually and

literally the same everywhere and for every one. And both painting and

music (immediately sensuous elements) are less completely amalgamated

with the ideal, represent it less solidly and thoroughly than the

statue, so far as the ideal is itself external or plastic.

[172] The greater affinity of Romantic art with the movement and

variety of the modern spirit displays itself not only in the

greater flexibility of painting, music, or poetry, as compared with

architecture and sculpture, but in the fact that the Romantic type

contains these three arts at least, while the Symbolic and Classical

types had only one art each.

[173] This is drawn from Goethe's doctrine of colour, which Hegel

unfortunately adopted in opposition to Newton's theory.

[174] He means landscape, principally.

[175] "_Aufheben_," used pregnantly by Hegel to mean _both_ "cancel,"

"annul," _and_, "preserve," "fix in mind," "idealize." The use of this

word is a cardinal point of his dialectic. See "Wiss. der Logik.,"

i. 104. I know of no equivalent but "put by," provincial Scotch "put

past." The negation of space is an attribute of music. The parts of

a chord are no more in space than are the parts of a judgment. Hegel

expresses this by saying that music idealizes space and concentrates it

into a point.

[176] The parts of space, though external to each other, are not

distinguished by qualitative peculiarities.

[177] "_Aufheben._"

[178] "Ideality of matter:" the distinctively material attribute of a

sonorous body, its extension, only appears in its sound indirectly, or

inferentially, by modifying the nature of the sound. It is, therefore,

"idealized."

[179] Succession in time is a degree more "ideal" than co-existence in

space, because it exists solely in the medium of memory.

[180] "_Seele_:" mind on its individual side, as a particular feeling

subject. "_Geist_" is rather mind as the common nature of intelligence.

Thus in feeling and self-feeling, mind is said to concentrate itself

into a soul.

[181] Hegel seems to accept this view. Was he insensible to sound in

poetry? Some very grotesque verses of his, preserved in his biography,

go to show that his ear was not sensitive. Yet his critical estimate

of poetry is usually just. Shakespeare and Sophocles were probably his

favourites. And, as a matter of proportion, what he here says is true.

It must be remembered that the beauty of sound in poetry is to a great

extent indirect, being supplied by the passion or emotion which the

ideas symbolized by the sounds arouse. The beauty of poetical sound

in itself _is_ very likely less than often supposed. It must have the

capacity for receiving passionate expression; but that is not the same

as the sensuous beauty of a note or a colour. If the words used in a

noble poem were divested of all meaning, they would lose much, though

not all, of the beauty of their sound.

[182] "Stages or elements." "_Momente_," Hegel's technical phrase for

the stages which form the essential parts or factors of any idea. They

make their appearance successively, but the earlier are implied and

retained in the later.

[183] Adequate, and so of permanent value.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

A CLASSIFIED LIST

OF

Kegan Paul, Treneh, Trübner & Co.'s

PUBLICATIONS.

DECEMBER, 1896.

INDEX.

Angling, 67

Animal Magnetism, 30

Anthropology, 48

Arts, Useful and Fine, 56

Astronomy, 49

Bibliography, 93

Biography, 34

Botany, 49

Buddhism, 91

Chemistry, 51

Chess, 56

China, 86

Diet, 57

Education, 44

Egypt, 87

Essays, 3

Ethnology, 48

Ethics, 31

Fiction, 12

Finance, 46

Folk-lore, 28

Gastronomy, 57

Geology, 51

History, 39

History, Constitutional, 45

India, 81

Islam, 89

Japan, 90

Languages, 67

Law, 45

Medicine, 57

Mental Science, 31

Metaphysics, 31

Meteorology, 51

Military Science, 60

Mineralogy, 51

Moral Science, 27

Music, 61

Mythology, 28

Numismatics, 61

Occult Sciences, 29

Oriental, 81

Painting, 62

Periodicals, 95

Persian, 78, 92

Philology, 67