THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FINE ART
BY
G. W. F. HEGEL
TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY
F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY
ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS
VOL II
CONTENTS OF VOL. II
SECOND PART
INTRODUCTION
[Evolution of the Ideal in the Particular Types of Fine Art,
namely, the Symbolic, the Classical, and the Romantic.
Symbolic Art seeks after that unity of ideal significance
and external form, which Classical art in its representation
of substantive individuality succeeds in securing to
sensuous perception, and which Romantic art passes
beyond, owing to its excessive insistence on the claims
of Spirit]
SUBSECTION I
THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART
INTRODUCTION
OF THE SYMBOL GENERALLY
[1. Symbol as a sign simply in language, colours, etc. 8
2. Not a mere sign to represent something else, but a
significant fact which presents the idea or quality it
symbolizes 9
3. Thing symbolized must have other qualities than that
accepted as symbol. Term symbol necessarily open
to ambiguity 10
(_a_) Ambiguity in particular case whether the concrete
fact _is_ set before us as a symbol. Difference between
a symbol and a simile. Illustrations 10
(_b_) Ambiguity extends to-entire worlds of Art, _e.g_,
Oriental art. Two theories with regard to mythos
discussed and contrasted 14
(_c_) The problems of mythology in the present treatise
limited to the question, "How far symbolism is
entitled to rank as a form of Art?" Will only
consider symbol in so far as it belongs to Art in its
own right and itself proceeds from the notion of
the Ideal, the unfolding of which it commences] 19
DIVISION OF SUBJECT
[1. The artistic consciousness originates in wonder. The
effects that result from such a state. Art the first interpreter
of the religious consciousness. Conceptions
envisaged in plastic forms of natural objects 23
2. The final aim of symbolic art is classical art. Here it
is dissolved. The Sublime lies between the two extremes 26
3. The stages of symbolical art classified according to
their subdivisions in the chapters of this. Second Part
of the entire treatise] 29
CHAPTER I
UNCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM
A. Unity of Significance and Form in its immediacy 36
1. The religion of Zoroaster 37
2. No true symbolical significance in the above 42
3. Equally destitute of an artistic character 44
B. Fantastic Symbolism 47
1. The Hindoo conception of Brahmâ 50
2. Sensuousness, measurelessness, and personifying
activity of Hindoo imagination 51
3. Conception of purification and penance 64
C. Genuine Symbolism 65
1. Nature no longer accepted in its immediate sensuous
existence as adequate to the significance. Art
and general outlook of ancient Egypt 75
[(_a_) The inward import held independent of immediate
existence in the embalmed corpse 76
(_b_) Doctrine of immortality of the soul as held by
Egyptians 76
(_c_) Superterranean and subterranean modes of
Egyptian art. The Pyramids] 77
2. Worship of animals, as the vision of a secreted soul.
Symbolical and non-symbolical aspects of this cult 78
3. Works of Egyptian art are objective riddles. The
Sphinx symbolic of the genius of Egypt. Memnons,
Isis, and Osiris 79
CHAPTER II
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SUBLIME
A. Pantheism of Art 89
1. Hindoo poetry 90
2. Persian and Mohammedan poetry. Modern reflections
of such poetry as in Goethe 92
3. Christian Mysticism 97
B. The Art of the Sublime 97
1. God as Creator and Lord of a subject World. He
is Creator, not Generator. His Dwelling not in
Nature 100
2. Nature and the human form cut off from the Divine
(_entgöttert_) 101
3. Nullity of objective fact a source of the enhanced
self-respect of man. Man's finiteness and immeasurable
transcendency of God. No place for
immortality. The Law 103
CHAPTER III
THE CONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM OF THE COMPARATIVE TYPE OF ART
A. Modes of Comparison originating from the side of externality 110
1. The Fable. Aesop 113
2. The Parable, Proverb, and Apologue 122
3. The Metamorphosis 125
B. Comparisons, which in their imaginative presentation
originate in the Significance 128
1. The Riddle 130
2. The Allegory 132
3. The Metaphor, Image, and Simile 137
C. The Disappearance of the Symbolic Type of Art 161
1. The Didactic Poem 163
2. Descriptive Poetry 165
3. Relation of both aspects of internal feeling and external
object in the ancient Epigram 165
SUBSECTION II
THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART
INTRODUCTION
THE CLASSICAL TYPE IN GENERAL
1. Self-subsistency of the Classical type viewed as the
interfusion of the spiritual and its natural form 175
[(_a_) No return of the ideal principle upon itself. No
separation of opposed aspects of inward and external 175
(_b_) Symbolism absent from this type except incidentally 176
(_c_) Reproach of anthropomorphism] 179
2. Greek art as the realized existence of the classical type 181
3. Position of the creative artist under such a type 183
[(_a_) His freedom no result of a restless process of fermentation.
Receives his material as something
assured in history or belief 183
(_b_) His plastic purpose is clearly defined 184
(_c_) High level of technical ability 185
Classification of subject-matter] 186
CHAPTER I
THE FORMATIVE PROCESS OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART
Introduction and Division of subject 189
1. The Degradation of Animalism as such 191
(_a_) The sacrifice of animals. How regarded by the
Greeks 192
(_b_) The Chase, or examples of such in heroic times 194
(_c_) Tales of metamorphosis. Illustrations both from
Greek and Egyptian traditions 194
2. The Contest between the older and later Dynasties of
Gods 201
(_a_) The oracles whereby the gods attest their presence
through natural existences 205
(_b_) The ancient gods in contradistinction from the
new 208
[(_α_) The Titan natural potences included among the
older régime 208
(_β_) They are the powers of Earth and the stars 208
without spiritual or ethical content. Prometheus.
The Erinnyes 209
(_γ_) The order of these gods is a succession] 215
(_c_) The conquest of the older régime of gods 217
3. The Positive Conservation of the conditions set up by
Negation 220
(_a_) The Mysteries 220
(_b_) Preservation of old régime still more obvious in artistic
creations. Illustrations from Greek poetry 221
(_c_) The Nature-basis of the later gods. Nature not in
itself divine to the Greek. Illustrations of both
points of view 223
CHAPTER II
THE IDEAL OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE OF ART
Introduction and Division of subject-matter 229
1. The Ideal of Classical Art generally 230
(_a_) The Classical Ideal is a creation of free artistic
activity, though it reposes on earlier historical
elements 230
[(_α_) The Greek gods are neither the appearance of
mere external Nature, nor the abstraction from
one Godhead 232
(_β_) The Greek artist is a poet. But his productive
power is concretely spiritual, not merely capricious 233
(_γ_) The relation of the Greek gods to human life.
Illustrations from Homer, etc.] 233
(_b_) What is the type of the new gods of Greek art? 235
[(_α_) Their concentrated individuality, or substantive
characterization 236
(_β_) Their beauty not merely spiritual, but also plastic 237
(_γ_) Removal of them from all that is purely finite
into a sphere of lofty blessedness exalted above
mere sensuous shape] 238
(_c_) The nature of the external representation. Sculpture,
in its secure self-possession, most suited as
the medium 241
2. The Sphere or Cycle of the Individual Gods 242
(_a_) What is called the "divine Universum" is here
broken up into particular deities 242
(_b_) Absence of an articulate system 243
(_c_) The general character of their distinguishing attributes 244
3. The particular Individuality of the Gods 246
(_a_) The appropriate material for such individualization
[(_α_) The natural religions of symbolism a primary
source. Illustrations 247
(_β_) That of local conditions 250
(_γ_) That of the world of concrete fact. Illustrations
from Homer, etc.] 254
(_b_) Retention of a fundamental ethical basis 258
(_c_) Advance in the direction of grace and charm 259
CHAPTER III
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CLASSICAL TYPE
1. Fate or Destiny 261
2. Dissolution through the nature of the anthropomorphism
of the gods 263
[(_a_) Absence or defect of the principle of subjectivity as
here asserted 263
(_b_) The transition to Christian conceptions only found
in more modern art. The prosaic art of the Aufklärung.
Illustrations 266
(_c_) The dissolution of classical art in its own province] 270
3. Satire 273
(_a_) Distinction between the dissolution of classical and
symbolic art 274
(_b_) The Satire 276
(_c_) The Roman world as the basis of the satire with
illustrations ancient and modern 277
SUBSECTION III
THE ROMANTIC TYPE OF ART
INTRODUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC IN GENERAL
1. The Principle of inward Subjectivity 282
2. The steps in the Evolution of the content and form of
the Romantic Principle 283
[(_a_) Point of departure deduced from the Absolute viewed
as the determinate existence of a self-knowing
subject of thought and volition. Man viewed as
self-possessed Divine. History of Christ 286
(_b_) This process of self-recognition and reconcilement
viewed as a process in which strain and conflict
arise. Death as viewed by Christian and Greek
art contrasted 287
(_c_) The finite aspect of subjective life in the secular
interests, the passions, collisions, and suffering,
or enjoyment of the earthly life] 290
3. The romantic mode of exposition in relation to its content 291
(_a_) The content of romantic viewed relatively to the
Divine extremely restricted. Nature divested of its
association, symbolic or otherwise, with Divinity 291
(_b_) Religion the premiss of romantic art in a far more
enhanced degree than in symbolic art. Influence
of the romantic principle on the medium adopted 293
(_c_) Two worlds covered by the romantic principle, viz.,
the soul-kingdom of Spirit reconciled therein,
and the realm of external Nature from which even
the aspect of ugliness is not excluded. Latter
world only portrayed in so far as soul finds a home
therein] 293
Division of subject-matter 295
CHAPTER I
THE RELIGIOUS DOMAIN OF ROMANTIC ART
1. The Redemption history of Christ 302
(_a_) The principle of Love as paramount in this religious
sphere. How far Art in such a sphere is a superfluity 303
(_b_) From a certain aspect the appearance of Art is
necessary 303
(_c_) The aspect of contingency in the particularity of an
individual Person as such Divine 304
[(_α_) The presentment by artists of the exterior personality
of Christ 304
(_β_) The conflict inherent in the religious growth,
viewed as a process, though determining that
process universally, is concentrated in the history
of _one_ person in the first instance 306
(_γ_) The feature of death only regarded here as a
point of transition to self-reconcilement] 308
2. Religious Love 309
(_a_) Conception of the Absolute as Love 309
(_b_) Form of Love as self-concentrated emotion. Affiliation
of such with sensuous presentment 310
(_c_) Love as the Ideal of romantic art 310
[(_α_) Christ as Divine Love 311
(_β_) Form most compatible with Art the love of
mother. Mary, mother of Jesus 311
(_γ_) Love of Christ's disciples and the Christian community] 313
3. The Spirit of the Community 313
(_a_) The Martyrs 315
(_b_) Penance and conversion within the soul 320
(_c_) Miracles and Legends 323
CHAPTER II
CHIVALRY
Introduction 325
1. Honour 332
(_a_) Notion of same. Contrast between Greek and
modern art in this respect 332
(_b_) Vulnerability of same 335
(_c_) Reparation demanded. Honour a mode of self-subsistency
which is self-reflective 336
2. Love 337
(_a_) Fundamental conception of. Illustrations from
poetry 337
(_b_) Collisions of the same 341
[(_α_) That between honour and love 341
(_β_) That between the supreme spiritual forces of
state, family, etc., and love 342
(_γ_) Opposition between love and external conditions
in the prose of life and the prejudice of
others] 342
(_c_) Limitation of contingency inherent in the conception
itself 343
3. Fidelity 345
(_a_) Loyalty of service 346
(_b_) The nature of its co-ordination with a social order
either in the world of Chivalry or the modern 347
(_c_) Nature of its collisions. Illustrations. The "Cid,"
etc. 348
CHAPTER III
THE FORMAL SELF-STABILITY OF PARTICULAR
INDIVIDUALITIES
Introduction 350
1. The Self-subsistence of individual Character 354
(_a_) The formal stability of character 355
(_b_) Character viewed as an inward but undisclosed
totality. Illustrations from Shakespeare 359
(_c_) The substantial interest in the display of such formal
character. Shakespeare's vulgar characters, and
the geniality of their presentment 365
2. The Spirit of Adventure 367
(_a_) The contingent nature of ends and collisions 368
[(_α_) Christian Chivalry in its conflict with Moors,
Arabs, and Mohammedans. Crusades. Holy Grail 369
(_β_) The universal spirit of adventure in the personal
experience of individuals. Dante and the "Divine
Comedy" 371
(_γ_) The contingency within the soul due to love,
honour, and fidelity] 371
(_b_) The comic treatment of such contingency. Ariosto
and Cervantes, contrast between 372
(_c_) The spirit of the novel or romance 375
3. The Dissolution of the Romantic type 377
(_a_) The artistic imitation of what is directly presented by Nature 379
[(_α_) Naturalism in poetry. Diderot, Goethe, and
Schiller 381
(_β_) Dutch _genre_ painting 382
(_γ_) Interest in objects delineated related to artistic
personality] 385
(_b_) Individual Humour 386
(_c_) The end of the romantic type of Art 388
[(_α_) Conditions under which it is possible for the
artist to bring the Absolute before the aesthetic
sense 389
(_β_) The position of Art at the present day. Analogous
position of modern artist and dramatist 391
(_γ_) General review of previously evolved process
of Art's typical structure. What is possible for
modern art and the conditions necessary. Illustration
of the terminus of romantic art with the
nature of the Epigram. Supreme function of Art] 394
SECOND PART
EVOLUTION OF THE IDEAL IN THE PARTICULAR TYPES OF FINE ART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART
INTRODUCTION
All that has hitherto been the object of our examination in the
first part of this inquiry referred to the reality of the Idea of
the beautiful as Ideal of art. In whatever direction, however, we
developed the notion of the ideal art-product, we throughout applied
to it a meaning of purely general signification. But the idea of the
beautiful implies a totality likewise of essential differences, which
as such must in veritable form assert themselves. These differences we
may broadly describe as the _particular modes_ of art, as the evolved
content of that which is implied in the notion of the Ideal, and which
secures actual form through art. When, however, we speak of these
forms of art as of distinct species or grades[1] of the Ideal, we do
not accept the term in the ordinary usage of it as though we found
here in external guise particular classes of objects related to and
modifying the Ideal respectively as their common genus. Species in the
sense used here simply expresses the various and continuously expanding
determination of the idea of the beautiful and the Ideal of art itself.
The universality of the ideal representation is in the case posited not
determined on the side of external existence, but is assumed to be the
closer determination of itself in the explication of its own notion;
or, in other words, it is the notion itself which unfolds itself in a
totality of particular types of art.
More closely regarded, then, the specific types of art have their
origin, as the unfolded realization of the Idea of the beautiful, in
the very nature of the Idea itself, which by means of them presses
forward to real and concrete appearance. Moreover, just in so far as it
ceases to expand[2] in the abstract determination or concrete fulness
of any one of them, it manifests itself in some other form of realized
expression. For the Idea is only Idea in its essential truth in so far
as it proceeds in this self-evolution by means of its own activity.
And inasmuch as it is, as Ideal, immediate appearance, and moreover
with each mode thereof is still identical as the idea of the beautiful,
we find that in every particular phase which reveals the Ideal in its
process of self-explication we have another actual manifestation which
is immediately related to the essential characterization of those
diverse types of yet further expansion. It really is a matter of no
consequence whether we regard this process as a process of the Idea
within its own substance, or that of the form under which it attains
determinate existence, inasmuch as both aspects are immediately bound
up with each other, and the perfecting of the Idea as content, and the
perfecting of its form are but two ways of expressing the same process.
Or, to put the matter in the reverse way, the defects of a given form
of art of this kind betray themselves as a defect of the Idea, in so
far as such defects give a limited significance to the essential nature
of the Idea in external form, and as such invest it with reality.
When we consequently compare such still inadequate forms of art with
what most obviously presents itself for comparison, that is, the true
Ideal, we must be careful not to use expressions commonly applicable to
works of art that are failures, which either express nothing at all,
or have discovered an incompetence to express what ought to have been
expressed. Rather for every form of the Idea there is a definite mode
of appearance, which clothes it precisely in one of those particular
forms of art to which we have adverted, adequate in every respect
thereto, and the defective or perfected character of which consists
entirely in the relative truth or untruth of the determinate form,
under which and through which the Idea is actually realized. For the
content must first be clothed with reality and concreteness before it
can attain to the form wholly adequate to its essential truth. As we
have already indicated in the previous division of our subject-matter,
we have three fundamental forms or types of art to examine.
_First_, we have the _symbolical._ In this the Idea is still seeking
for its true artistic expression, because it is here still essentially
abstract and undetermined, and consequently has not mastered for itself
the external appearance adequate to its own substance, but rather finds
itself in unresolved opposition to the external objects in physical
Nature and the world of mankind. And inasmuch as in this crude relation
to objective existence it immediately surmises its own isolation, or
is carried into some form of concrete existence by means, of universal
characteristics which are void of all true definition, it vitiates and
falsifies the actual forms of reality which it has found, and which
it seizes in a wholly capricious way[3]. And, consequently, instead
of being able to identify itself completely with the object, it can
only assert a kind of accord, or rather a still abstract reflection of
significance and figure, a mode of representation which, being neither
complete in its artistic fusion, nor capable of being completed,
suffers the object to emerge as reciprocally external, strange, and
inadequate to itself as it was before.
_Secondly_, we have the form in which the Idea, here in accordance
with its true notional activity, is carried beyond the abstraction and
indeterminacy of general characterization[4], is conscious of itself
as free and infinite subjectivity, and grasps that self-conscious life
in its real existence as Spirit (Mind). Spirit, as the free subject of
consciousness, is self-determined through its own resources, and even
in this its conscious grasp of self-determination possesses a form of
externality adequate to express it, and one in which the essential
import of that consciousness can be united with an explicit reality
entirely appropriate. This second type of art, the _classical_, is
based upon such absolutely homogeneous unity of content and form. In
order, however, to make this unity complete the human spirit, in so
far as it makes itself the object of art, must not be taken as Spirit
in the absolute significance we refer to it, where it discovers its
adequate subsistence wholly in the _spiritual_ resources of its own
essential domain, but rather as a still _individualized_ spirit, and as
such charged with a certain aspect of isolation. In other words, the
free individual which classical art unites to its forms appears, it is
true, as essentially universal, and consequently freed from all the
mere contingence and particularity both of the subjective world of mind
and the external world of Nature. But it is at the same time permeated
by a universality which is itself essentially individualized. For the
external form is necessarily both defined and singular by virtue of
its externality, which it is only capable of completely fusing with an
artistic content by representing that content as itself defined, and
consequently of a limited character; and, moreover, it is only Spirit
that is thus particularized which can pass into an objective shape and
unite itself with the same in an inseparable unity.
In this form Art has reached the fulness of its own notion to this
extent, namely, that the Idea, which is here spiritual individuality,
brought into immediate accord with itself in the form of its bodily
presence, receives from it a presentation so complete, that external
existence is no longer able to preserve its consistency as against the
ideal significance which it serves to express; or, to put it in the
reverse way, the spiritual content is exclusively manifested in the
elaborated form within which Art clothes it for sensuous perception,
and thereby affirmatively asserts itself in the same.
_Thirdly_, we have the form in which the Idea of beauty grasps its
own being as _absolute_ Spirit, Spirit, that is to say, in the full
consciousness of its untrammelled freedom. But for this very reason
it is unable any more to obtain complete realization in forms which
are external; its true determinate existence is now that which it
possesses in itself as Spirit. That unity of the life of Spirit and
its external appearance which we find in classical art is unbound,
and it flees from the same once more into itself. It is this recoil
which presents to us the fundamental type of the _romantic_ type of
art. Here we find, by reason of the free spirituality which pervades
the content, such content makes a more ideal demand upon expression
than the mere representation through an external or physical medium
is able to supply; the form on its external side sinks therefore to
a relation of _indifference_; and in the romantic form of art we
consequently meet with a separation between content and form as we
previously found it in the symbolic form, with this difference that
it is now due to the subordination of matter to spiritual expression
rather than the predominance of externality over ideal significance.
It is in this way that symbolic art _seeks_ after that perfected unity
of ideal significance and external form, which classical art in its
representation of substantive individuality succeeds in _communicating_
to sensuous perception, and which romantic art _passes over and beyond_
through its overwhelming insistence on the claims of Spirit.
[Footnote 1: _Art._ Hegel takes the ordinary scientific sense to
describe the meaning. The word "type" would more truly express it.]
[Footnote 2: _Für sich selber ist._ That is, having arrived at one form
of determination, returns upon itself and throws off another form, just
as the plant germ after arriving at the leaf expands into the bud, and
so on.]
[Footnote 3: That is, with no reference to intelligent principle.]
[Footnote 4: _Allgemeiner Gedanken._ Hegel means the bare
generalizations or abstract conceptions of thought.]
SUBSECTION I
THE SYMBOLIC TYPE OF ART
INTRODUCTION
OF THE SYMBOL GENERALLY
Symbol, in the signification we here attach to the word, is not
merely the beginning of art from the point of view of its notional
development, but marks also its first appearance in history. We
may consequently regard it as only the forecourt of art, which is
principally the possession of the East, and through which, after a
variety of transitional steps and mediating passages, we are at last
introduced to the genuine realization of the Ideal in the classical
type of art. We must therefore from the very first take care to
distinguish symbol where its unique characteristics provide it with an
independent sphere of its own, in which it determines the radical and
effective type of a certain form of art's exposition and presentment
from that kind of symbolic expression which amounts to no more than
a purely external aspect of form entirely without such independent
significance. In the latter sense we, in fact, come across it in
the classical and romantic forms of art just as certain aspects of
symbolical art are not wholly without the characteristic features
of the classical Ideal, or present to us the origins of romantic
art. Such reciprocal interplay between the fundamental forms of art
attaches, however, merely to subsidiary images or isolated traits; it
has no power whatever to modify, still less to expunge, the animating
principle which essentially determines the character of the entire work
of art.
In such cases where we find symbol elaborated in its entirely unique
and independent form it is as a general rule characterized by the
quality of the _sublime_, because its main impression is to show us the
Idea still united to measureless dimension rather than rounded in a
free and self-defined content; it would fain clothe itself with form,
and yet is unable to secure in the substantial appearances of the world
a definite form which is entirely adequate to express the abstractness
and universality of its longing. On account of this inability to attain
its purpose the Idea passes over and beyond the external existence
which surrounds it instead of penetrating to the core or completely
making its home therein. And this flight beyond the limits of the
finite and visible world is precisely that which constitutes the
general character of the sublime.
But before we proceed further it will be convenient, by way of
elucidating the formal aspect of our subject, to explain at once, if in
quite general terms, what we understand by the expression symbol.
Generally speaking, symbol is some form of external existence
immediately presented to the senses, which, however, is not accepted
for its own worth, as it lies thus before us in its immediacy, but
for the wider and more general significance which it offers to our
reflection. We may consequently distinguish between two points of
view equally applicable to the term; first, the _significance_, and,
secondly, the mode in which such significance is _expressed_. The
_first_ is a conception of the mind, or an object which stands wholly
indifferent to any particular content, the _latter_ is a form of
sensuous existence or a representation of some kind or other.
1. Symbol, then, is in the first place a _sign._ When we speak of the
significant and nothing more there is no necessary connection between
the thing signified and its _modus_ of expression whatever. This
manner of its expression, this sensuous thing or image, so far from
being immediately called up by that for which it is the sign, rather
presents itself to the imagination as a wholly foreign content to it,
by no means necessarily associated with it in a unique way. So, for
example, in language tones are signs of specific conditions of idea
or emotion. By far the greater number of the tones of any language
are, however, associated with the ideas, which are thereby expressed
entirely by chance, so far as the content of those ideas is concerned,
even though the history of the development of language may show us that
the original connection between the two was of a different nature, and
that an essential element in the difference between one language and
another consists in this, that the same idea is expressed through a
different sound. Another example of such bare signs are colours[5],
which we used in cockades or flags in order to express the nationality
of an individual or vessel. Such colours by themselves alone carry
no particular quality which can be immediately related to the thing
they signify, that is, the nation which they represent. In a sense
such as this, where the bond between the signification and the sign is
one of _indifference_, symbol must not be understood when we connect
the expression with art. For art consists precisely in the reciprocal
relation, affinity, and substantive fusion of significance and form.
2. We must consequently interpret sign in a different sense when we
speak of it as equivalent to symbol. The lion is, for example, a symbol
of magnanimity, the fox symbolizes cunning, the circle eternity,
the triangle the Triune God. Here we find that the lion and the fox
themselves possess the qualities whose import they serve to express. In
the same way the circle points beyond the mere indefinite extension, or
the capriciously fixed limit of a straight line, or any other line that
does not return upon itself, and which at the same time is suitable as
the expression of a definite period of time; and the triangle regarded
as a _totality_ possesses the same number of sides and angles as is
involved in the idea of God, when the determinations under which
the religious consciousness defines the Supreme Being are expressed
numerically.
In the latter forms of symbol therefore the objects presented to the
senses have already in their own existence that significance, to
represent and express which they are used; symbol as employed in this
expanded sense is consequently no purely indifferent mark for something
other than itself, but a significant fact which in its own external
form already presents the content of the idea which it symbolizes.
At the same time it is not the concrete thing it is itself, which it
should bring before the imagination, but simply that general quality of
significance which attaches to it.
3. We would, thirdly, draw attention to the fact that although symbol
may not, as is the case with the purely external and formal sign, be
wholly inadequate to the significance derived from it, yet, in order
that it may retain its character as symbol, it must on the other hand
present an aspect which is strange to it. In other words, though the
content which is significant, and the form which is used to typify
it in respect to a _single_ quality, unite in agreement, none the
less the symbolical form must possess at the same time still _other_
qualities entirely independent of that _one_ which is shared by it,
and is once for all marked as significant, just as the content[6]
need not necessarily be a bare abstract quality such as strength or
cunning, but rather a concrete substance, which on its side, too,
possesses a variety of characteristics which distinguish it from the
primary quality in which its symbolic character consists, and in the
same way, but to a still greater degree, from everything else that
characterizes the symbolical form. The lion, for example, possesses
other qualities than mere strength, the fox than mere cunning, and
the apprehension of God is not necessarily bound up with conceptions
which imply number. The content, therefore, as thus viewed, is also
placed in a relation of _indifference_ to the symbolical form, which
represents it, and the abstract quality which it typifies may quite
possibly be present in countless other existing objects. In the same
way a content which is thus varied in its composition may possess
many qualities, to symbolize any of which other forms will equally
serve where a similar correspondence with such is apparent. The same
reasoning is also applicable to the external object in which any
particular content[7] is symbolically expressed. Such an object, in
its concrete natural existence, possesses a number of characteristics
for all of which it may stand as the symbol. The most obvious symbol
for strength is unquestionably the lion, but the ox and the horn of
the ox may equally serve as such, and from other points of view the ox
possesses many other qualities as significant. But few objects, if any,
have been brought home to the imagination with such a prodigal wealth
of symbolic form and imagery as that of the Supreme Being. We may
conclude, then, from the above remarks that the use of the term symbol
is necessarily[8] and essentially open to _ambiguity._
(_a_) For, in the first place, no sooner do we look for some symbol
than the doubt almost invariably arises whether a _particular form is
to be accepted as a symbol or no_; and this is so, though we set on one
side the further ambiguity with reference to the _particular_ nature of
the content, which a given form under all the _variety_ of its aspects
may be held to symbolize, many of which may be employed symbolically
through associating links that do not appear on the surface[9].
Now what a symbol primarily offers us is generally speaking a form, an
image, which of itself is the presentment of an immediate fact. Such
immediate existence, or its image, a lion for example, an eagle, or a
particular colour, stands there before us as it is, a valid existing
fact. The question consequently arises whether a lion, whose image is
set before us, merely is set there to express the natural fact, or
whether in addition to this it carries a further significance, that is
the more abstract connotation of mere strength, or the more concrete
one of a hero or a period of the year, husbandry and anything else we
choose to infer from it; whether in fact, as we say, the image is to be
taken literally, or with a further ideal significance, or possibly only
with the latter. The last case finds its illustration in symbolical
expressions of speech and particular words such as comprehension,
conclusion[10] and others of the same kind. When such signify mental
activities we have simply set before us the immediate import of a
mental activity and no more without any recall to our memory of the
material acts, which originally were implied in the meaning of these
words. When on the contrary the picture of a lion is presented us we
have not merely the significance to consider which it may bear as
symbol, but also the bodily shape and presence of the king of beasts
before our eyes. An ambiguity of this nature can only fully disappear
when the sense attached to both aspects, namely, symbolical import, and
its external form, is expressly stated, and we learn by this means the
exact relation which exists between them. In that case, however, the
concrete fact which is set before us ceases to be a symbol in the real
meaning of the term, and becomes simply an image, the relation of which
to significance is expressed by the well-known form of comparison,
namely, _simile._ In the simile, that is to say, both factors are
immediately presented to us, the general conception and its concrete
image. When on the contrary reflection has not proceeded so far as to
hold general conceptions in assured independence, and consequently to
set them forth by themselves, in that case we find that the sensuous
image to which they are cognate, and in which a significance of more
general[11] import is able to find its expression is not yet conceived
as separate from such a significance, but both are still immediately
held together in unity. And this it is which, as we shall see more
closely as we proceed, constitutes the distinction between symbol
and comparison. An illustration of the latter kind may be found in
that exclamation of Karl Moor, as he gazes on the setting sun: "Thus
dies a hero!" Here we see that the ideal significance is expressly
separated from the sensuous impression while at the same time it is
associated with the picture. In other cases, it is true even of similes
this act of separation in relation is not so clearly marked, and the
association appears to be more immediate; in such cases it must already
appear manifest from the general content of the narrative, from the
position assigned to the picture, or other circumstances, that viewed
as merely a statement of fact, such an image is not justified, but that
some special significance or other, which cannot fail to arrest our
attention, is intended by it. When, for example, Luther says:
/$
A steadfast stronghold is our God.
$/
or we read:
/$
In den Ocean schifft mit tausend Masten der Jungling,
Still auf geretteten Boot treibt in den Hafen der Greis[12].
$/
we can have no doubt whatever upon the implied significance, whether
it be of a protection suggested by "stronghold," the world of hopes
and life-plans symbolized in the picture of the ocean and the thousand
masts; or the narrowed aims and possessions with the assured plot of
ground at the end, which is reflected from the boat and the haven. In
the same way when we read in the Old Testament: "May God break their
teeth in their mouth, may the Lord shatter the hindermost teeth of the
young lions," it is obvious that neither the words "mouth," "teeth,"
nor "hindermost teeth of the young lions" are used in the literal
sense, but are utilized as images and sensuous ideas, which carry a
significance only present to the mind, and that such _significance_ is
all that matters.
This ambiguity, then, is all the more conspicuous in the case of
symbolical representation for the reason that an image, which carries
a particular significance, only receives the descriptive name of
_symbol_ when such significance ceases to be expressly marked by
itself, or is otherwise clearly emphasized as it is in the case of the
simile. No doubt the ambiguity of the genuine symbol is to this extent
removed in that by virtue of this very uncertainty the fusion of the
sensuous image and its significance becomes a matter more or less of
convention and custom, a feature which is indispensably necessary in
the case where mere signs are used, while on the other hand the simile
asserts itself as something individual, discovered on the spur of the
moment to assist the meaning, and is independently clear, because it
emphasizes the significance alongside of that independence. At the same
time, though no doubt the symbol may be clear enough to those who are
habituated to its use, and whose imaginative life is at home in such
a conventional atmosphere, it is a very different matter with all who
are outside this native circle, or for whom it is now a thing of the
Past; for such it is only the immediate sensuous representation which
is in the first instance seized, and it remains for these in every way
a question of doubt, whether they are to rest satisfied with that which
lies openly before their eyes, or are to accept these as indicators to
yet further imagery or ideas. When, for example, we gaze in Christian
churches upon the _triangle_ in some conspicuous position on the walls,
we at once recognize that the intention is not to place before the
view this geometrical figure simply as such, but rather to draw our
attention to its spiritual significance. If, however, we were to find
it elsewhere we should probably feel equally certain that such a figure
had no reference whatever, either as sign or symbol, to the Trinity.
On the other hand a folk strange to the ideas which have grown up in
Christian countries might easily feel doubts in both cases, and it is
by no means easy for ourselves to determine with equal certainty in all
cases, whether a figure of this kind is to be understood as presenting
us with its literal or symbolical interpretation.
(_b_) Moreover this ambiguity does not merely apply to isolated
cases, but extends to vast areas of the entire domain of art, to the
content of an almost unlimited material open to our inspection, to the
content in full of all that Oriental art has ever produced. For this
reason, as we enter for the first time the world of ancient Persian,
Indian, or Egyptian figures and imaginative conceptions we experience
a certain feeling of uncanniness, we wander at any rate in a world
of _problems._ These fantastic images do not at once respond to our
own world; we are neither pleased nor satisfied with the immediate
impression they produce on us; rather we are instinctively carried
forward by it to probe yet further into their significance, and to
inquire what wider and profounder truths may lie concealed behind such
representations. In other productions of the same kind it is apparent
at the first glance that they are, just like so many fairy tales of
children, merely an interplay of pictorial fancy, a strange texture of
curiosities woven together at haphazard. For children delight in just
such an even surface of pictures, a play of the fancy which makes no
demand on effort or intelligence, but is simply a collection tumbled
together. Nations on the contrary, even in their childhood, require as
the food of their imaginative life a more essential content; and this
is just what in fact we find in the figures of Indian and Egyptian art,
although the interpretation of such problematical pictures is only
dimly suggested, and we experience great difficulty in deciphering it.
Even in the province of classical art we meet now and again with a like
uncertainty, though it is the essence of classical art to be throughout
clear and intelligible on its own surface without the use of symbolism
of any kind. And this clarity of classical art consists in this that
it comprehends the true content of Art, in other words substantive[13]
subjectivity, and thereby discovers at the same time the true form,
which essentially expresses nothing less than this genuine content,
so that what it appears to mind, the significance that is of it is
just that, which is veritably expressed in the external form, both the
ideal aspect and the plastic shape being entirely adequate to each
other; in symbolical art, the simile, and other forms of that kind,
the image always brings before perception something in addition to
that significance, for which it merely serves as the picture. At the
same time classical art, too, presents us with an aspect of ambiguity.
In considering the mythological phantasies of antique art it is
frequently a matter most difficult to decide, whether we do rightly
in taking such plastic figures simply for what they are, contenting
ourselves with mere wonder over the wealth and charm, which this happy
play of imaginative vigour offers us, for the reason of course that
mythology is generally accepted as nothing but an idle collection
of fairy tales, or whether on the contrary we have still to seek for
a significance of wider range and greater depth. We shall feel the
insistence of such a doubt in exceptional force where the content of
these fables refers directly to the life and activity of the Divine,
in cases, that is, where the stories handed down to us can only be
regarded as utterly unworthy of the Supreme Being, indicative of an
invention as entirely inadequate as it is in the worst possible taste.
When we read, for example, the twelve labours of Hercules, or, to take
a stronger case, are informed that Zeus hurled Hephaestus from Olympus
on to the island of Lemnos, with the result that Vulcan remained lame
ever after, we are no doubt ready to believe that the entire story is
nothing but a fairy tale of the imagination. It is just as possible to
believe that all the love affairs of Zeus are mere freaks of a prodigal
fancy. But, on the other hand, for the very reason that such stories
are told about the Supreme Divinity, it is quite equally credible that
meaning of more universal import is hidden under that which such myths
immediately transmit to us.
With regard to such facts as those above stated, there are two
theories current of exceptional importance and contradictory to each
other. The one accepts mythology as a collection of stories of purely
external significance, which as such could not fail to be unworthy
presentations of the Divine nature, though able, when regarded
apart from such associations, to reveal to us much that is finely
conceived, delightful, interesting, nay, even of great beauty. They
offer us, however, no ground whatever for attempting to enlarge their
significance. In this view mythology is in the form in which it is
presented purely _historical_: under one aspect, that is, treating it
as art, in its shapes, pictures, gods, together with all the practical
activities and events it describes, it is amply self-sufficient,
or rather by the way it brings before us that which is significant
supplies its own elucidation; from another point of view, that is to
say, its origin in history, we have to regard it as built up from
local claims, no less than the chance caprice of priest, artist, and
poet, the facts of history, foreign legends and traditions. The theory
which is _opposed_ to the above is unable to rest satisfied with the
purely external husk of mythological form and narration, and insists
on discovering beneath it a meaning of more universal and profounder
import, to master which, as it breaks upon the surface, it conceives to
be the main object of mythological inquiry regarded as the scientific
examination of the mythos. In this view mythology must necessarily be
apprehended as bound up with _symbolism._ And by symbolism all that is
meant here is just this, that however bizarre, ridiculous, grotesque
such myths appear to be, however much the adventitious caprice of a
plastic imagination may contribute to their form, they are essentially
a birth of Spirit; and in spite of it all contain in them significant
ideas, that is, thoughts of universal significance upon the nature of
God; they are, in short, _Philosophemes._[14] In this latter sense
the recent work of Creuzer on symbolism is particularly noteworthy;
this writer has once more taken up the review of the mythological
conceptions of the ancient world, not, as is so frequently the fashion,
from the external and prosaic standpoint, or simply with the object of
determining this artistic merit, but rather expressly to elucidate the
intrinsic rationality of their substance. Such an inquiry proceeds from
the presupposition that myths and fabulous tales have their origin in
the human spirit, which is capable, no doubt, of playing freely with
its notions of gods, but in its religious interest marks the point
where it enters a more exalted sphere, in which reason itself is the
discoverer of form, albeit it is charged with the defect of being
unable at this early stage to exhibit the core from which it grows with
commensurate power. And this assumption is essentially just. Religion
discovers its fountain-head in Spirit, which seeks after its truth,
dimly discovers it, bringing the same to consciousness by means of
any form, which displays an affinity with this form of truth, be it a
form of narrower or wider borders. But once grant that it is reason
which seeks after such forms, and the necessity is obvious to recognize
the work of reason. Such a recognition is alone truly worthy of human
inquiry. Whoever shelves this problem makes himself master of nothing
but a motley show of unrelated learning. If we, on the other hand,
probe into, the truth of mythological conceptions as it presents itself
to mind, without at the same time excluding from our grasp that other
aspect of them, that is, the haphazard caprice therein exercised by
the imagination, and all the external influences, local or otherwise,
which have contributed to this creation, we shall then be in a position
to justify the various systems of mythology. To justify the work of
man in the imagery and forms that are the product of his spirit is
a noble enterprise, of rarer worth than the mere heaping together
of the external facts of history. The objection has no doubt been
pressed against Creuzer that here, treading in the steps of the new
Platonists[15], the wider significance he elucidates from the myths is
a creation he attaches to them himself; that, in short, he discovers
conceptions in them which are not merely without any historical basis
to uphold them, but which it can be positively shown he must have
first introduced before he could have found them; in other words it
is asserted that neither the people of such times nor the poets or
priests--although from another point of view emphasis is frequently
laid on the occult wisdom of the priesthood--could have possessed any
knowledge of such ideas, which would have been wholly incompatible
with the prevailing culture. Such objections, of course, are entitled
to their full weight. These peoples, poets, and priests have not, in
fact, been conscious of universal conceptions in the particular form of
universality which the human mind now discovers at the root of their
mythological ideas, in the sense that they could have deliberately
clothed such conceptions in the forms of symbolism. And as a matter
of fact this is never maintained even by Creuzer. But however true it
may be that the reflections of the ancient world over its mythology
were entirely different from those of the modern, we are by no means
therefore entitled to conclude that the conceptions of its mythology
are not essentially symbolical, and as such must be fully accepted;
rather our inference should be that in the times when these peoples
created the poetry of their myths, from the midst of a life itself
steeped in poetry, they would instinctively bring home to consciousness
all that was most spiritual and profound in that life in the forms of
the imagination rather than that of reflection, and fail to separate
conceptions which were more universal or abstract from the concrete
creations of their phantasy. That this really was the case is a fact
which we have in this inquiry to accept as fundamentally established;
we may, nevertheless, be equally prepared to admit that, in such a form
of interpretation as the symbolical, theories are apt to slip in which
are merely the product of artifice and ingenuity, much as is the case
with etymological science.
(_c_) At the same time, however much we may find ourselves in general
agreement with the view that mythology, with its tales of the gods
and its circumstantial pictures of a persistently poetic imagination,
includes within its borders a content, that is to say rational and
profound religious conceptions, it is still open to us to ask in our
examination of the symbolical form of art whether for the same reason
all mythology and art is to be interpreted in a _symbolical sense_, in
accordance with that typical assertion of Friedrich von Schlegel, to
the effect that we are bound to look for an allegory in every artistic
representation. The symbolical or allegorical is then understood in the
sense that a general conception[16] is assumed to underlie every work
of art as its motive principle and every mythological form, by bringing
the universal character of which into prominence it should then be
possible to expound the real significance of such a work or imaginative
creation. This mode of treatment is, moreover, very commonly adopted
in our own days. We find, for instance, in the more recent editions
of Dante a marked tendency to interpret every canto in an exclusively
allegorical sense, and no doubt the poetry of Dante contains many
examples of such allegories. In the same way Heyne's editions of the
classical poets evince the same disposition in their commentaries to
elucidate the general significance of every metaphorical expression by
means of the abstract conceptions of the understanding. Nor is this to
be wondered at; for it is just this faculty which is most ready to
seize upon symbol and allegory, while at the same time it separates
the sensuous image from its significance, and by so doing destroys the
unity of the artistic form, an aspect over which it is, in its zeal
for a symbolical interpretation, which aims exclusively at setting the
universal characteristic as such in relief, wholly indifferent.
Such an extension of symbolism over every province of mythology and art
is by no means that which we have in view in our present consideration
of the symbolical form of art. It is not any part of our labours to
ascertain to what extent a symbolical or allegorical significance, in
this enlarged use of the term, is applicable to the forms of art. On
the contrary we shall restrict ourselves entirely to the question how
far symbolism itself is entitled to rank as a form of art; and the
question is raised in order that we may finally determine the precise
relation which subsists between artistic significance and artistic
form in so far as such a relation is symbolical and stands in contrast
to other modes of artistic presentation, in particular those of the
classical and romantic art-forms. We must consequently endeavour before
everything else expressly to limit the field of our review to that
portion where we find the symbolical is independently portrayed in its
essential character and is open to our consideration as such, rather
than attempt to make a symbolical interpretation co-extensive with
the entire domain of art. And it is consistently with such a purpose
that we have already subdivided the Ideal of art under its respective
symbolical, classical, and romantic forms.
In the signification we give to the expression the symbolical
disappears at the point where we find that a free subjectivity rather
than purely abstract conceptions determines the content of the artistic
product. In this case the conscious subject is his own self-assured
significance, his own self-manifestation. All that he feels, conceives,
does, and perfects, his qualities, his actions, and his character,
all this he actually is himself; the entire gamut of his spiritual
and sensuous manifestation has no further significance than that of
declaring his subjective unity, which, in this process of expansion
and development of its own wealth, brings before the eyes of all the
man himself as master over the entire field of objective reality
thus presented to him, the world in which he discovers his existence.
Significance and sensuous presentment, inward and outward reality,
fact and picture, are here no longer separate from each other, assert
themselves here no longer as merely cognate, the characteristic
distinction of the symbolic relation, but rather as a totality, in
which the manifestation possesses no other reality, the reality no
other manifestation either outside of or alongside with itself. That
which declares itself and that which is declared is here posited[17] in
its concrete unity. In this sense the gods of Greece, in so far, that
is to say, as the art of Greece was able to represent them as free,
self-subsistent, and unique types of personality, are to be accepted
from no symbolical point of view, but as self-sufficient in their own
persons. The actions of Zeus, for example, of Apollo or Athene are
actions appropriated by Art to themselves and only themselves, and must
not be allowed to stand for anything but the might and passion of such
personages. If we once attempt to abstract from free individualities
of this kind some general conception as the essential core of their
significance, setting it alongside their concrete particularity as
an interpretation of their entire and individual manifestation, we
let fall or annihilate all that we have failed to observe, and it is
precisely all in these figures which art seeks most to secure. For
this reason artists have been unable to take kindly to such symbolical
interpretations of all works of art and the mythological figures we
find in them. For all that is left us in the sphere of art we have just
been considering which is really compatible with an interpretation
based on symbolism or allegory only affects subsidiary aspects,
and is for that reason expressly limited to the attribute and the
representative signs; the eagle, for example, stands by Zeus, an ox is
the companion of the evangelist Luke; the Egyptians, on the contrary,
beheld in the form of Apis the Divine itself.
The point so difficult to decide in connection with this manifestation
of self-conscious freedom, otherwise so appropriate to artistic
presentment, is just this, whether that which is placed before us as
such a subject really possesses a subjective individuality of the
above quality, or only carries the mere semblance of it in the form of
a _personified_ shadow[18]. In this latter case personality is nothing
but a superficial form, which fails to express its vital substance in
particular acts no less than bodily form, which would otherwise enable
it to penetrate through all that is external in its appearance as its
own possession, and instead of this still retains another inwardness
for the external reality as its significance, which is not either true
personality or subjective freedom. It is precisely at this point that
we find the boundary which includes or excludes symbolic art.
Our interest, then, in the consideration of the symbol consists in
this, that we recognize thereby that process within itself where we
find the beginnings of art, in so far as the same proceeds from the
notion of that Ideal which unfolds itself gradually as art in its
truth, and while doing so recognizes each stage of symbolical art as
successive steps which conduct us to the same consummation. However
intimate the connection between religion and art may be we are not here
concerned to pass in review either symbols or religion under the range
which is co-extensive with the wider signification of the word symbol
or emblematical conceptions; we have exclusively to consider that
aspect of them, according to which they belong to art in its own right,
handing over their religious aspect to the historian of mythology and
symbolism.
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT
In proceeding now to a closer determination of the several divisions
of symbolic art it will be necessary, in the first place, to fix the
boundary lines within which the development of the successive grades
of this type moves forward. Speaking generally, as we have already
observed, the entire sphere we have now to define is in principle a
_forecourt_ of art. We have here, in the first instance, significant
conceptions which are purely abstract, which are still in themselves
destitute of essential individuality, the immediate artistic
presentment of which may be as truly described either as adequate or
inadequate[19]. Our first definition of boundary consists, therefore,
in determining generally the earliest modes under which artistic
perception and representation work themselves out[20] into actuality;
on the further side of the line at the other extreme we have real art,
in the direction of which symbolic art uplifts itself as to its truth.
1. In discussing the origins of this appearance of symbolic art from
the _subjective_ point of view, we may draw attention to an observation
made previously, that the artistic consciousness, no less than the
religious, or rather we should say both in their essential unity, and
we may even include the impulse of scientific inquiry, have originated
in _wonder._ The man who is still unable to wonder at anything lives
in a condition of crassness and obtuseness which is devoid of all
interest, in which for him everything is as naught for the reason that
he fails as yet to separate or unravel himself from objects around him
and their own immediate and independent existence. The man, however,
at the opposite extreme, whose wonder is _no longer_ excited, is the
man who contemplates the entire external world as somewhat which he
has made himself clear about. It may be under the abstract conceptions
of the commonsense understanding resulting in some general survey of
knowledge attainable by the average mind, or it may be in the noble
or profounder consciousness of his own absolute spiritual freedom and
universality. In either case he has converted the bare fact of such
objects and their existence into some spiritual insight of their truth
brought home to himself. We may conclude, then, that wonder originates
in the condition where we find that man, as conscious Spirit, torn away
from his first most immediate association with Nature, and from his
earliest and entirely active[21] relation to desire, steps back from
Nature and his own individual existence, and seeks after and finds in
the objects which surround him a universal, an essential and permanent
principle. Then for the first time the facts of Nature astonish him,
they become for him an other-than-himself he would fain appropriate,
and within which he strives to rediscover his own substance, that is
the universal, thoughts, reason. For the dim foretaste here of a higher
and the consciousness of the external are still unsevered, and this
though a contradiction between the objects of Nature and the Spirit
which perceives them is already present, a contradiction in which these
objects appear to repel him quite as much as they attract, and the
feeling of which, in the force wherewith they thrust him away, is, in
fact, the birth-pang of his very wonder.
The earliest result of this condition of wonder in man's vision of
Nature is that on the one hand he sets himself in opposition to
Nature and her objective world as a principle[22], and adores her
as Power; on the other he is equally possessed with a desire, which
craves satisfaction, to render objective to himself his intuition of
a higher, essential, and universal somewhat, and to look upon its
rehabilitated presence. In this two-fold aspect of his conscious life
he is confronted by reality in the following way. The particular
objects of Nature, and above all those elementary facts, sea,
rivers, mountains, and constellations, are not received by him in the
singularity of their immediate presentment to sense, but, carried up
into the sphere of imaginative conception, assume for that faculty the
form of universal and essentially self-subsistent existence. And we may
trace the beginning of art in this, that it reflects these ideas of the
imagination thus universalized and essentially independent, in visible
representation for immediate perception, and sets them forth for mind
in the individual form of the same as objects. The mere adoration of
external facts, with its Nature-cult and fetish-cult, is not as yet on
this account an art of any kind.
Under the aspect in which it is related to the _objective_ world,
the beginnings of art are more intimately associated with religion.
The earliest works of art are of the mythological order. In religion
it is nothing less than the Absolute, which breaks to consciousness
through its own impulse[23], though the determinating factors of
that consciousness be the most abstract and jejune conceivable.
And the earliest _phase in this evolution_ of the Absolute is the
phenomenal presence of Nature, in whose existence man dimly forebodes
the Absolute, and envisages the same for himself in the semblance of
natural objects. In this striving Art discovers its source. We shall
find, however, in this very effort art first made visible, not so
much where the Absolute is descried by human eyes in the external
world which immediately confronts them, a mode of Divine reality in
which they rest content, but rather where man's consciousness evolves
from its own substance a mode of apprehending what it conceives as
the Absolute in the form of a self-subsistent externality, no less
than that objective presentation which he unites with it in more or
less adequate fashion. For we must remember that Art possesses a
substantial content which is grasped by mind (spirit), and which, it
is true, appears in external guise, but for all that in a form of
externality, which is not merely immediately visible to sense, but is
primarily the _product_ of _mind_ regarded as the existing fact which
intrinsically comprehends that content as a whole and then expresses
it. Art is consequently and by virtue of its power to create forms
cognate with its own substance the _first_ interpreter of the religious
consciousness; it, in fact, is the first to make the prosaic view of
the objective world a thing valid to itself[24], when our humanity has
fought itself essentially free as the self-consciousness of Spirit
from the immediacy of sense, and sets itself over against the same in
the strength of the same freedom with which it accepts and understands
that objectivity as simply external fact and no more. This complete
separation of the subject and object of sense-perception is, however,
indicative of a considerably later phase of man's spiritual history.
The first knowledge of truth, on the contrary, declares itself as an
intermediate state between the purely unintelligent absorption of the
individual in Nature and that spiritual condition which is entirely
released from it. This intermediate state, however, in which Spirit
merely envisages for itself its conceptions in the plastic forms of
Nature's objects because it still fails to master any form of higher
significance, although it strives through such association to bring the
two aspects of its experience into one homogeneous whole, is, to put
it in its general terms, the attitude of art and poetry as contrasted
with that of the prosaic understanding. And for this reason we find
that the prosaic consciousness declares itself first in its full bloom,
where, as is the case in the Roman and in later times throughout our
own Christian world, the principle of the subjective freedom of Spirit
is realized in its abstract and actually concrete form.
2. And, _secondly_, the final _aim_ toward which the effort of symbolic
art is directed, and with the attainment of which the symbolic type
is dissolved, is _classical art._ But although we find in this latter
form the true manifestation of art's essence first elaborated, it is
not the first type of art. Rather it presupposes within its content
all the various mediating and transitional stages of the symbolic form
itself. It is quite true that the essential aim of that content is to
reveal the notion as a rounded and self-defined totality, that is in
its concreteness and actuality as the individuality of Spirit; but
the notion is only then able to declare itself in such concrete form
to conscious life after it has passed through a variety of mediatory
stages forced upon it by the abstract conceptions which the nature of
its own initial impulse presupposes. It is classical art, however,
which brings to a close all the mere preliminary experiments of art in
the direction of symbolism and the sublime[25]. And it is able to do
this inasmuch as the subjective spirit finds in it, as its essential
possession, a form truly adequate to its substance, and in the same
way that the self-determining notion creates from its own potency
the individual existence that fully expresses it. When once Art has
discovered its true content, and by doing so found its true form, its
search and striving after both, wherein the defect of symbolical art
consists, is therewith at an end.
If we seek further for a closer principle of division of symbolic
art within the limits of the boundaries on either extreme hitherto
discussed, we shall find the same generally under the modes in
accordance with which it contends with the genuine significances of
art and their truly appropriate forms, the battle that is apparent
in a content which is still striving in opposition to the truth of
art, no less than in a form that is equally inadequate to express it.
For both aspects, although externally united in the identity of one
creation, are neither brought completely together themselves, nor
permeated throughout with the notion of art in its truth; and for this
reason they appear quite as much as contestants struggling to be free
from the defects of their union. We may, in short, describe symbolic
art throughout as a continuous war carried on between the comparative
adequacy and inadequacy of its import and form[26]; and the varied
gradations of symbolic art are not so much kinds of specific difference
as they are stages and phases of one and the same incongruity between
the spiritual idea and its sensuous medium.
At first, however, this contention is only potentially present, that
is to say the incompatibility of these two sides, whose union is thus
affirmed and enforced, is not yet openly present to consciousness. And
this is so for the reason that it neither recognizes for itself in its
universal nature the import which it seizes, nor is able to comprehend
the realized form in its self-subsistent and self-exclusive existence;
consequently, instead of representing to the senses both aspects
in their _difference_, it is content to proceed upon the immediate
appearance of _identity_ which it enforces. In this original _point
of departure_ we have before us the as yet inseparable unity of the
art-form and the symbolical expression it seeks after, fermenting,
as it were, beneath the association of contradictory elements in
mysterious guise--the unity, that is, of the real and primordial
symbolism, whose plastic shapes are as yet not _posited_ as symbols at
all.
The _termination_ of this process[27], on the other hand, is the
disappearance and dissolution of the symbolic type altogether. The
strife which has hitherto been merely implied in it is now brought
home to the artistic consciousness. The act of symbolization in
consequence becomes the _conscious severation_ of the transparent
significance, which is now recognized for what it is from the sensuous
image cognate with it. In this severation, however, there still remains
an express relation of reciprocity, which, however, declares itself
as such no longer in the mode of immediate identity, but rather as
a mere _comparison_ between the two, in which that differentiation
and separation which in the previous type was not brought clearly
to consciousness still remains as conspicuous a factor. And this is
the sphere of that symbolism where the symbol is recognized as such.
Here we find the artistic import _recognized_ and presented in its
independent universality, whose concrete embodiment is expressly placed
in subordination as an image of that presentment, and no more, and
as such a comparative medium is utilized for the purpose of artistic
representation.
Halfway between that starting-point above described and this
termination of the symbolic type we find the art of the _sublime._
In this the essential import, posited as the universality of Spirit
in its absolute self-exclusion, disengages itself in the first place
from concrete existence, permitting the same to appear as a mere
negative, external and subservient factor beside it, which it is unable
to leave, in order that it may express itself in it, standing in its
native self-subsistency. Rather it finds it necessary to declare it
as that which is essentially defective and self-dissolving, and this,
moreover, although it has naught beside as means for its expression
than just this to which it opposes itself as external and nugatory. The
splendour of this import of the sublime may be accepted in the order
of the notional process as previous to that of the mode of genuine
comparison for this reason, that the concrete particularity of natural
and any other phenomena must necessarily be treated in the first place
negatively, merely appropriated, that is to say, as the adornment
and embellishment of the unreachable might of Spirit's absolute
significance, before that express severation and discriminating
comparison of external shapes cognate with, and yet at the same time
distinct from, the import, whose image they reproduce, can assert
itself.
3. The three principal stages[28] above indicated break up naturally on
closer inspection into the following subdivisions we now summarize in
the chapters which include them.
FIRST CHAPTER
A. The _first_ stage which presents itself in this portion of
our subject-matter is as yet neither to be described strictly as
symbolical, nor as belonging strictly to art; it rather clears the road
to both. It is the sphere of the immediately cognized and substantive
unity of the Absolute regarded as spiritual significance with its
unsevered sensuous existence in a form presented by Nature.
B. In the _second_ stage we pass to the symbol in its real sense; the
dissolution of the first unity above described here commences, and
while, on the one hand, the significances assert themselves in their
independent universality above the particular phenomena of Nature,
on the other they are necessarily forced with a like insistency to
present themselves to consciousness together with this preconceived
universality in the concrete form of natural objects. In this primary
and twofold struggle to spiritualize Nature, and to present that which
is born of Spirit to sense, at this stage of the conflict between
them, we meet with all the ferment and wild, tossed hither and thither
medley, the entire fantastic and confused world that is to say of
symbolic art, which half surmises, it is true, the incongruity of its
manner of shaping, yet is unable to remedy the same save through the
distortion of its figures, while straining after a purely quantitative
sublimity that would fain devour all limits. In this phase consequently
we find ourselves in a world steeped with poetic phantasies,
incredibilities and miracle, yet fail to encounter one work of genuine
beauty.
C. Owing to this strife between the spiritual significance and its
sensuous presentation, we are conducted _thirdly_ to the stage we
may describe as that of the true symbol, on which the symbolic _work
of art_ for the first time appears in its complete character. The
forms and shapes are here no longer those present to sense, which,
as we saw on the first mentioned stage, were immediately coincident
with the Absolute as their positive existence, without any further
modification at the hands of art; neither, as in the second phase,
are they intent on asserting their unreconciled material against the
universality of the significance merely through extensions of the
quantitative limits of Nature's objects, the ebullitions of a rioting
fancy. Rather the symbolic form, which is here throughout apparent, is
Art's own creation, a work not merely capable of expressing its own
individuality, but from another point of view possessed with the power
of presenting at the same time both the particular object that it is
and the further universal significance with which it is associated, and
which it thereby discloses to the mind, so that these very shapes stand
before us as problems which we are imperatively called upon to unriddle
and probe to the inward charge which they carry.
We may at once further venture the general remark with reference to
these more clearly defined types of a symbolism still to be ranked as
elementary that they spring from the religious attitude to existence
of entire nations; for which reason it will form part of our plan to
recall their position in history. Not that complete identification of
specific types with a given period is wholly feasible. Rather it would
be truer to say that particular modes of conception and presentation,
when we refer them generally to some kind of artistic type, are mingled
up together, so that we find the specific type, which we have reason to
regard as the fundamental one in any particular nation's general view
of existence, exemplified both in earlier and later peoples[29], though
its repetition may only be discovered in subordinate and isolated
cases. In general, however, we may say that we possess the more
concrete manifestations and visible proofs of the first stage in the
ancient _Persian_ religion of the second in the _Indian_, of the third
in that of _Egypt_.
SECOND CHAPTER
In the second chapter that significance, which has hitherto been
more or less obscured by its particular sensuous form, has at last
wrested its way to freedom, and its independent character is brought
clearly to consciousness. With this victory the relation of real
symbolism is dissolved; we have instead, through the way in which the
absolute significance[30] is cognized as the universal _substance_
interpenetrating the entire extension of the visible world, the art of
the absolute essence[31] in the form of a symbolism of the _sublime_;
and this now takes the place of purely symbolical and fantastic
suggestions, deformities, and riddles.
We have here mainly two points of view to distinguish which are based
upon differences in the relation of the substantive essence, that is
the Absolute and Divine, to the finitude of the apparent. Or rather we
may say that this relation is capable of being twofold, both _positive_
and _negative,_ although in both forms, inasmuch as it is in either
case universal substance, which has to appear, it is not the particular
form and import of the objective facts, but their general principle of
animation and their position relatively to this substance which is made
visible to sense.
A. In the first phase or type this relation is so conceived, that
substance, here the All and the One delivered from every form of
particularity, is immanent in the determinate phenomena as the
animating principle which brings them into being and is their life;
and moreover, it is affirmatively and immediately present to the
vision in this immanence, and is comprehended, and made the object of
representation by the individual who surrenders himself to its presence
through the adoring self-absorption in this indwelling essence of the
entire world of contingent and material things. In this point of view
we have the art of the Pantheism which possesses the Sublime as its
inherent principle, an art such as we find it in its elementary stage
in India, then elaborated in all its splendour in Mohammedanism and
its artistic mysticism, and finally with still profounder significance
reappearing in certain manifestations of Christian mysticism.
B. The _negative_ relation on the other hand of true Sublimity we must
look for in _Hebraic_ poetry. In this poetry of the Glorious, which
is only concerned to celebrate and exalt the unimaginable Lord of
the heavens and the earth that it may employ His entire creation as
the passing instrument of His Power, as the messengers of His Glory,
as the delight and ornament of His Greatness, this service of His
Creation, be it never so magnificent[32], is deliberately posited as
negative, and this for the reason that it is unable to discover any
adequate or positively sufficient expression for the Power and Dominion
of the Highest, and is only able to attain a genuine satisfaction by
means of the subjection of the creature, which in the feeling and
admission of its unworthiness is alone able with adequacy to express
its insignificance[33].
THIRD CHAPTER
Through this independent self-assertion of significance, made
thus transparent to consciousness in its isolated simplicity,
the _severation_ of the same from the imaged appearance, whose
incommensurability over against it has already been accepted, is now
essentially complete; and albeit, along with the fact of this conscious
separation, both form and import may still persist in the relation
of an intimate affinity, a necessity which is implied in the fact
of their being symbolical art, yet this relation no longer attaches
to either import or form, but is placed now in a _third_ mode of
conception, which according to its own point of view, carries relations
of similarity with both these sides[34], and in reliance on these
relations makes visible and declares the independently transparent
significance by means of the cognate and particular image.
Owing to this change the image, instead of remaining as it was
previously the unique expression of the Absolute, becomes now merely an
ornament, and we thereby discover a relation which ceases to correspond
with the notion of beauty. In other words image and significance,
instead of being moulded one within the other, confront each other as
opposites, precisely, in fact, as was the case in genuine symbolism,
though then the process remained incomplete. Consequently works of
art which are based on this form are of subordinate rank, and their
content is unable to comprise the Absolute itself, and is necessarily
restricted to circumstances and occurrences of narrower range. For this
reason the forms which are now under discussion are for the most part
merely used occasionally and by way of diversion.
More closely considered we have in this chapter to distinguish between
three principal stages of our process.
A. To the _first_ we appropriate those types of presentation commonly
known as _Fable_, _Parable_, and _Apologue._ In these the severation
of form and significance, which constitutes the characteristic trait
of the entire sphere to which this chapter refers, is not as yet
_expressly_ recognized; that is to say, the _subjective_ aspect of
the comparison is not yet fully _emphasized_; consequently also the
representation of the particular and concrete phenomenon, through which
the universal significance is finally to declare itself, still remains
the _predominant_ factor.
B. In the _second_ stage, on the contrary, the universal _import_
asserts its independent mastery over the elucidating form, which
now appears merely as _attribute_, or, under the guise of an image,
capriciously selected by the mind which makes the contrast. To this
type belong the _Allegory_, _Metaphor_, and _Simile_.
C. In the _third_ stage we meet with the visible and complete
_collapse_ of those related aspects in the symbol which previously had
either been immediately joined in union, despite the fact of their
relative incongruity, or in their independent severation had still
persisted under a relation of affinity[35]. Out of this arises that
form of content which is cognized as independent in its prosaic[36]
universality, to which the art-form has become wholly an external
relation; on the one hand we find it represented by the _didactic_
poem, on the other that very aspect of its external form is accepted
for what it is, and exemplified in so-called _descriptive_ poetry. Here
we find that every association and relation of symbolism has vanished;
we have to look round us for some more comprehensive union of form and
content, and one more truly adequate to the notion of art.
[Footnote 5: So the French expression _des couleurs_, and our English
"the colours."]
[Footnote 6: Hegel uses the 'technical term _Inhalt_ in this passage to
signify either (_a_) the quality of significance, or (_b_) the object
which is symbolized by virtue of some selected quality. The use of it
in both senses makes the passage somewhat difficult to follow.]
[Footnote 7: _Inhalt_ here evidently is the abstract quality.]
[Footnote 8: Necessarily because such ambiguity is implied in the idea
(_seinem Begriff nach_).]
[Footnote 9: This, I think, is the sense. The language literally is,
"Which a form under several possible significations, as symbol of any
of which (_deren_) it can be employed often through connecting links
(_Zusammenhänge_) more remote, may be taken to symbolize."]
[Footnote 10: The German words are _Begreifen_ and _Schliessen_, which
in their original sense are "to grasp with the hand" (_prehendo_) and
"to shut" or "lock up." The English words in a still fainter form carry
the same significance through the Latin language. The symbolism of
language at this stage is obviously only apparent to the student of
language.]
[Footnote 11: That is, more abstract.]
[Footnote 12: Or in English: /# Forth on the ocean is shipped Youth
with his thousand sails: Silent in bark barely saved steals into
harbour old age. #/]
[Footnote 13: _Substantielle_, that is, an artistic consciousness which
is aware of its own essential nature--Spirit, and the object of pure
intelligence--the Ideal.]
[Footnote 14: Perhaps we should rather say a Theosophy.]
[Footnote 15: The Alexandrine School, of which Plotinus and Philo are
leading names.]
[Footnote 16: _Ein allgemeiner Gedanke._ The reference throughout
this paragraph to the universality of the ideas of reflection as
contrasted with the sensuous image is rather a reference to the
abstract conceptions of the analytical mind, that is, which are usually
understood as universals in the sense of generic conceptions, than
any fuller grasp of concrete reality such as possesses a truly ideal
significance. So in its application to the metaphor I imagine what is
meant is that we have here the process of dry analysis which merely
destroys its significance as metaphor, that is, its synthetic unity for
our aesthetic sense.]
[Footnote 17: _Ist aufgehoben_, here not in the sense of being
cancelled, but raised to the expression of concrete unity.]
[Footnote 18: _Als blosse Personification_, that is, an
individualization which impersonates the subjective identity without
possessing its concrete substance, a personified shadow like the
sphinx. Such appears to be the sense.]
[Footnote 19: Because the content for which such shapes (_Gestaltung_)
are given is itself incoherent, and therefore incompatible with
adequate expression.]
[Footnote 20: _Sichhervorarbeiten._ Our word "elaborate" is here
insufficient. Hegel means the mode in which the Idea of art works
itself free from entirely potential obscurity into a living force,
a real _energeia._ We cannot say "emerges into daylight," however,
because the highest grasp of symbolic art is still only a twilight. It
is like the growth of the plant-germ, still underground, or partially
so.]
[Footnote 21: _Pracktischen._ Not matter-of-fact relation, but rather a
relation that asserts itself exclusively in action.]
[Footnote 22: _Als Grund_, that is, as a fundamental unity of the real.]
[Footnote 23: _Die erste näher gestaltende Dollmetcherin_, lit., the
first interpreter which supplies forms more nearly cognate with itself.]
[Footnote 24: It is valid (_geltend_) because it introduces there its
own spiritual nature.]
[Footnote 25: The previous statement of Hegel must not be overlooked,
however, and it may be considerably amplified, that there is much in
romantic art which is related to symbolism and the sublime. Take the
case of the celebrated sculpture of Michael Angelo typifying Night,
Day, Dawn, and Twilight, or such modern pictures as those of Watts's
"The Minotaur" and "The Spirit of Christianity."]
[Footnote 26: Or rather "between those aspects of its import and form
which are reciprocally homogeneous and those which are not."]
[Footnote 27: This process of symbolic art.]
[Footnote 28: _Hauptstufen._ The word signifies either the phase or
grade of a process of development, or to take the metaphor used by
Hegel above (_Stadien_) may perhaps be better translated by "stage," as
though indicating the successive stages of a journey.]
[Footnote 29: I think _Völkern_ rather than _Zeiten_ must be here
understood, and the sense appears to be that the confusion indicated
refers to a mingling of forms appropriate to a nation in one historical
period with those that are more cognate with a people at any earlier
or it may be later period. But unquestionably this attempt to identify
a type as between different nations with historical periods that will
harmonize with Hegel's own classification is a difficult matter as we
may see by the fact that Egypt, the oldest example of all, represents
the third stage. On the other hand, if the confusion referred to is
applied to the particular development of any one people, the examples
given by Hegel do not bear on the difficulty they illustrate.]
[Footnote 30: Or rather "the import of the Absolute."]
[Footnote 31: _Substantiality_, called below _die Substanz_; the word
signifies the real essence of the Absolute.]
[Footnote 32: The principal clause of this sentence has no end as
printed. The auxiliary must be omitted either before _in diesem
Dienste_ or _eine positive._ I prefer the first alternative.]
[Footnote 33: The relative here agrees, I think, with _die
Dienstbarkeit_ rather than _die Kreatur_ or _die Poesie._ Hegel says
"compatible with itself and its significance," we should rather say
"its sense of its own insignificance."]
[Footnote 34: Hegel's words are _sondern in einem subjectiven Dritten_,
_welches in beiden Seiten nach seiner subjectiven Anschauung_, etc.
This "subjective third" is, as explained below, the way in which the
relation between the image and the absolute significance ceases to be
regarded as identical.]
[Footnote 35: This sentence as it stands is ungrammatical; there is a
change in the construction as it proceeds.]
[Footnote 36: The prosaic universality is the prose of its form
separated from content. It is prosaic because it is unrelated to the
vitality of the notion.]
CHAPTER I
UNCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM
Now that we pass to the consideration of the several distinctions
of symbolical art in more detail, we have to make a beginning with
the identical beginning of art as it proceeds out of the notion of
art itself. This commencement, as we have seen, is the symbolical
form of art in its still immediate form wherein the appearance,
as purely image or likeness, is neither brought to consciousness
nor presupposed--_unconscious symbolism_, that is to say. Before,
however, we shall be in a position to consider this form in its
genuine symbolical character, it will be necessary to review several
presuppositions which the notion of symbolism itself determines in
order that we may utilize them for the basis upon which the symbol may
unfold itself for scientific apprehension.
The point from which we make a start may be defined more closely as
follows:
The fundamental root of the symbol is, regarding it from one aspect,
the immediate union of the universal and thereby spiritual significance
with the form which may at the same time be described as adequate and
inadequate, an inadequacy, however, which is as yet unperceived. This
association, however, must, on the other hand, receive a form from the
_imagination_ and _art_, and must not _merely_ be conceived as a Divine
reality exclusively immediate to sense. By this means the symbolical
originates in the first instance with the _severation_ of a universal
import from the immediate _presence of Nature_, in whose existence the
Absolute is contemplated as actually present. These two aspects supply
us with the preliminary stages for the genuine forms of symbolic art.
The _first_ presupposition consequently--we may call it the coming
into being of the symbolical--is not that union which is the product
of art, but rather just that immediate unity of the Absolute and True
and its existence, which is discovered in the visible world apart from
art's mediation.
A. IMMEDIATE UNITY OF SIGNIFICANCE AND FORM
In this identity of the Divine immediately envisualized, a Divine,
which is brought home to consciousness as the union of its determinate
existence in Nature and humanity, Nature is neither taken simply for
that which it is in isolation by itself, nor is the Absolute severed
from it and posited in an independent self-subsistence. Consequently it
is wholly beside the point to speak of a distinction here between the
Inward and the External, the significance and the form, and this for
the reason that the Inward is not as yet released in its independence
as significance from its immediate reality in the object of sense. When
we apply here the expression import[37], such merely emphasizes our
_own_ reflection upon it, which is due to the necessity for ourselves
personally to regard the form, which contains that which is spiritual
and inward under the mode of sense-perception, generally as something
external to us, through which we are desirous of penetrating into
the Inward, that is, its animating life and significance, in order
that we may understand it. For this reason we are under the necessity
from the very first, when dealing with such general impressions of
sense-perception, of making an essential demarcation between those
cases in which the peoples, who in the first instance experienced
them, themselves were clearly conscious of this Inward itself as such,
that is, as a spiritual significance, and those in which the use of
such expressions is only applicable to ourselves, who now and only
now recognize an import of this kind in the content of that external
expression of sense-envisagement.
In this primary unity such as the latter cases involve, there is
no such distinction between soul and body, notion and reality, as
is implied in the former. That which we describe as corporeal and
sensuous, natural and human, is not merely an expression for a
significance which proceeds at the same time to a point of distinction
from it[38]; but the phenomenon is itself conceived as the immediate
reality and presence of the Absolute, which does not in addition
possess some other mode of self-subsistent existence, but is confined
exclusively to the immediate presence of an object of sense, which
is God or the Divine. In the service of the Lama, for example, this
particular, actual human being is immediately known and adored as
God, just as in other natural religions the sun, mountains, rivers,
the moon, particular animals, such as the bull, ape, and so on, are
looked upon as immediately Divine existences and worshipped as sacred.
We may observe a similar directness, if under a mode of profounder
application, even now in many aspects of the Christian consciousness.
According to Catholic doctrine, for example, the consecrated bread
is the real body, and the wine the real blood of God, and Christ is
immediately present therein; nay, even according to the Lutheran faith,
both bread and wine are converted into such real body and blood by
virtue of the faith of the recipient. In this mystical union it is not
merely a symbolism which is expressed, a point of view which comes into
prominence as the result of it for the first time in later doctrines
of the reformed Church, where we find as a result the spiritual
significance is expressly severed from the sensuous object, and the
external medium is then accepted as merely pointing to an import which
is distinct from itself. In the same way the power of this Divine is
held to operate in the miracle-working images of the Virgin as a Divine
force that is immediately present within them, and not merely under
symbolical guise through the significant import of such pictures.
We find, however, the most thorough and universal exemplification of
this absolute and immediate unity of sense-perception in the life and
religion of the ancient Zend-people, whose conceptions and institutions
are preserved for us in the Zend-Avesta.
1. In other words the religion of Zoroaster beholds Light in the form
of its natural existence, the sun, stars, and fire in the luminous
activity and flames which proceed from them, actually as the Absolute,
without separating this Divine independently from that Light either as
its expression and image or the sensuous medium thereof. The Divine,
the significance, is not thus severed from its determinate existence
in the form of lights, however displayed. For even when light is
accepted here in the sense of Goodness and Justice, and through such
significance is extended to all that is rich in blessing, support,
and life, it is still not taken as the mere image of such things, but
Light is itself the Good. And the same view applies to the opposite of
light, namely, obscurity and darkness when identified with that which
is unclean, hurtful, evil, destructive, and deadly.
This point of view may be more closely defined and considered as
follows:
(_a_) In the first instance the Divine, as the essential purity
of Light[39], and the Darkness and Unclean are, it is true,
_personified_ under the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman respectively.
This personification is, however, throughout entirely superficial.
Ormuzd is no essentially free individuality devoid of all relation to
external objects[40] as was the God of the Jews, or truly spiritual and
personal as is the God of Christianity when conceived as truly personal
and self-conscious Spirit; rather Ormuzd, despite the fact that he is
described also as king, great spirit and judge, remains inseparable
from such external existence as Light and its illuminations. He is
exclusively this universal characteristic of all particular existences,
in which light and thereby the Divine and Pure are realized, without
any additional power to withdraw himself in a spiritual universality
and independence into his own substance from that which is thus
immediately presented. His consistence rests in the particular facts
of existence precisely in an analogous way to that of the genus in the
species. It is true that regarded as this universal he is superior to
all that is wholly particular, and is the first, most supreme, the
kings of kings glorious in his gold, the purest and so forth; but he
retains his existence none the less exclusively in all that is luminous
and pure as Ahriman in all that is obscure, evil, destructive, and
charged with disease.
(_b_) As a result this mode of vision is at the same time extended to
the conception of an _empire_ of light and darkness, and the strife
between these forces. In the empire of Ormuzd it is in the first place
the Amschaspands, as the seven principal lights of heaven, which
receive adoration as Divinity, inasmuch as they are the essential
particular existences of Light, and for this reason constitute as a
pure and spacious empeopled heaven, the existence of the Divine itself.
Every Amschaspand, to which Ormuzd belongs, has assigned to it days
of precedence, blessing, and beneficence. The Izeds and Ferners carry
the conception still further into specification, which it is probable
enough are personifications of Ormuzd himself, albeit they add to him
no further shape that we may envisage as human, so that neither the
spiritual nor the bodily mode of subjectivity, but simply the existence
as light, appearance, illumination, splendour, remains the essential
characteristic of the object envisaged.
In the same way also the particular objects of Nature, which themselves
do not exist in external form as lights and luminous bodies, such
as animals, plants, and so forth, no less than the forms which
characterize the human world, whether we view it under its spiritual
or bodily presentment, in other words the particular activities and
conditions of it, the entire life of the state, the king with the seven
great men who support him, the division of classes, cities, the various
provinces with their governors, all that is warranted by experience
as typical of the best and purest for the protection of the rest--the
entire reality, in fact, of this life is regarded as an existence of
Ormuzd. For everything that carries within itself and promulgates
what has solidity, life, and substance is an existence of Light and
Purity, and consequently an existence of Ormuzd; every particular
truth, excellence, love, justness, every individual example of life,
beneficence, protection, spiritual power and enjoyment or benignity
is, according to Zoroaster, regarded as essentially Light and Divine.
The empire of Ormuzd is the Pure and Illuminating of visible reality;
and conformably to this there is no distinction between the phenomena
of Nature or Spirit, just as Light and Goodness, the spiritual and the
sensuous quality, are inseparably blended in the conception of Ormuzd
himself. The _splendour_ of a creature is consequently for Zoroaster
the very substance of spirit, force, and life-exhalations of every
kind, in so far, that is, as they tend to actual conservation and to
the removal of everything positively evil and hurtful, for that which
is the Real and the Good, whether in beast, man, or vegetable life, is
Light, and it is according to the measure and mode of display of this
luminousness that the relative power or weakness of the splendour of
all objects is determined.
An articulation and graduated division of similar character is found
in the empire of Ahriman, merely with the difference that what is
spiritually or naturally evil, and generally the destructive and
actively negative principle asserts itself in actual masterdom. But the
might of Ahriman must not be suffered to spread; the aim of the entire
world is consequently assumed to be that of annihilating the Empire of
Ahriman, in order that the life, presence, and dominion of Ormuzd may
prevail throughout creation.
(_c_) To this exclusive object the entire life of humanity is
consecrate. The life-task of every man consists exclusively in a
purification of soul and body, and in the extension of this blessing
and this conflict with Ahriman throughout all the conditions and
activities of the life of man or Nature. The highest and most sacred
duty is consequently to glorify Ormuzd in his creation, and to love,
honour, and conform oneself to all that proceeds from his Light and is
essentially pure. Ormuzd is the beginning and end of all adoration.
Above all else the Parsee is moved to summon the life of Ormuzd in
thought and speech; he is the main object of his prayers. And in the
exaltation of him, from whom the entire world of the Pure has streamed
in its splendour, the devotee is in duty bound to accommodate his
adoration of particular objects according to the measure in which they
proclaim his majesty, worth, and perfection. So far as they are good
and ring sound, to that extent, the Parsee reasons with himself, is
Ormuzd alive within them; he loves them as the children of his purity,
yea, rejoices over them as in the beginning of his substance, forasmuch
as through him was everything brought forth in newness and purity.
And for the same reason is all prayer directed first and foremost to
the Amschaspands as the most intimate reflections of Ormuzd, as the
primates of supreme splendour who surround his throne and advance his
dominion. Such prayer to these heavenly spirits is immediately directed
to their qualities and activities, and in the case of stars at the
time of their uprising. The sun is invoked by day, and always with the
changes appropriate to his own motion through sunrise, noonday, or
sunset. From morning till noonday the devotion of the Parsee centres in
this that Ormuzd may exalt his splendour; at evening he prays that the
sun may through Ormuzd and the protecting care of every Tzed perfect
the course of his life. But principally we find honour paid to Mithras,
who, as the fruit-bringer to the Earth and the wilderness, pours forth
the fermenting sap over all Nature, and as mighty champion against all
the Devas of contention, war, confusion, and destruction, is the author
of peace.
In addition to this the Parsee, in his generally single-toned songs
of praise, exalts his ideals, that is, the purest and most veritable
examples of human life, the Ferver conceived as pure human spirits, on
whatever portion of the Earth's surface they live or have lived. In
the chief place prayer is offered to the pure spirit of Zoroaster, and
after him to the leading lights of all classes, cities, and provinces;
and already in this religion, we find that the spirits of all mankind
are contemplated as united together with a sufficient bond in that they
are members in the living association of Light, which hereafter in
Gorotman shall receive a yet more perfect union.
Finally, not even the animals, mountains, and vegetable world are
forgotten, but are appealed to as embodiments of Ormuzd; all that is
good and serviceable in them to mankind is extolled, and especially the
first and most excellent of its kind is adored as the present existence
of Deity. And over and above this worship of Ormuzd and of every form
of selected excellence among the pure and beneficent objects of his
creation the Zend-Avesta is insistent upon the _practice_ of goodness
and the purity of thought, word, and deed. The Parsee is to be in the
entire display of his external and inward man as Light, as Ormuzd, the
Amschaspands, and the Izeds, as Zoroaster and all good men live and do.
Such live and have lived in the Light, and all their deeds are Light;
therefore shall every man make them an example to his eyes and follow
after the same. The more purity of light and goodness man expresses
in his life and accomplishment, the nearer he stands to those spirits
of heaven. As the Izeds throw the blessing of their beneficence over
everything, are a source of life and fruitfulness and friendship, so,
too, he must seek to purify Nature, to ennoble her, and to reach abroad
the light of life and the joy of plenteousness. In accordance therewith
he shall feed the hungry, tend the sick, offer the drink of consolation
to the thirsty, give roof and shelter to the wanderer, provide pure
seed for the Earth, delve clean channels of water, plant the waste with
trees, nourish to the best of his power their growth, care for the
sustenance and fructification of things alive, keep pure the lambency
of fire, remove from sight the dead and unclean beast, establish
marriages, and in the doing thereof the holy Sapandomad, the Ized of
the Earth, herself rejoices, averting the harm which the Devas and the
Darvands are busy to prepare.
2. If we ask ourselves once more, after this delineation in outline
of the fundamental conceptions of this system, what is the symbolical
character of the same there can be but one reply, namely, that there is
no trace here of anything we have previously described as symbolical.
On the one side, no doubt, we have light in its obvious natural form,
and on the other it possesses the further significance of all that
is rich in goodness, blessing, and permanence. It is, therefore,
possible to contend that the actual existence of light is merely an
image cognate with this universal significance, which interpenetrates
every part of the world of Nature and mankind. If we apply such an
interpretation to the conception of Parsees themselves we shall find
such a separation of existence and its import to be false; for these
the Light as Light is actually the Good, and is so apprehended that
it is in the form of light present and active in everything that is
good, vital, and positive. The universal and Divine is carried no
doubt through the distinctions of the world of particular objects,
but in this its differentiated and particularized existence, the
substantial and inseparable unity of import and form remains constant,
and the distinctions that are involved in this unity do not affect the
difference of significance _quâ_ significance, and its manifestation,
but only the distinguishing features of particular objects, such as
stars, organic life, human opinions and actions, in which the Divine as
Light or Darkness is immediately open to sense.
In the further embrace of such conceptions there are no doubt points
of connection with incipient symbolism, but we get out of them no real
type of that mode of viewing things in its completeness; they will only
pass muster as isolated traits in its direction. To such effect Ormuzd
is on one occasion made to say of his beloved one Dschemschid: "The
holy Ferver of Dschemschid, the son of Vivengham, was great before me.
His hand received from me a dagger, whose sharpness was gold, and whose
shaft was gold. Therewith Dschemschid marked out three hundred portions
of the Earth. He split up the Earth-realm with his gold-plate, yea,
with his dagger and spake: 'Let Sapandomad rejoice.' He spake the holy
word with prayer to the tame cattle and the wild and unto men. So his
passing through was happiness and blessing for these lands and animals
of the home and the field, and men ran together into great dwellings."
Here we find in the dagger, and the cleaving of the Earth-soil an image
which may be interpreted as significant of agriculture. Agriculture
is still no essentially spiritual activity, and just as little is it
a purely natural one; it is rather a universal occupation of mankind,
which results from reflective thought and experience, and which has
point of association with all the relations of life. It is no doubt
never expressly stated in this conception of the passing of Dschemschid
that this splitting of the Earth with the dagger indicates agriculture;
nor is there a single word added of any increase of the fruits of the
field by virtue of this division; for the reason, however, that in
this particular act more appears to be included than the mere turning
over and loosening of the soil, we are led to look for a further
significance beneath it. The same observations apply to more recent
conceptions, such as we find exemplified in the later elaboration of
the worship of Mithras, where Mithras is represented as a youth who
in the dusk of a grotto raises on high the bull's head and plunges
a dagger in his neck, whereon a serpent licks up the blood, and a
scorpion gnaws his genitals. This symbolical account has received
an astronomical and other interpretations. We may, however, find in
it a still more universal and profounder meaning, and take the bull
generally to personify the principle of Nature, over which man, as
essentially spirit, secures the victory, and this though astronomical
associations may also be implied in it. That, however, such a
revolution as the victory of Spirit over Nature is contained in it is
also suggested by the name of Mithras, or mediator, more especially
if we refer it to a later period when such uplifting over Nature was
already a necessity present to the national consciousness. Symbols such
as the above, however, as already observed, only incidentally come to
the fore in the conceptions of the ancient Parsees, and do not in any
way constitute a principle for their fundamental type of thought.
Still less can we describe the cultus, which the Zend-Avesta
inculcates, as one of symbolical tendency. We find no trace here,
for example, of symbolical dances in celebration or imitation of the
interlaced revolutions of the stars; as little any other forms of
activity which may pass as the suggestive counterfeit of universal
conceptions; rather all actions which are prescribed to the Parsee as
imperative in a religious sense are matters directly concerned with the
actual enlargement of his purity, either of soul or body, and appear as
directed with one intent and one object of realization, namely, that of
increasing the actual dominion of Ormuzd over men and the objects of
Nature, an object consequently which is not merely symbolized in such
activity, but entirely carried out.
3. For the reason, then, that a genuine symbolic type fails absolutely
when applied to this religious system, it is equally destitute of a
true _artistic_ character. No doubt we may generally describe its mode
of conception as _poetical_ for the particular facts of Nature are
just as little as the particular sentiments, circumstances, acts, and
affairs of men treated in their immediate and consequently haphazard
and prosaic relation which is void of all significance, and are rather
contemplated essentially in the Absolute as very Light; or to put it
the other way, the universal essence of the concrete reality of Nature
and mankind is not conceived in the universality which is without
existence or form, but this universal and that particular is envisaged
and expressed in immediate union. Such a mode of viewing existence
may possibly claim a certain beauty, breadth, and largeness of its
own, and in contrast to gross and senseless idols Light is no doubt
as the essentially pure and universal element, an adequate image of
Goodness and Truth. But for all that we find that poetry here fails
to pass beyond a general conception; it never reaches either art or
the works of art. For the Good and the Divine are neither essentially
defined, nor is the consistency and form of this content a creation of
mind (Spirit); but rather, as we have already found, the thing which
is immediately present to sense, namely, the actual sun, stars, fire,
organic nature, throughout its vegetation, animal and human life, is
conceived as the appropriate form of the Absolute in this its existent
and _immediate_ shape. The sensuous representation is not, as Art
requires, the plastic product of mind, shaped and discovered by the
same, but immediately identified with and expressed by the external
existent shape as its appropriate counterfeit. It is quite true, in
another aspect, the particular thing is, by means of the imagination,
also fixed in an independent relation to its reality, as, for instance,
in the Izeds and Fervers, that is, in the genii of particular men; the
poetic invention, however, discovered in this incipient severation
is of the weakest kind for the reason that the distinction remains
entirely of a formal character, so that the genius, Ized or Ferver,
neither includes nor is able to include any real characteristic
content of its own, but, instead of this, either repeats one identical
content or possesses nothing more than the purely empty form of the
subjectivity, which the existing individual already possesses. The
product of the imagination here is consequently neither an other and
profounder significance nor the self-subsistent form of an essentially
richer individuality. And when we moreover find particular objects
envisaged on the wider plane of general conceptions and generic types,
to which, as appropriate to such types, the imagination vouchsafes a
real existence, even here also this uplifting of multiplicity into the
sphere of an all-comprehending and essential unity, regarded as the
basic core and substance of the individuals that constitute the same
species and genus, can only in a yet more indefinite sense be accepted
as an activity of the imagination, no real exemplification of either
poetry or art. So we have, for instance, in the holy fire of Behram the
essence of fire; and in the same way there is a water that underlies
all existent water. So, too, Horn is esteemed as the first, purest,
and most stalwart among trees, the primordial tree from which the
life-sap full of immortality flows; and among all mountains Albordsch,
the sacred mountain, is set before us as the primaeval root of the
Earth, erect in the splendour of the Light, from which the good deeds
of all men proceed, who have possessed the knowledge of Light, and
on whom the sun, moon, and stars repose. In general, however, we may
affirm that the universal is visibly known in immediate union with the
actual objects of sense, and it is merely now and again that universal
conceptions are embodied in the particular image.
In yet more prosaic fashion does the cultus of this religion make
as its principal object the dominion of Ormuzd a reality which
interpenetrates all things, merely requiring this one essential
condition to the adequacy of every object, namely, its purity, and
without attempting therewith to construct from such any existent
form of art that is based upon immediate life, as, for example, the
warriors and wrestlers of Greece were so ready to do in their artistic
elaboration of physical perfection.
From whatever side, then, or whatever may be the point of view from
which we regard this first unity of spiritual universality and sensuous
reality, we only get from it the _basis_ of symbolical art; it still
fails to possess a real symbolism of its own, and is unable to produce
works of art. In order that we may attain this object, which is the
next in view, we must pass away from the union we have just considered,
and examine modes of conception where the _difference_ and _conflict_
between significance and form is more really emphasized.
B. FANTASTIC SYMBOLISM
Quitting now the sphere of thought in which the identity of the
Absolute and its externally envisaged existence is immediately
cognized, we have, as an essential determination to start from, the
severation of these two aspects hitherto united, a _cleavage_ which
stimulates the effort to restore once more the visible breach by means
of an elaborate fusing together of the whole thus divided by a rich
use of the images of phantasy. With this attempt the essential need
for art is felt for the first time. No sooner has the imagination
succeeded in holding fast its envisaged content, which is no longer
grasped in immediate union with the objects of sense, in isolated
separation from that existence, than for the first time spirit is
confronted with the task of reclothing with the material of phantasy
for sensuous perception, that is, under the renewed mode of a spiritual
product, these general conceptions and of creating through this
activity the shapes of art. And for the reason that in the stage of
our process where we now find ourselves, this task is capable of only
a symbolic solution, we may easily fall under the impression that
we stand already in the sphere of genuine symbolism. This, however,
is not the case. What immediately faces us here are the forms of a
fermenting phantasy[41], which in the restlessness of its fantastic
dreams merely indicates the path which conducts us to the real centre
of symbolical art. In the first appearance of the distinguishing
relation between significance and the mode of its presentation, both
the severation and the association are still grasped in a confused
manner. This confusion is necessitated by the fact that neither of
the parted aspects of difference have as yet attained a totality,
capable of emphasizing the precise point in the process, which will
serve as the fundamental determination of the opposed side in it,
and by means of which for the first,time a really adequate union and
reconciliation is rendered possible. Spirit (mind), to illustrate our
difficulty further, determines by virtue of its own totality the
side of the external phenomenon out of its own essential substance
quite as really as it does its own spiritual content for the obvious
reason that the essentially complete and independent phenomenon only
receives its adequate form as the external existence of that which is
spiritual. In the case, however, of this primary severation of the
significances apprehended by mind, and the existent world of phenomena
such aspects of significance are not those of concrete spiritual life,
but abstractions, and this expression also is entirely destitute
of spiritual intension, and is consequently, in an abstract sense,
purely external and sensuous. This twofold impulse in the direction of
disunion and union is for the same reason an unsteady gait[42], which
ranges from the objects of sense in undefined and unmeasured waste
immediately to the aspects of universal import, and is only able to
discover for the inward content of consciousness the absolutely opposed
form of sensuous shapes. And it is this very contradiction which is
set forth as a means of really uniting elements which contradict each
other. The result is that instead of so doing it is first driven from
one side of the opposition into the other, and then again is hurled in
its ceaselessly alternating dance into the former extreme, while it
believes that in this rocking to and fro of its strain it has found
the means to lull itself to repose. Instead of getting, therefore, a
true satisfaction we have the _contradiction_ merely affirmed as its
genuine resolution, and in addition the union most incomplete of all
is set forth as that which art really requires. We must not therefore
expect to find in such a field of confusion worse confounded the true
forms of beauty. In this restless leap from one opposed extreme to the
other all that we find from one point of view in the sensuous material
that is absorbed, regarding the same in its singularity no less than as
it constitutes its elementary appearance to sense, is that the breadth
and potency of every import of universality is associated therewith
in what must consequently be a wholly inadequate way. From another
aspect that which is most universal, as soon as the process has passed
from the same, is shamelessly plunged under the reverse treatment
into the very heart of the sensuous present; and if any feeling of
the incompatibility of such an effort is consciously perceived, the
imagination here is only capable of rendering assistance by means of
distortions which carry the particular shapes over and beyond their own
secure boundaries, adding to their extension, making them ever more
indefinite, by an imaginative leap which mounts to the immeasurable,
breaks up every bond of union, and in its very strain after
reconciliation reveals each opposing factor in its most unmitigated
hostility[43].
These earliest and still most uncontrolled attempts of imagination and
art we meet most signally among the ancient races of India, the main
defect of whose productions, when viewed relatively to their particular
position at this stage of our classification, consists in this, that
they are neither able to seize the profounder aspects of significance
in independent clarity, nor grasp the reality of sense-perception in
its characteristic form and meaning. The Hindoo race has consequently
proved itself unable to comprehend either persons or events as parts
of continuous history, because to any historical treatment a certain
soberness is essential of accepting and understanding facts in their
true and independent form, and subject to their mediating links,
grounds, causes, and objects, being empirically ascertained. The
natural impulse to refer all and everything back to the Divine is
hostile to this prosaic reasonableness, no less than its tendency to
prefigure for itself in the most ordinary or most sensuous of objects
a presence and reality of godhead created by its own imagination.
These peoples consequently, through their confused intermingling of
the Finite and the Absolute, in which the logical order and permanence
of the prosaic facts of ordinary consciousness are disregarded
altogether, despite all the profusion and extraordinary boldness of
their conceptions, fall into a levity of fantastic mirage which is
quite as remarkable, a flightiness which dances from the most spiritual
and profoundest matters to the meanest trifle of present experience, in
order that it may interchange and confuse immediately the one extreme
with the other.
If we concentrate our attention more closely upon the more conspicuous
features of this continuous bout of intoxication, this craze and
condition of craze, what we are concerned with is not to trace
religious conceptions as such, but merely to emphasize the points of
prominence which relate such modes of conception with art. These may be
indicated as follows:
1. One extreme of the consciousness of the Hindoo is the consciousness
of the Absolute, here regarded as the essentially and absolutely
Universal, undifferentiated and consequently wholly indefinite. This
supreme of abstractions, inasmuch as it is neither in possession of
a particular content, nor is conceived under the mode of concrete
personality, is, from whatever side you may look at it, no object at
all that the imagination acting through the senses can reclothe for
art. Brahman[44], taken in a general sense as this supreme Godhead, is
absolutely removed from the sensuous and sense-perception, or rather is
not even an object for Thought. For self-consciousness is inseparable
from thought, which posits itself as an object of Thought, in order
that it may thus come to self-knowledge. Every act of intelligence
is an identification of the ego and object, a reconciliation of
that which is severed outside from this relation of recognition;
what I do not understand remains as something strange and foreign
to myself. The mode of union, under the Hindoo conception, of human
personality with Brahman is nothing more nor less than a continually
ascending process of exhaustion[45] in the direction of this supreme
of abstractions, in which not merely the entire concrete content, but
also self-consciousness itself, must be eliminated before the final
consummation is realized. Or, to put the same thing another way, the
Hindoo recognizes no reconciliation and identity with Brahman in
the sense that the spirit of humanity becomes _conscious_ of this
union. The unity rather consists in this, that both consciousness
and self-consciousness, and with them the entire content of the
objective world and personality totally disappears. This emptying
and annihilation to the point of absolute vacuity is treated as the
supreme condition under which man is capable of identity with highest
Divinity, that is Brahman. An abstraction of this sort, one of the
barest it is possible to imagine, whether we consider it from the
point of view of the Absolute, as Brahman, or from the human aspect
of a purely theoretically conceived cultus that consists in man's
self-evaporation[46] and self-annihilation, is in itself no object
either for the imagination or art; all the latter can do is to profit
by such opportunity as various imaginary representations of what
happens by the way to this goal may offer for their exercise.
2. Conversely the Hindoo view of existence launches itself with
just the same immediacy over this very abstraction from all sense
into the wildest flood of it. Inasmuch, however, as the immediate
and consequently unbroken identity of both sides is in this view
cancelled, and instead of this the element of _difference_ within
this identity has become the basic principle of the type itself, this
very contradiction plunges us with no mediating connections from the
Finite into the Divine, and again from this latter into what is most
transitory of all; and we live and move among _simulacra_, which rise
up entirely as the growth of this alternating process, a kind of
witches' world, where the definition of every shape eludes our grasp as
we endeavour to seize it, is converted all at once into its opposite,
or straddles away into mere inflated enormities.
The general modes under which Hindoo art manifests itself may be
summarized under the three following points of view:
(_a_) In the first place we find the full hugeness of the content of
the Absolute is imposed by the imagination upon the _sensuous_ in its
aspect of singularity in such a way that this particular thing is
itself, in its own form and station, taken completely to represent
such a content and to exist as such for the imaginative sense. In the
Râmâyana, for example, the friend of Râma, namely, the prince of apes
Hanuman, is a principal personage, and he accomplishes the bravest
of exploits. And generally we may observe that among the Hindoos the
ape is revered as Divine, and we find, in fact, an entire city of
apes. In the ape, as this point of singularity, the infinite content
of the Absolute is envisaged and adored. It is just the same with
the cow, Sabalâ, which in the Râmâyana during the episodic treatment
of the expiations of Visvamitra, appears clothed with immeasurable
power. If we take a glance on higher planes we find entire families
in India--even though the individual here be merely a vacant and
monotonously vegetating life-unit--in whom the Absolute itself, as
this concrete reality, is adored in its immediate life and presence as
God. This same coincidence is found in Lamaism. Here, too, a single
individual receives the highest worship due to the present God. In
India, however, this honour is not exclusively paid to one man. Every
Brahmin proves at once his claim from the day of his birth in his own
caste to be ranked as Brahman, and possesses that second birth of the
Spirit which identifies his humanity with God, in the way of Nature
through his actual bodily birth, so that the crown of the most Divine
itself is immediately referred back upon the entirely commonplace
fact of physical existence. For although the Brahmin is under the
most sacred obligation to read the Vedâs, and attain by this means an
insight into the secrets of Deity, this duty can be actually carried
out in the most perfunctory way without detracting in the least from
the Brahmin's own divinity. In a similar manner it is one of the modes
most common to the representations of Hindooism to have the primordial
God set forth as the procreator or begetter, as we find Eros is in the
case of Greek mythology. This procreation as Divine activity is further
worked into all kinds of representations in a wholly material way,
and the private parts, both male and female, are treated as sacred in
the highest sense. And in a reverse way, and to no less extent, the
Divine, when it passes over in its independent Divinity to the plane
of existing reality, is suffered in a wholly trivial manner to get
mixed up with everyday details. We may take an example of this from
the commencement of the Râmâyana, where Brahmâ has come on a visit to
Vâlmîkis, the mythical bard of the Râmâyana. Vâlmîkis receives him
entirely in the common Hindoo fashion, pays him a compliment or two,
places a stool before him, and supplies him with water and fruits.
Brahmâ sits down just like anybody else and constrains his host to do
likewise: and there they sit on and sit on until at last Brahmâ orders
Vâlmîkis to compose the poem of the Râmâyana.
Modes of conception such as these are still not symbolic in the
strict sense; for although we find that here, as the symbol requires,
forms are taken from the material of sense and diverted to the use
of conceptions of more universal import, we still find the further
condition of this requirement wanting, namely, that the particular
existences must not actually exist for sense-perception as this
absolute significance, but merely _suggest_ the same. For the Hindoo
imagination the ape, the cow, and the particular Brahmin are not merely
a cognate symbol of the Divine, but are contemplated and represented as
the Godhead itself, as existences adequate to that Godhead.
It is the contradiction inherent in this immediacy which is the
motive force of another feature in the conceptions of Hindoo art. For
while, on the one hand, that which is absolutely severed from sense,
the spiritual significance out and out, is conceived as the actually
Divine, yet, on the other, the particular facts of concrete reality
are immediately envisaged by the imagination, even in their sensuous
existence, as Divine manifestations. They are no doubt partly only
taken to represent particular aspects of the Absolute; but even so
the particular thing in its immediacy is still incompatible with the
universality, which it is, as adequate to the same, introduced to
express; and it appears in all the more glaring contradiction to it
for the reason that the significance is here already conceived in its
universality, yet, despite of this, an express relation of identity
is immediately set up by the imagination between it and the most
particular of material facts.
(_b_) The most obvious way in which Hindoo art endeavours to mitigate
this disunion is, as we have already suggested, by the _measureless_
extension of its images. Particular shapes are drawn out into colossal
and grotesque proportions in order that they may, as forms of sense,
attain to universality. The particular form of sense, which is taken
to express not itself and its own characteristic meaning as a fact of
external existence, but a universal significance which lies outside
it, fails to satisfy the imagination until it has been torn out itself
into vastness which knows neither measure nor limit. This is the cause
of all that extravagant exaggeration of size, not merely in the case
of spatial dimension, but also of measurelessness of time-durations,
or the reduplication of particular determinations, as in figures with
many heads, arms, and so on, by means of which this art strains to
compass the breadth and universality of the significance it assumes.
The egg, for example, contains the bird within it. This particular fact
is enlarged to the measureless conception of a world-egg secreting the
universal life of all creation, and in which Brahmâ, the procreating
God, accomplishes without effort the year of creation, until by virtue
of his thought alone the the two halves of the egg fall asunder. And,
in addition to natural objects, human individuals and events are
exalted that they may express the significance of truly Divine action
in such a way that we can neither hold fast the Divine or the human
in their independence, but both seem to run in a continual confusion
backwards and forwards into one another. As a striking illustration
of such a mode of conception, we have the incarnations of certain
Hindoo gods, principally Vishnu, the conserver of life, whose exploits
figure largely in the great epic poems. Râmas is, for instance, himself
the seventh incarnation of Vishnu (Râmatshandra). From a review of
particular demands, actions, circumstances, modes of appearance, and
traits of demeanour, we are led to infer from these poems that this
content is in great measure borrowed from actual events, that is from
the exploits of ancient kings who exercised a powerful influence in
creating new conditions of law and order; we find ourselves surrounded
by a thoroughly human atmosphere and on the firm ground of reality. But
then again, in a converse direction, the entire scene expands, reaches
out into the nebulous, playing over and beyond it with universal
conceptions, so that we lose the vantage ground we had gained and are
robbed of all our bearings. We are treated in just the same way in the
Sakuntala. At first we have set before us the most gentle and odorous
realm of Love, in which everything goes on its way in an entirely human
fashion; and then we are all at once snatched from the wealth of this
genuine world, and transported into the clouds of the heaven of Indra,
where everything suffers change, and our formerly circumscribed sphere
is inflated to the measure of the universal import of Nature's life in
its relation to the Brahmin and the power of Nature's gods, which is
vouchsafed to man in return for his severe self-mortifications.
Such modes of representation are also not to be termed in a strict
sense symbolical. That is to say the true symbol suffers the
determinate shape, which it applies, to remain under that original
definition, because its purpose is not to envisage therein the
immediate existent of the significance in its universality, but to
point to that import merely _through_ the qualities of the object
which are cognate to it. Hindoo art, however, although it severs
universality from the singular existing fact, still adds the further
requirement that both sides shall be immediately united through the
imagination, and is consequently forced to divest determinate existence
of its specific limitations, and, albeit in a material fashion, to
enlarge in the direction of indefiniteness and generally to change and
reconstitute. In this melting down of all clear definition, and in the
confusion which results from it, so that that form is always set down
as highest for everything, whether phenomena, events, or actions, which
in the mode of their figuration can neither for themselves assert nor
intrinsically possess and express any control over such content, we may
rather seek for features analogous to the type of the _sublime_ than
see any illustration of real symbolism. For in the Sublime, as we shall
see for ourselves further on, the finite phenomenon only expresses the
Absolute, which it would previsage for conscious sense to the extent
that in so doing it escapes from the world of appearance, which fails
to comprehend its content. This is just its treatment of eternity.
Its idea of it is sublime when it has to be expressed in terms of
time-duration, precisely through the emphasis it lays on the fact that
no number, however great, is sufficient. In this strain runs the text:
"A thousand years in Thy sight are even as a day." Hindoo art contains
much of the same or similar nature. It strikes the opening notes of
"the Sublime" symphony. The main difference, however, between it and
the true Sublimity consists in this, that the Hindoo imagination does
not in the wild exuberance of its images bring about the essential
nothingness of the phenomena which it makes use of, but rather through
just this very measurelessness and unlimited range of its visions
believes that it has annihilated and made to vanish all difference
and opposition between the Absolute and its mode of configuration. In
this extreme type of exaggeration, then, there is ultimately little of
real kinship with either true symbolism or Sublimity: it is equally
remote from the true sphere of beauty. It offers us no doubt, more
particularly in its more sober delineation of that which is exclusively
human, much that is endearing and benign, many gracious pictures and
tender emotions, the most splendid and seductive descriptions of
Nature, the most childlike traits of Love and naïve innocence, and
withal much too that is magnanimous and noble; but, none the less, if
we review it generally according to the fundamental import of all it
expresses, we shall find that the spiritual is throughout rooted in
sense, the meanest objects are placed on the same plane as the highest,
true definition is wrecked, the Sublime is lowered to the conception of
mere immeasurability, and that which is the original material of mythos
for the most part vanishes before our eyes in the fantastic dreams of
a restless and inquisitive imaginative power, and modes of shaping the
same devoid of all intelligent purpose.
(_c_) In conclusion, the purest form of representation which we
meet with at this stage of imaginative conception is that of
_personification_, as it generally applies to the _human figure._
For the reason, however, that the significance on this plane is
not as yet grasped as the free subjectivity of Spirit, but rather
either under a determination of abstract universality or as a mode
of natural existence, one that contains, for example, the life of
rivers, mountains, stars, or sun, for this reason it is only employed
as means of expression for this kind of content under a mode which
really detracts from the full worth of the human form. For the human
body, if we view it in its true definition, no less than the form of
human activities and events, expresses simply concrete Spirit and a
spiritual content, which is self-contained and subsistent in this its
reality, and possesses therewith no mere symbol or external sign.
From one point of view consequently this personification, albeit the
significance, which it is invoked to represent, is taken to belong
to the spiritual no less than the natural, yet, on account of the
abstractness which clings to this form of significance, is on this
stage of thought still of a superficial nature, and needs yet many
other modes of representation to be rendered clear to the closer
inspection, forms with which it is here confusedly mingled and
thereby itself made obscure. And, moreover, taking it under another
aspect, it is not the subjectivity here and its form which supplies
the characterization, but rather its _expressions_, actions, and so
forth; for it is in deed and action that the more defined line of
severation first asserts itself, which can be brought into relation
with the specific content of the universal significances. In that case,
however, we are again face to face with the defect that it is not the
conscious subject, but merely its _means of expression_, which supply
the signification, no less than the confusion of thought, that events
and deeds, instead of constituting the reality and the existence of
the subject as determinately self-realized, preserve its content and
significance elsewhere. A series of such actions is able therefore
very possibly to carry with it a certain result and consequence, which
is derived from the content which such a series subserves as its
expression. This consequent result is, however, to an extent equally
great, liable again to be interrupted and in part suspended by that
which is central in the personification and the man[47], because
subjective activity is also a stimulus to capricious action and its
manifestation, so that both that which is significant and that which is
destitute of this quality keep up their varied and irregular interplay
just in so far as the imagination is unable to unite their significant
characteristics and the forms which are appropriate to them in one
substantial and secure mode of association. And, moreover, if it is the
purely natural aspect of such facts which is exclusively accepted as
the unified content, in that case the material must inevitably prove
itself inadequate to support the human form, just as this, being only
fully adapted as a means of expressing Spirit, is on its side incapable
of representing what is wholly natural. In all these respects such a
mode of personification as the one we are examining fails to express
a true mode; for the truth of art requires, as the truth universally
requires, that there should be a complete concordance between the
inward and the outward, that is, the notion and its reality. Greek
mythology, for example, personified the Pontine sea; Scamander
possesses its river gods, nymphs, dryads, and so forth. In other words
it builds up Nature in the most various forms as the content of its
human divinities. It does not, however, suffer its personification
to remain purely formal and superficial, but creates thereby real
individuals, in whom the purely natural significance fades into the
background, and the human element, on the contrary, which has taken up
and absorbed such material out of Nature, becomes the prominent factor.
Hindoo art, on the other hand, is unable to advance beyond a grotesque
intermingling of these two sides of Nature and humanity, so that
neither is treated according to its rightful claim, and both are merely
given the forms which are appropriate to the other.
Speaking in a general way we cannot consider even these
personifications to be as yet strictly symbolical, for the reason that
owing to their formal superficiality they do not stand in any essential
relation to or mode of association more truly intimate with the more
determinate form which they are presumed to express. At the same time
we may note here, with respect to other particular modifications and
attributes, with which such personifications appear to be intermingled,
and which are taken to express the more defined qualities generally
attached to Divinities, an impulse in the direction of symbolic
representation, for which the personification then stands merely as the
universal type of widest connotation.
If we turn now to the more important examples of the imaginative sense
on the plane we are now considering, we have first to draw attention
to Trimûrtis, the triformed Godhead. This Deity includes in the first
place _Brahmâ_, the activity which brings forth and procreates, the
creator of the world, Lord of all the gods and much more beside. On
the one hand he is to be kept distinct from Brahman (as Neuter), that
is from the ultimate Being, and is the first-born of such. In another
aspect, however, he again seems to fall into union with this abstract
Godhead, as generally happens with Hindoo thought where the lines of
difference are rarely held secure, and part are allowed to vanish and
the rest simply to get confused with each other. The form with which
he is most closely identified has much that is symbolical about it;
he is formed with four heads and four hands, and with the latter are
his sceptre and ring[48]. He is of a red colour, an obvious suggestion
of sunlight, since these Divinities invariably carry qualities which
are of universal significance in Nature and which are thus personified
in them. The _second_ Deity of this triune Trimûrtis, is Vishnu, the
preserving Godhead, the _third_ Sivas, the destructive Power. The
symbols employed to represent these gods are countless. For by reason
of the universality of the significances they express they comprehend
an infinite number of varied activities. In part these are related to
particular phenomena of Nature, mainly the elementary, such as, for
example, the quality of "fiery,"[49] which is an attribute of Vishnu,
and frequently we have set before us shapes of the most antagonistic
description.
In the conception of this triform god we have the fact at once brought
home to us in the clearest way that the form of Spirit is not yet able
to assert itself in its Truth if for no other reason than this, that
here it is not the spiritual which constitutes the truly permeating
significance. That is to say, this trinity of gods would only be
Spirit if the third god were an essentially concrete unity, a unity
which returned upon itself from the differentiation and reduplication
of its substance. For God, according to the true conception of
Godhead, is Spirit as this active and absolute self-differentiation
and Unity, a conception which is generally what constitutes the notion
of Spirit. In this Trimûrtis, however, the triune God is not by any
means such a concrete totality, but merely a passage from this to that,
a metamorphosis, a procreator, a destroyer, and so forth. We must
be accordingly very careful not to imagine that we have discovered
the highest Truth in these most primordial gropings of man's reason,
and in this one note of concord which, no doubt, as mere rhythmic
expression[50], contains the triune form of Deity, that is, the
fundamental conception of Christian theology, believe that we already
have before us a recognition of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Starting from such fundamental conceptions as those of Brahman and
Trimûrtis, Hindoo imagination expatiates still further without let in
a countless number of the most varied formed Divinities. For those
primary significances of universal application which are apprehended
as essential Deity are of such a kind that they may be rediscovered
in an infinite number of phenomena, which are again personified and
symbolized as gods, and each and all combine in throwing the greatest
obstacles in the way of any intelligible system by reason of the
indefinite character and confusing volubility[51] of this type of
imagination, which fails utterly to grasp the real nature of anything
that it discovers, and merely wrests everything that it touches from
its own appropriate sphere. For these gods of subordinate rank, at the
head of which we may place such a Divinity as Indrus, who represents
the Air and the Heavens, the chief material is furnished by the general
forces of Nature, such as stars, rivers, and mountains conceived in
the various phases of their activity, their change, their influence on
mankind, whether beneficent or hurtful, preservative or destructive.
One of the most important subjects, however, of Hindoo imagination
and art is the origin of gods and the rest of creation, in other words
its Theogony and Cosmogony. For this type of imagination is generally
rooted in the continual effort to carry over that which is most removed
from sense into the very heart of the external world, or in the reverse
process once more to expunge that which stands nearest to sense and
Nature by means of the barest abstraction. Consequently the origin
of the gods is referred back to the primordial Godhead[52], and at
the same time the workings and existence of Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Sivas
are represented as actual in mountains, streams, and human events.
A cosmological content of this kind can, on the one hand, contain
an independent and specific order of Deities, while on the other
these gods are made to merge in those universal significances of the
supremest type of Godhead. Such theogonies and cosmogonies are numerous
and of every conceivable variety. When anyone ventures, therefore,
to say that the Hindoos have thus or thus portrayed the creation of
the world or the origin of Nature, such a statement can only be taken
to apply to a particular sect or book; you can very easily find a
perfectly different account of these events elsewhere. The imagination
of this people in the pictures and images they have created is
exhaustless.
A mode of conception which is conspicuous throughout the entire series
of these creation stories is the constantly repeated presentation of
the creative act not in the form of _spiritual fiat_, but of a purely
_natural_ process of _generation._ Only after having made ourselves
thoroughly conversant with this mode of imaginative vision shall we
discover the key to unlock the meaning of many representations which
at first totally confound all our feelings of shame, shamelessness
being here apparently driven to its furthest limits, and in its utter
sensuousness carried beyond all belief. A striking example of this
mode of imaginative treatment is offered us by the notoriously popular
episode from the Râmâyana, known as the descent of Gangâ. This tale
is narrated on the occasion when Râmas happens by chance to come to
the Ganges. The wintry and ice-covered Himavân, the prince of the
mountains, was father by the slender Menâ of two daughters, Gangâ,
the elder, and the beautiful Umâ the younger one. Certain gods,
more particularly Indras, beseech the father to send them Gangâ, in
order that they may institute the sacred rites, and as Himavat proves
himself quite ready to accede to their request Gangâ mounts on high
to the blessed gods. After this follows the further story of Umâ, who
after accomplishing wonderful actions of humility and penitence, is
espoused to Rudras, that is, Sivas. From this union spring up wild and
unfruitful mountains. For a hundred years long Sivas lay with Umâ in
the bridal embrace, without intermission, so that the gods aghast at
the procreative power of Sivas, and full of anxiety for the productive
child, beseech him that he will divert the stream of his strength on
the Earth. This passage the English translator has not ventured to
translate literally, for the reason that it flings too much for him
every shred of shame or modesty to the winds. Sivas hearkens to the
beseechings of the gods, and staying his former procreative ardour,
that he may not utterly confound the universe, he loosens the seminal
flood over the Earth. Out of this, transpierced with fire, rises up
the white mountain which separates India from Tartary. Umâ, however,
falls into scorn and anger at this complaisance, and thereon curses
all wedlock. In this section of the tale we have what are mainly
fearful and distorted pictures which run so entirely counter to our
ordinary notions of imagination and intelligent senses that the most
we can do is to observe what they would appear to offer in default of
either. Schlegel has omitted to translate this section of the episode
and merely added in his own words how Gangâ descends once more on the
Earth. And this took place in the following way. A certain forebear
of Râmas, Sagaras, was father of a bad son, and by a second wife he
was father of no less than 60,000 sons, who came into the world in a
pumpkin, were, however, raised up into stalwart men on clarified butter
in pitchers[53]. Now it chanced one day that Sagaras was of a mind to
sacrifice a steed, which was, however, seized from him by Vishnu in
the form of a serpent. On this Sagaras sends forth his 60,000 sons.
But no sooner had they come to Vishnu after great hardships and a
long searching than a breath of hers burns them all to ashes. After
a weary waiting a certain grandson of Sagaras, by name Ansumân the
Shining, son of Asamaschas, set forth to find his 60,000 uncles and
the sacrificial steed. He actually comes upon both the steed Siwas and
the heap of ashes. The king of birds, Garudas, however, notifies to
him the fact that unless the stream of the holy Gangâ flows down from
heaven over the heap of ashes his relations will be unable to return
to life. Whereupon the stalwart Ansumân endures for 32,000 years on
the mountain-top of Himavân the sternest mortifications. All in vain.
Neither his own chastisements nor those of yet another 30,000 years
of his son Dwilipas are of the slightest avail. At last the son of
Dwilipas, the glorious Bhagîrathas, succeeds in accomplishing the feat,
but only after mortifications which last 1,000 years. Then the Gangâ
plunges down; but in order that the Earth may not thereby shiver in
pieces, Siwas now bows his head so that the water runs into his mane.
Thereupon yet further mortifications are enjoined upon Bhagîrathas, in
order that Gangâ may be free to stream forth from these locks. Finally
she is poured forth in six streams; the seventh Bhagîrathas conducts
after mighty privations to the place of the 60,000, who mount up to
heaven, and therewith Bhagîrathas rules for yet many a year over his
people in peace.
Other theogonies such as the Scandinavian and the Greek are very
similar in type to the Hindoo. The principal feature of them all
is this of physical generation and production; but not one of them
plunges so headlong into the subject or in general displays such
caprice and impropriety in the images of its invention as the Hindoo.
The theogony of Hesiod is in particular far more intelligible and
succinct, so that at least one knows where one is, and is clear as to
the general significance; and this is so because the impression is
far more pronounced that the form and external embodiment of the myth
is set forth by the narrator as something external. The mythos starts
in this case[54] with Chaos, Erebos, Eros, and Gaia. The Earth (Gaia)
brings forth Uranos of her own accord, and then is mother by him of
the mountains, sea, and so forth, also of Cronos and the Cyclops,
Centimani[55], whom Uranos, however, shortly after birth incarcerates
in Tartaros. Gaia thereupon induces Cronos to castrate Uranos. The deed
is accomplished. And from the blood that falls on the Earth spring to
life the Erinnyes and the Giants. The castrated member is caught by the
sea, and from the sea's foam arises Cytherea. In all this description
the outlines are more clearly and decisively drawn. And we are thereby
carried beyond the circle of mere gods of Nature.
3. If we endeavour now to seize some point where the transition is
emphasized to the stage of real symbolism, we shall find the same
already in the first beginnings of Hindoo imagination. That is to
say, however preoccupied the Hindoo imagination may be in its efforts
to contort the sensuous phenomenon into a plurality of Divinities, a
preoccupation which no other people has displayed with anything like
the same exhaustless scope and countless transformations, yet from
another point of view in many of its visions and narratives it remains
throughout constant to that spiritual abstraction of a God supreme over
all, in contrast with whom the particular, sensuous, and phenomenal
is undivine, inadequate, and consequently is apprehended as something
negative, something which has finally to be cancelled. For, as we have
from the first noticed, it is precisely this continual involution of
one side on the other which constitutes the fundamental type of the
Hindoo imagination, and makes it for ever incapable of finding a true
principle of reconciliation. The art is consequently never tired of
representing, in every imaginable way, the surrender of the sensuous
and the power of spiritual abstraction and self-absorption. Of this
kind are the representations of toilsome mortifications and profound
meditations, of which not merely the most ancient epical poems,
such as the "Râmâyana" and the "Mahâbhârata," but also many other
works of art furnish most important examples. No doubt many of these
self-chastisements are undergone on grounds of ambition, or at least
with a view to definite objects, which do conduct the devotee to the
highest and most final union with Brahman, and to the mortification of
everything carnal and finite. An object of this kind is the endeavour
to secure the power of a Brahmin; but even in this there is always the
fact present to consciousness that the expiation and the continuance
of a meditation that is ever more and more diverted from the objects
of sense will raise the devotee over his birth-place in a particular
caste, no less than help him resist the power of Nature and the gods
of Nature. For this reason, that prince of Divinities of this class,
Indras, opposes most signally strenuous aspirants, and strives to
entice them away; or, in the case where all his seductions fail, he
invokes assistance from the supreme gods lest the entire heaven fall
into confusion.
In the representation of mortifications of this kind and the several
kinds and grades according to which they are ranked, Hindoo art is
almost as fertile in its invention as in its system of Divinities, and
it pursues the theme with the most thorough earnestness.
This, then, is the point from which we may now extend our survey in a
forward direction.
C. REAL SYMBOLISM
In the case of symbolical, no less than that of Fine Art, it is
necessary that the significance which it seeks to embody should not
merely be set forth, as is the case in Hindoo art, from the first
immediate unity of the same with its objective existence, such
as obtains before any severation or distinction has as yet been
emphasized, but that this significance should itself be independent and
_free_ from the _immediate_ sensuous content. This deliverance can only
so far assert itself as the sensuous and natural medium is both grasped
and envisaged as itself essentially negative, as that which has to be
and has been absorbed. It is a further requirement, moreover, that the
negativity, which is successful in making its appearance as the passing
off and the self-dissolution of the Natural, should be accepted and
receive embodiment as the _absolute import_ of the object generally,
as a phase, that is to say, of the Divine. But with a fulfilment of
such claims we are already beyond the limits of Hindoo art. It is true
that the consciousness of this negative side is not wholly absent
from the Hindoo imagination. Sivas is the destroyer no less than the
producer. Indras dies, nay, more, the Destroyer Time, personified as
Kâla the terrible giant, confounds the entire universe and all gods,
even Trimûrtis, who passes away at the same time in Brahman, just as
the individual in his self-identification with the highest form of
Divinity suffers his Ego and all his wisdom and will to vanish away.
In these conceptions, however, the negative element is in part merely
a transformation and change, in part only an abstraction, which allows
all definition to drop away, in order that it may thrust its path to
an indefinite and consequently vacuous and content-less universality.
The substance of the Divine on the other hand persists through change
of form, passage over and advance to a system of many Deities, and the
abrogation of that system once more in the one highest form of God
unalterably one and the same. It is not that conception of the one
God, which itself essentially possesses, as this unity, the negative
aspect as its own determination, both necessary and appropriate to its
own essential notion. In an analogous way the destructive and hurtful
element is placed according to the Parsee view of existence _outside_
the personality of Ormuzd in Ahriman, and consequently only makes a
contradiction and conflict manifest belonging under no form of relation
to Ormuzd, as a distinct phase of his own substance.
The actual point in the advance which we have now to make consists,
therefore, in this that, on the one hand, the negative aspect, fixed
by consciousness in an independent relation as the Absolute, is,
however, on the other, merely regarded as a phase of the Divine, as
a phase, however, which is not only as outside the true Absolute
incidental to another Godhead[56], but is to be so ascribed to the
Absolute, that the true God appears as a process in which He negates
_Himself_, and thereby contains this negative element as an inherent
self-determination of His own substance.
Through this enlarged conception the Absolute is for the first time
essentially _concrete_, that is self-determination, and thereby
essential unity, whose particular antitheses, as parts of a process,
appear to consciousness as the different determinations of one and
the same God. For the necessity of giving essential definition to the
absolute significance is just that which at this stage it is felt to be
of first importance to satisfy. All the significances up to this point
persisted by virtue of their abstract character as absolutely undefined
and consequently void of content, or were merged, when in a converse
direction they tended to clear distinction, immediately in the Being of
Nature, or fell into a conflict in respect to their configuration which
gave them no repose and reconciliation. This twofold defect we have now
to remove, both by showing the advance of Thought regarded as itself an
ideal process, and by illustrating that advance by means of particular
facts of the mind and institutions of nations on the objective plane of
history.
And in the _first_ place we may observe a more intimate bond of
association is set up between the Inward and Outward aspect of
consciousness in the increased recognition that every determination
of the Absolute is already essentially an inchoate movement in the
direction of expression. For every determination is essentially
distinction[57]. The External, however, is as such always defined
and distinct, and consequently there is thus an aspect immediately
presented, according to which the External is manifested in a form
more adequate to the significance than was possible under the modes
of conception as yet examined. The first definition, however, and
essential negation of the Absolute inevitably falls short of the free
self-determination of Spirit as _Spirit._ It is merely the immediate
negation of itself. This immediate and consequently natural negation
in its most comprehensive form of statement is _Death._ The Absolute
is consequently apprehended now in a way that it is compelled to
submit itself to this form of negation as a part of the essential
determination of its own notion, in other words it is obliged to enter
the path of extinction, and we observe consequently the glorification
of Death and grief in the first instance made present to the national
consciousness as the death of the dying sensuous material. The death of
Nature is cognized as a necessary part[58] of the life of the Absolute.
The Absolute, however, on the one hand, in order to be subject to this
phase of Death, must be posited already as determinate existence; and,
equally from another point of view, must not be suffered to remain in
the annihilation of Death, but must be held to _re-establish_ itself
in an essentially positive unity on a yet higher plane of existence.
Death is consequently not accepted here as constituting the entire
significance, but merely one aspect of the same. And though no doubt
the Absolute is in one sense viewed as a cessation of its immediate
existence, a passage over and beyond and a passing away, yet it is
quite as much in the reverse sense conceived as a return upon itself,
as a resurrection, as an eternal process of Divine realization rendered
possible by virtue of this evolutional principle of negation. For Death
is capable of a twofold meaning. Under the first it is the immediate
passing away of the natural; under the second Death is the extinction
of the exclusively natural and thereby the birth of a higher type, that
is, spiritual, from which the merely natural falls away in the sense,
that Spirit possesses in itself this phase as an essential phase of its
own substance.
For this reason, _secondly_, the form of Nature can no longer be
accepted in the immediacy of sensuous existence as adequate to the
significance referred to it, because the significance of the External
consists just in this, that it must die in the form of its real
existence and rise again.
On the same ground, _thirdly_, the mere conflict between significance
and form and that ferment of the imagination, which was the fantastic
product of Hindoo conceptions, drop away. The significance is, it is
true, even now not yet fully and with absolute clarity cognized in its
pure unity _free_ from all sense-presented reality, so that it could be
set forth in real _contrast_ with the form of its actual embodiment;
conversely, however, the form itself, this particular, object, that
is, whether in its glorified shape of grandiosity or in any other
more conspicuous form of caricature, as an image of animal life, a
human personification, event or action, is not taken to envisage for
immediate sense an adequate existence of the Absolute. This corrupt
form of identity is already surpassed as fully to the extent that it
still falls behind that other complete deliverance. And in the place of
both of these extremes we have asserted that kind of representation,
which we have above already described as the _real symbolical._ On the
one hand it is now _able_ to appear for the reason that the Inward, or
that which is conceived as significance, is no longer something which
merely, as in Hindoo conceptions, comes and passes away, at one moment
is absorbed immediately in externality, at another is withdrawn from
the same into the solitude of abstraction, but it begins to make itself
independently secure against the mere reality of Nature. And on the
other hand the symbol is now forced to seek some form of plastic shape.
That is to say, although the significance, identical in every way with
that which has hitherto obtained, possesses as a phasal condition of
its content the negation of the Natural, yet the true Inward now for
the first time shows a definite tendency to wrest its way from that
Natural, and is consequently itself still swallowed up within the
external mode of appearance, so that it is unable independently to be
brought home to consciousness in its clear universality without having
previously had to comply with the form of external reality.
Now the kind of _configuration_ which is implied by the notion of
that which generally constitutes the _fundamental significance_ in
symbolism, may be described in the following terms, namely, we find in
it that the definite forms of Nature, human activities and so forth,
neither--to express one aspect of it--represent or signify merely
themselves severally in their isolated natural characteristics, nor--to
emphasize the other aspect--bring their immediate form to consciousness
as the Divine actually visible to sense. They are rather employed to
_suggest_ that same Divine through qualities which they possess cognate
with a significance of more comprehensive range. For this reason it is
just that universal dialectic of Life, its origin, growth, collapse
in and awakening from Death, which also in this connection supplies
the appropriate content for the true symbolic type; and this is so
because we find in almost every province of natural and spiritual
life certain phenomena, which presuppose this process as the basis of
their existence, and consequently can be utilized as means of giving a
visible body to such significant aspects and of pointing by suggestion
to the same, a real affinity being actually inherent between the two
sides. Thus plants spring from their seed, sprout, grow, bring forth
fruit; the fruit corrupts and produces fresh seed. In the same way the
sun rises to a low elevation in winter; in Spring he mounts on high,
until we have his meridian reached in summer; it is then that he pours
forth his richest blessing or exerts the greatest destructive force;
after that he inclines once more towards the horizon. The various
stages of human life, too, childhood, youth, maturity, and old age,
illustrate precisely the same universal process. But in a special sense
specific localities such as the Nile-valley are adapted to the closer
particularization in the direction indicated.
In so far, then, as that which is purely fantastic is displaced by
these more fundamental traits of affinity and the more intimate
applicability of the expression to the import it expresses there arises
a thoughtful process of selection with reference to the comparative
congruity or incongruity of the symbolizing forms, and the intoxicated
eddy to and fro which prevailed is laid to rest in a more intelligent
circumspection.
We consequently observe that a union more at one with itself reappears
in the place of that which we found in the first stage of our process,
subject, however, to this characteristic difference, that the identity
of the significance with its objectively real existence is no longer
one immediately envisaged, but one that is _set up_ out of the
difference and consequently not one previously discovered, rather we
should say a mode of union that is the _product of mind_ (Spirit). That
which, in its most general terms, we call the _Inward_ begins at this
point to assume the solidity of self-subsistence, to be conscious of
itself; it seeks for its counterfeit in the objects of Nature, which
on their part possess a similar reflection in the life and destinies
of Spirit. Out of this eager movement to recognize the one side in
the other, and by means of the external to bring for itself visibly
to sense and the imaginative faculty the significance, as also to
envisage by virtue of that Inward the significance of the external
shapes through a union in which both sides are associated, we get that
vast impulse of art which finds its satisfaction through means which
are purely symbolical. Only when the Inward is free and is driven
forward to make clear to the imaginative vision in real form what it
essentially is, and to have before itself this very vision, moreover,
in the form of an external work, do we find that the genuine impulse
of art, and the particularly plastic arts, begins to be a living fact.
Then it is that the necessity is felt to clothe the Inward with a
form not merely previously discovered from the resources of spiritual
activity, but rather one that is minted out of spirit (mind) for the
first time. In the symbol, then, there is a second form _created_,
which, however, is not independently valid for itself as its main
purpose, but is rather employed to envisage the significance, and
stands consequently in a dependent relation to the same.
It were possible to apprehend the above relation in such a way as
though the significance were that point from which the artistic
consciousness starts on its journey, and that only after having found
this it begins to look round for means to express its universal
conceptions through external phenomena cognate in their affinity to
such conceptions. This, however, is not the way that real symbolic
art proceeds. For its characteristic distinction consists in this,
that its penetration fails as yet to grasp the significances in their
independent consistency, independent, that is, from every mode of
externality. For this reason its point of departure is rather from
that which is immediately presented and its concrete existence in
Nature and Spirit. This it thereupon, in the first instance, expands
to the measure of the universality of such significances, whose
determination such objective real existence contains only under more
restricted conditions, adding this wider range in order that it may
create a form from Spirit, which is to make that universality visible
to consciousness in this particular reality when once it is set forth
clearly before perception. Regarded as symbolical forms, therefore,
the images of art have not as yet attained a form truly adequate
to Spirit, inasmuch as Spirit itself is not as yet at this stage
essentially clear and thereby free Spirit; but we have at least here
embodiments, which essentially proclaim the fact to us, that they are
not merely selected to represent simply themselves, but are intended to
point to significances of profounder intension and more--comprehensive
range. That which is purely natural and sensuous asserts itself as fact
and nothing beside; the symbolical work of art, however, whether it
be the phenomena of Nature or the human figure that it makes visible
to the eye, points at the same time over and outside such facts to
something further, which, however, must possess an intimate root of
affinity with the images that are thus displayed, and an essential bond
of relation with them. This association between the concrete form and
its universal significance may conceivably be present in many different
ways. At one time the emphasis will be laid on the external aspect, and
it will consequently be more obscure; at another, however, the basis of
affinity will be more pronounced as in the case when the universality,
which is to be symbolized, constitutes, in fact, the essential content
of the concrete phenomenon. In this case naturally it is a much simpler
matter to grasp the symbolic character of the object.
The most abstract mode of expression in this respect is _number_,
which, however, it is only possible to use as an indication of a
further meaning beyond that it ordinarily elucidates when this
significance is itself, essentially numerical. The numbers seven and
twelve are frequently met with in Egyptian architecture, because
seven is the number of the planets, and twelve is that of the lunar
revolutions or the number of feet that the water of the Nile must
necessarily rise in order to fructify the land. Such a number is then
regarded as sacred in so far as it is present as a determinant in the
great elementary relations, which are revered as forces in the whole
life of Nature. Twelve steps or seven pillars are to this extent
symbolical. The same kind of numerical symbolism has an extensive
influence upon the form of widely famous mythologies. The twelve
labours of Hercules, for example, appear to contain a reference to the
twelve months of the year; for if Hercules under one aspect of the myth
is no doubt presented to us as the thoroughly human impersonation of a
hero, in another he unquestionably indicates a significance of Nature
under a symbolized form, and, in fact, is a personification of the
course of the sun.
In a further and more complete sense symbolical configurations of
space, labyrinthine passages, and such like carry a symbolical image
of the course of the planets, just as dances, too, in virtue of their
complex evolutions symbolically express the motion of the great
elementary bodies.
And further, on a higher plane, the bodies of animals are utilized
as symbols, but most succinctly of all the human figure, which, even
at this stage, as we shall see later on, appears to be elaborated in
modes more compatible with its intrinsic worth for the reason that even
now Spirit in general makes a real movement to embody itself from out
the mere swaddling clothes of Nature in a shape more adequate to its
own self-subsistent personality. Such, then, constitutes our general
concept of the true form of symbolism and the necessity under which
art labours to express the same. And in order that we may discuss the
more concrete exemplifications of this type of symbolism, it will be
necessary in dealing with this first plunge of Spirit into the wealth
of its own resources to leave the East and direct our attention mainly
on the West.
As a symbol of universal import to indicate the point of view where
we now stand, we may perhaps first and foremost fix before our eyes
the image of the Phoenix, which is its own funeral pile, yet ever is
rejuvenated out of the flames of its death and rises from the ashes.
Herodotus informs us (II, 73) that at least in representations he saw
this bird in Egypt, and, in fact, it is the _Egyptian_ people who also
supply us with a focus for the type of symbolical art. Before, however,
we proceed to the closer consideration of Egyptian art we will mention
several other myths, which form, as it were, the passage to that
national symbolism which we find most elaborate, no matter from what
direction we approach it. Such are the myths of Adonis, that of his
death, and the lament of Aphrodite over him, the funeral festivals,
etc., conceptions and rites which find their original home on the
Syrian coast. The service of Cybele among the Phrygians possesses the
same significance, which also finds its echo in the myths of Castor and
Pollux, Ceres and Proserpina.
As the essence of such significance we find in the above quoted
examples, before everything else, that phasal condition of negation we
have already alluded to, the death, that is, of the natural regarded
as a basic and absolute condition of the Divine process, emphasized
as such, and made visible in its independence. It is in this sense
that we can explain the funeral festivals that celebrate the death of
the god, the excessive lamentations over his loss, which is once more
made good through his rediscovery, resurrection, and rejuvenescence,
making it possible for the festivals of joy to follow. This universal
significance contains further its more definite relation to Nature.
In winter the sun loses his force, while in spring he returns once
more, and with that Nature regains her youth, she dies and is reborn.
In examples such as these the Divine, personified as a human event,
discovers its significance in the life of Nature, which then from a
further point of view becomes a symbol for the essential character of
the negative condition generally, in spiritual things no less than
natural.
It is in _Egypt_, however, that we have to look for the perfect
example of symbolical representation in its systematic elaboration of
characteristic content and form. Egypt is the land of symbol, which
proposes to itself the spiritual problem of the self-interpretation
of Spirit, without being able successfully to solve it. The problems
remain without an answer; and such solution as we are able to supply
consists therefore merely in this, that we grasp these riddles of
Egyptian art and its symbolical productions as this very problem which
Egypt propounds for herself but is unable to solve. For the reason
that we find that Spirit here still endeavours in the external objects
of sense, from which again it strains to free itself, and further
labours with unwearied assiduity, to evolve from itself its essential
substance by means of natural phenomena no less than to embody the same
in the form of spirit for the _vision of the senses_, rather than
as the pure content of mind, this Egyptian people may, in contrast
to all the instances previously examined, be described as the nation
Art claims for herself[59]. Its works of art, however, remain full of
mystery and silence, without music or motion; and this is so because
Spirit here has not yet truly found its own life, nor has learned how
to utter the clear and luminous speech of mind. In the unsatisfied
stress and impulse, to bring before the vision through her art, albeit
in so voiceless a way, this wrestle of herself with herself, to give
shape to the Inward of her life, but only to become conscious of her
own Inward, no less than that which universally prevails[60], through
external forms which are cognate with it--we have in a sentence the
characterization of Egypt. The people of this wonderful land was not
merely agricultural, but also constructive, a folk which tossed up the
soil in every direction, delved lakes and canals, and exercised their
artistic instincts not merely in giving visible shape to buildings of
enormous solidity, but in carrying works themselves of vast dimension
to a like extent into the bowels of the earth. To erect buildings of
this kind was, as we have long ago learned from Herodotus, a principal
occupation of this people, and one of the chief exploits of their
kings. The buildings of the Hindoo race are also unquestionably of
colossal size; we shall, however, find nowhere else a variety which can
compare with that of Egypt.
1. Reviewing now the general conceptions of Egyptian art with a closer
attention to particular aspects of it, we may in the first place define
the fundamental principle of so much of it as follows, that we find
here the Inward is securely held in its independent opposition to the
immediacy of external existence. And what is more, this Inward is
conceived as the negation of Life, in other words the dead thing, not
as the abstract negation of the evil and hurtful thing, such as Ahriman
in contrast to Ormuzd, but as form essentially substantive.
(_a_) To illustrate this thought further, the Hindoo merely subtilizes
his life to the most empty of abstractions, that is in result one that
therewith negates every form of concrete content. Such a Brahm-becoming
process is not to be found in Egypt; rather we find here that the
invisible possesses a fuller significance; the corpse secures the
content of the living body itself, which, however, as torn away from
immediate existence, in its retirement from actual life[61], still
possesses its relation to that which is alive, and in this concrete
form is maintained as self-subsistent. It is a well-known fact that
the Egyptians embalmed and revered cats, dogs, hawks, ichneumons,
bears, and wolves (Herod., II, 67), but most of all the dead human body
(Herod., II, 86-90). By them the honour paid to the dead is not that of
burial, but its preservation from age to age as a corpse.
(_b_) And moreover we may observe that the Egyptians do not merely
remain constant to this immediate and still wholly natural permanency
of the dead. That which is preserved in its physical or natural aspect
is also conceived to endure in a form present to the imagination.
Herodotus informs us that the Egyptians were the first who held the
doctrine that the human soul is immortal. We consequently find that
they are the first who present to us a more exalted mode of this
resolution of the natural and spiritual, a mode that is to say, under
which it is not merely the natural body which secures an independent
self-subsistence.
The immortality of the soul is a conception which borders closely upon
the freedom of Spirit. The Ego is here apprehended as removed from the
purely natural mode of its existence, reposing on its own substance.
This knowledge of itself, however, is the principle of freedom. No
doubt we are not justified in asserting that the Egyptians grasped
the notion of spiritual freedom in its profoundest sense. We must not
imagine that their belief in the immortality of the soul is identical
with our own form of that belief; but they already possessed the power
to retain securely that which was separated from Life under a form
of existence visible only to the imagination, no less than one in
which it was identical with the bodily material. They have thereby
made possible the passage to the full emancipation of Spirit, albeit
it was but the threshold of the temple of freedom that they passed
over. This fundamental conception of theirs is further expanded to a
unified and substantial Kingdom of the Departed set up in contrast to
the immediate presence of the real. A Court of Justice of the Dead is
held in this invisible state over which Osiris as Amenthes presides.
One of similar character is also instituted in the sphere of immediate
reality, justice being executed even among men over the dead, and after
the decease of a king every one was entitled to submit his grievances
to that court.
(_c_) If we now proceed to inquire what is the _symbolical_ form of
art, which is given to such conceptions, we must look for this among
the characteristic features of Egyptian architecture. The form of this
architecture is twofold; there is one type that is superterraneous,
while the other is subterraneous.
On the one hand we find underground labyrinths, gorgeous and extensive
excavations, passages half a mile in length, dwellings covered with
hieroglyphics elaborated with every possible care. On the other we have
piled above their level those amazing constructions among which we
may first and foremost reckon the _pyramids_. For centuries men have
ventilated various notions as to the precise meaning and significance
of these pyramids. It is now, however, assured beyond dispute that they
are nothing more or less than the enclosures of the graves of kings or
sacred animals, such as the Apis, the Cat, or the Ibis. In this way we
have before our eyes in the pyramids the simple prototype of symbolical
art. They are enormous crystals which secrete an Inward within them;
and they so enclose an external form which is the product of art, that
we are at the same time made aware they stand there for this very
Inward in its severation from the mere actuality of Nature, and that
their entire significance depends on that relation. But this kingdom
of Death and the Invisible, which here constitutes the significance,
possesses merely the one and, what is more, the formal aspect
appropriate to the true type of art, that is its dissociation from
immediate existence; it is for this reason primarily but a Hades, not
yet a Life, which, although raised above sensuous existence as such,
is none the less at the same time essentially a defined existence,
and thereby intrinsically free and living Spirit. Consequently the
embodiment for such an Inward still remains in relation to the
determinacy of the same's content quite as much a wholly external form
and envelopment. Such an external environment, in which an Inward
reposes under a veil, are the pyramids.
2. In so far, then, as the Inward can be generally envisaged as an
external object to immediate perception, the Egyptians in their
relation to the aspect opposed to this externality have come to worship
a Divine existence in living animals, such as the bull, the cat, and
various others. That which is alive is on a higher plane than the
purely inorganic object, inasmuch as the living organism possesses an
Inward, to which the external shape points, which, however, persists
as an Inward and consequently a realm of mystery. This sacred cult of
animals must consequently be understood as the vision of a secreted
soul[62], which as Life is a power superior to that which is merely
external. To us no doubt it can only appear as a repugnant fact that
animals, dogs and cats, are held sacred instead of that which is truly
spiritual.
This worship, moreover, has nothing symbolical in it viewed simply as
such; for it is the actual living animal, Apis or the like, which is
here itself revered as the existence of God. The Egyptians, however,
have used the shapes of animals in a symbolical way. In that case
they are no longer valid, simply for what they are, but it is further
assumed that they express a more universal import. We find the most
ingenuous illustration of this in the use of animal masks, which we
find more particularly under representations of embalming, at which
process certain individuals, who take an active part, either in opening
the corpse or removing the intestines, are depicted wearing such masks.
It is obvious that the animal's head is not taken to present the animal
itself, but a significance at the same time distinct from it and more
universal. The forms of animals are also utilized in other ways than
this in admixture with the human form. Human figures are to be found
with heads of lions, which have been interpreted as images of Minerva;
then there are heads of the hawk, and in the heads of Ammon we find
the horns still retained. Examples such as the above obviously imply
symbolical relations. In a like sense the hieroglyphical writing of
the Egyptians is in great measure symbolical, for it either endeavours
to make its meaning comprehensible through the images of real objects
which do not stand for themselves, but a universality which is cognate
with them, or, as is still more frequently the case, in the so-called
phonetic aspect of this style of writing, it signifies particular
letters by means of the specific mark of some external object, whose
initial letter possesses in speech the same tone as that which it is
the intention to express.
3. And generally it is the fact that in Egypt pretty nearly every
conformation is symbolical and hieroglyphical, expressing not itself
but indicative of something more, with which it possesses affinity,
or in other words a cognate relation. The truest forms of the symbol,
however, are only completely illustrated in such cases where we find
that this relation is of a more profound and fundamental character
than those we have just adverted to. We will now briefly enumerate
a few constantly recurring examples of this more important type of
affiliation.
(_a_) Precisely as Egyptian belief[63] surmises a mysterious Inwardness
of content in the animal form, we find the human figure represented in
such a way that the most characteristic intension[64] of subjectivity
is still asserted through an external relation, and consequently is
unable to unfold into the freedom of Beauty. Particularly remarkable
in this respect are those colossal figures of _Memnon_ which, reposing
on themselves, motionless, with arms glued to the body, feet close
together, inflexible, stiff and lifeless, are set up face to face
with the sun, waiting for his ray to strike them, animate them, and
make them resonant. Herodotus, at any rate, informs us that these
Memnonic figures emitted a musical note on the sun's rising. The
higher criticism has no doubt expressed itself as sceptical on the
latter point; the fact, however, of a distinct note has recently been
once more established both by Frenchmen and Englishmen; and though it
appears that this echo is no result of previous mechanical ingenuity,
we have an explanation of it in the fact that, as sometimes happens
with minerals which make a crackling noise in water, the tone of these
images of stone is actually produced by the collective action of the
dew, the morning cool, and the subsequent impact of the sun's rays, to
the extent, that is, that tiny fractures appear in the stone which then
again disappear. In any case we may attribute to these colossal shapes
the symbolical import, that they do not possess the spiritual principle
of Life free in themselves, and consequently require that their
animation should be brought to them externally by Light, which alone is
able to unbar the music of their life, instead of having the power to
accept the same from that real soul of Inwardness, which essentially
carries with it measure and beauty. In contrast to them the human
voice is the echo of personal feeling and the soul's self, without any
external stimulant, just as the height of human art generally consists
in the fact that the Inward of Spirit supplies the form thereof from
its own substance. The Inward or soul of the human form is in Egypt
still a mute, and in its animation it is the relation to external
nature which alone commands attention.
(_b_) A further type of symbolical conception is to be found in Isis
and Osiris. Osiris is an object of procreation and birth, and is done
to death by Typhon. Isis seeks for the scattered members, finds,
collects, and buries them. This mythos of the god has, then, in the
first place as its content purely _natural significance._ From one
point of view, that is to say, Osiris is the sun, and his life-history
stands as symbolic for his yearly course; from another, however, he
signifies the rise and fall of the Nile, which is necessarily the
source of all fruitfulness in Egypt. For in Egypt there may not be a
drop of rain for years together, and it is the Nile which primarily
waters the land by its floods. In winter time it flows but a shallow
stream within its bed; then, however, with the summer-solstice
("Herod.," II, 19) it begins for a hundred days to rise, pours over its
banks and streams far and wide over the land. Finally the water dries
up beneath the sun's heat and the scorching desert winds, and once
more retires to its course. Under such conditions the tillage of the
soil is carried out with ease; the most luxurious vegetation springs
up. Everything buds and ripens. The sun and Nile, and the way both of
them become weak or strong, these are the conspicuous forces of Nature
in this land, which the Egyptian has symbolically depicted under a
human form in the myths of Isis and Osiris. To this type of symbolism,
too, belongs the symbolical representation of the zodiac, which is
associated with the year's course, just as the number of the twelve
gods is bound up with the months. Conversely, however, Osiris typifies
under another aspect the entirely _human._ He is held sacred as the
founder of agriculture, of the division of the soil, property and laws,
and his worship is consequently to an equal extent related to human
activities, which are connected in the closest manner with ethical and
judicial functions.
In the same way he is judge of the Dead, and secures as such a
significance wholly released from the mere life of Nature, an import
under which the symbolical tends to pass away for the reason that
here the Inward and Spiritual is of itself content of the human form,
which, under such a mode of relation, begins to conserve the Inward
essentially belonging to it, one, that is, which through its external
form signifies merely its own substance. This spiritual process,
however, assumes again in equal measure as its content the external
life of Nature, and, for example, in temples, number of steps, floors,
and pillars, in labyrinths and their passages, windings and chambers,
represents the same in an external manner. Osiris is thus quite as much
the natural as he is the spiritual life in the different phases of his
process[65] and its transformations; and his symbolical embodiments are
partly symbolic of the elements of Nature; while again in part these
changes of Nature are themselves merely symbols of spiritual activities
and their various phases. For this reason, too, the human form persists
here as no mere personification, such as we found to be the-case
previously, because here the natural aspect, albeit from one point of
view it appears as the real significance, yet from another is itself
merely asserted as a symbol of the Spirit; and, generally speaking,
at this stage of conception, where we find that the Inward struggles
to come forth from the sense-vision of Nature, it is in a position of
subordinance.
For the same reason we find here that the human figure already receives
an entirely different type of elaboration, attesting thereby a real
effort to penetrate the arcana of true Inwardness and Spirit, though
this endeavour also fails as yet to attain its object, that is, the
essential freedom of the Spiritual. And it is by reason of this very
defect that the human figure remains before us with neither freedom nor
serene clarity, colossal, brooding, petrified, legs, arms, and head
glued straitened and tight to the rest of the body, without the grace
or motion of Life. Thus it is that art is first ascribed to Daedalus,
in that he loosed arms and feet from their fetters, and endowed the
body with movement.
On account of this alternative aspect of symbolism above referred to
symbolism in Egypt is, in addition to its other characteristics, a
totality of symbols in the sense that what in one respect is asserted
as significance is employed as symbol in a sphere cognate with it. This
ambiguous association of a symbolism which makes significance and form
intertwine, which is further actually typical or suggestive of much,
and thereby is already concurrent with that inward subjective sense,
which alone is capable of following such indications in a variety of
directions[66], is the characteristic distinction of these images,
albeit by reason of this ambiguity the difficulty of interpreting them
is of course increased.
A significance of this type--attempts at deciphering which are
unquestionably nowadays carried too far for the reason that pretty
nearly every kind of form is virtually set before us as symbolical
in some relation--may very possibly from the point of view of the
Egyptians themselves have been clear and intelligible as significance.
But, as we insisted at the very entrance of our inquiry, the
appropriate motto for the interpretation of Egyptian symbolism is
_implicite multum nihil explicite._ There is a type of workmanship
undertaken with the express endeavour that it shall carry its own
interpretation on the forehead, but we only find there evidence of the
effort; it stops short of the essential point of self-illumination. It
is in this sense that we must fix our eyes on the works of Egyptian
art. They contain riddles, the full solution of which is not merely
withheld from ourselves, but was equally beyond the reach of the great
majority of the artists who created them.
(_c_) The works of Egyptian art in their excessively mysterious
symbolism are therefore riddles, let us rather say the objective
riddle's self. And we may summarily define the _Sphinx_ as symbol of
the real significance of the genius of Egypt. It stands as a symbol for
symbolism itself. In countless numbers, set forth in rows of a hundred
at a time, we come across these Sphinx-forms on Egyptian soil; they
are hewn from the hardest stone, polished, covered with hieroglyphics,
and in the vicinity of Cairo of such colossal dimensions that their
lion-claws alone measure a man's height. Their animal bodies lie in
repose, above which as bust a human body rears itself; now and again
we find the head of a ram, but in the most common case it is that of
a woman. Out of the obtuse strength and robustness of animality the
spirit of man is fain to press forward, albeit still unable to attain
the perfect representation of his own freedom, or a counterfeit of
his body in motion; and this is inevitable, for he is still forced to
remain blended in the company of that Other which confronts himself.
This straining after self-conscious spirituality, which fails to grasp
itself from the truth of its own substance in a form of external
reality which is alone adequate to express it, and instead envisages
and brings the same home to consciousness in that which is merely
cognate with it, but also that which is equally foreign to it, is, in
its general terms, the symbolical; and we find it here concentrated to
a point as the riddle.
It is in this sense that the Sphinx in the Greek mythos, which itself
again is open to symbolic interpretation, appears as the monster
which propounds its riddle. The sphinx asked here the famous and
problematical question: "Who is it, who walks in the morning on four
legs, at noon upon two legs, and in the evening on three?" Oedipus
discovered the simple answer that it was man himself, and hurled the
sphinx from the rocks. The resolution of the symbol consists in the
illumination of all that is implied in the significance of one word,
Spirit, just as the famous Greek inscription cries out to mankind:
"Know thyself." The light of consciousness is that clarity, which
suffers its concrete content to shine all luminous through the form
which is wholly adapted to unfold it, and in its positive form of
existence simply reveals that which it is in truth.
[Footnote 37: _Bedeutung_.]
[Footnote 38: What Hegel means is that calling an aspect of sense
bodily or natural itself implies a distinction from that which is
spiritual, or only cognized by mind, and this distinction is not
present to the earliest human cognition of Divine reality.]
[Footnote 39: _Das Lichtreine._]
[Footnote 40: Except in the conceptions of the Hebrew prophets this is
only true subject to qualification even of the God of Israel. For he
was evidently associated with the thunder, to take but one case--the
deliverance of the tables of stone on Sinai.]
[Footnote 41: _Phantasie_ may often be translated by the word
imagination, but here the element of caprice and dependence on sensuous
image rather than creative impulse directed by a principle of selection
is to be emphasized.]
[Footnote 42: _Ein Taumel_, _i.e._, the dance as of intoxication.]
[Footnote 43: This is obviously a difficult passage to follow. The
main thing to remember is that Hegel is here describing the movement
of a dialectical process, that is the purely objective, rather than
the point of view of personal or even national experience. Such vivid
expressions as _Taumel_ and _schamlos hineinrücken_ remind one of the
Platonic dialectic.]
[Footnote 44: Hegel's editor has Brahman here, but according to a
passage lower down (p. 59) it should rather be Brahmâ.]
[Footnote 45: _Hinaufschrauben_, lit., a screwing up to--a screwing
that in fact crews the head off.]
[Footnote 46: _Verdumpfens._ Either Hegel wrote _Verdummens_, or more
probably _Verdampfens._ The idea of "becoming mouldy" makes no sense.]
[Footnote 47: This I think is the sense, though Hegel expresses it by
using words such as _das Personificieren und Vermenschlichen_, and
lower down _das Subjektiviren._ But previously he has rather contrasted
that false kind of personification which seeks for the significant
in the expression of the subject, his deeds and acts, rather than in
grasping the motive centre of personality, the subjective principle
itself, and it appears more intelligible in a passage, which is
sufficiently hard to follow in any ease, to preserve that contrast.]
[Footnote 48: There is apparently only one ring and sceptre, but the
words used are capable of the interpretation that would attach one for
each of the hands.]
[Footnote 49: Hegel cites Wilson's Lexicon, _s.v._ 2.]
[Footnote 50: _Dem Rhythmus nach_, that is, the Hindoo conception
is entirely superficial, and expresses rather a rhythmic order than
a profound spiritual truth which this number expresses, a truth
which as Hegel has previously observed may be expressed under other
determinations than the numerical.]
[Footnote 51: _Unstätigkeit_, instability, flightiness, detachment from
a fundamental principle.]
[Footnote 52: That is Brahmâ apparently.]
[Footnote 53: The order of the words would strictly mean that the sons
were in the pitchers and it is quite possible that this is the meaning.]
[Footnote 54: That is, in Greek cosmogony.]
[Footnote 55: What: _Centimanen_ refers to I do not know, possibly a
name for Arges, Ceropes, and Brontes.]
[Footnote 56: The sense is "which is not merely (to take the obvious
case of opposition which is, however, _not_ the one here described)
totally outside the Absolute and incidental to," etc. Hegel's words
would admit of the interpretation that this was part of the conception
he is describing. But this is obviously not so, for, in that case, the
negative would be ascribed to both the Absolute and the "other God."]
[Footnote 57: _Ist Unterscheiden_, is that which involves
differentiation. To posit a quality is to distinguish from other
qualities. A fundamental, aspect of Hegelian logic.]
[Footnote 58: _Glied_, part of one organic totality.]
[Footnote 59: Hegel uses an expression somewhat similar to Milton's
"Among the faithless faithful only he." _Den Bisherigen_ refers
primarily, of course, to the Persian and Hindoo peoples.]
[Footnote 60: _Wie des Innern überhaupt_, _i.e._, the Inward with its
significance as the Absolute.]
[Footnote 61: _In seiner Abgeschiedenheit vom Leben_. In other words
the corpse was preserved as still the only appropriate external form of
Life. Though Hegel separates the two aspects of Egyptian belief they
were necessary concomitants of each other.]
[Footnote 62: I have translated _Innerem_ here by "soul," but it
expresses of course too much if taken strictly in its most personal
sense.]
[Footnote 63: _Aberglaube_, not "superstition" so much as belief that
is intuitive, not rationally deduced. The emphasis is on _ahnt._]
[Footnote 64: Hegel puts it in the rather obscure and contradictory way
that the human figure is represented as "still _having_ the most unique
form of subjective intensity (_Das eigenste Innre der Subjectivität_)
outside it."]
[Footnote 65: That is, the mythological history of the God.]
[Footnote 66: Lit., "Which alone is able to apply itself (that is, to
the work of interpretation) in a variety of directions."]