In opposition to this formal particularity of character we have the

external conformation of situations, events, and actions. For the

reason, moreover, that the inward spirituality of romance stands

generally in an indifferent relation to that which is external the

actual phenomenon[262] appears in the present case independently free,

that is as neither permeated by the spiritual content of human aims and

actions nor clothed in modes adequate to retain them. By reason of its

unrelated and loose mode of manifestation it therefore enforces the

contingency of natural processes[263], circumstances, the sequence of

events, and manner of its realization as _the unexpected._[264]

In the _third_ place, and finally, the severation of the two factors

asserts itself, the complete identity of which supplies us with

the real notion of art. This is consequently the dismemberment and

dissolution of art itself. On the one hand we find that art passes to

a representation of wholly commonplace reality, to the reflection of

objects precisely as they appear in their contingent isolation and its

equally singular characteristics. Its interest is now wholly absorbed

in reproducing this objective existence by means of the technical

ability of the artist. On the other hand we have, in what is a mode

of conception and representation entirely dependent on the accidental

idiosyncracy of the artist himself, that is in humour, a complete

reversal of the pictorial style above mentioned. For in _humour_ we

meet with the perversion and overthrow of all that is objectively solid

in reality; it works through the wit and play of wholly personal points

of view, and if carried to an extreme amounts to the triumph of the

creative power of the artist's soul over every content and every form.

1. THE SELF-SUBSISTENCY OR INDEPENDENCE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER

The fundamental determinant of our present subject-matter is once again

that infinitude implied in the very nature of the human consciousness

which was our point of departure in the romantic type of art. The new

accretions we have now, however, to add to our conception of this mode

of self-subsistent infinity consist partly in the _particularity_

of content, which constitutes the world of the individual mind, as

to a further aspect of it in the immediate coalescence of the ego

with this its particularity, its wishes and objects, and thirdly,

in the living individuality, in which the substantive character is

self-determined. We are not, therefore, entitled to understand under

the expression "character" as now employed that which the Italians

represented in their masks. The Italian masks are also no doubt

definite characters, but this definition is only presented by them

in its abstraction and generality, without a personal individuality.

The characters, on the other hand, of the type under discussion are

each of them a character unique in itself, an independent whole, an

individual person[265]. If we have, therefore, occasion here to refer

to the formalism and abstraction of character, such an expression is

entirely relative to the fact that the fundamental content, the world

of such a character appears, on the one hand, as restricted and to that

extent abstract, and, on the other, as qualified by accidental causes.

What the individual is is not carried or sustained by virtue of what

is substantive or essentially self-accredited[266] in its content,

but through the naked personality asserted by the character, which

consequently reposes formally on its own individual self-subsistency

rather than on its content and its independently secured pathos.

Within the limits of this formalism we may now observe _two_ main lines

of distinction.

On the one hand we have the stability of character in the energy of its

_executive_ power, which restricts its line of action to specific aims,

and entrusts the concentrated force of individuality thus restricted to

the realization of such objects. On the other hand we have character

under the aspect of a totality that is _personal_, which, however,

persists not wholly articulated throughout the content of that inward

life and in the unsounded[267] depths of the soul, and is unable to

unravel itself wholly, or express itself with absolute clarity.

(_a_) What we have therefore before us, in the first instance, is the

particular character which wills to be that its immediate presence

proposes, Just as animals differ from each other and discover

themselves as independent creatures in this difference, so, too, here

we have different characters whose range and idiosyncracy remains

subject to the element of contingency[268], and is not to be accurately

determined by the mere notion.

(_α_) An individuality of this kind built up entirely on itself

consequently has no ready thought-out opinions and objects, which

it has associated with any universal principle of pathos: all that

it-possesses, does, and accomplishes it creates right away with no

further reflection out of its own specific nature; which is just

what it happens to be, and has no wish to be rooted in anything more

exalted, to be resolved in that and to find its justification in

something substantive. Rather it reposes unyielding and unmalleable

on itself, and in this stability either goes on its way or goes to

ground. A self-subsistency of character of this kind is only able to

appear, where the secular or natural man[269], in other words, humanity

in its particularity has secured its fullest claim. Pre-eminently the

characters of Shakespeare are of this type. It is just this iron[270]

steadfastness and exclusiveness which constitutes the aspect of them

which most excites our wonder. We have no word here of religion for

religion's sake, or action as the embodiment of human reconciliation,

in the unqualified religious sense, or of morality pure and simple.

On the contrary we are presented with individuals, conceived as

dependent solely on themselves, possessed with aims that are their

own exclusively, exclusively deducible from their individuality, and

which they carry through as best satisfies them with the unmitigated

consequences of passion, and with no incidental reflection on the

principles involved. In particular the tragedies, such as "Macbeth,"

"Othello," "Richard III" and others contain one character of this type

for their main interest surrounded by others less pre-eminent for such

elemental energy. Macbeth is forced by his character, for example, into

the fetters of his ambitious passion. At first he hesitates, then he

stretches his hand to seize the crown; he commits a murder in order

to secure it, and in order to maintain it storms on through the tale

of horror. This regardless tenacity, this identity of the man with

himself, and the object which his own personality brings to birth is

the source to him of an abiding interest. Nothing makes him budge,

neither the respect for the sacredness of kingship, nor the madness of

his wife, nor the rout of his vassals, nor destruction as it rushes

upon him, neither divine nor human claims--he withdraws from them

all into himself and persists. Lady Macbeth is a character of the

same mould, and it is merely the chatter of our latter-day tasteless

criticism which can find in her the least flavour of affection. At

her very first entrance, on reading Macbeth's letter reporting his

meeting with the witches and their prophecy in the words[271]: "Hail to

thee, thane of Cawdor! Hail to thee king that shall be!" she exclaims,

"Glamis thou art and Cawdor; and shall be what thou art promised. Yet

do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness, to

catch the nearest way." She shows no affectionate trait, no joy over

the happiness of her husband, no moral emotion, no sympathy, no pity

of a noble soul; she simply fears lest the character of her husband

will stand in the path of his ambition. She regards him simply as a

means. With her there is no recoil, no uncertainty, no consideration,

no retreating, as we find is at first the case with Macbeth, no

repentance, but the pure abstraction and rigour of character, which

perpetrates that which falls in with it, until it finally breaks.

This collapse which comes in a tempest on Macbeth from the outside as

he executes his object, becomes madness of the mind in Lady Macbeth.

Of the same type is Richard III, Othello, the old Margaret and many

another also. We have its opposite in the wretched coherence[272] of

modern characters, such as those of Kotzebue, which are outwardly noble

in the highest degree, great and excellent, yet in their soul-force

are all rags and tatters. Later writers have done no better in other

relations, despite their supreme contempt for Kotzebue. Heinrich von

Kleish is an example with his Kätchen and Prince von Homburg[273],

characters in which, in contrast to the alert condition of real causal

effect, magnetism, somnambulism, and sleep-walking are depicted as

that which is of highest and most effective moment. This Prince von

Homburg is a most pitiable exhibition of a general; he is distracted

when he makes his military dispositions, writes out his orders in a

way none can decipher them, is engaged in the night previous to the

battle with morbid forebodings, and acts on the day of battle like a

fool. And despite such duality, raggedness, and lack of harmony in

their characters these writers imagine that they tread in the footsteps

of Shakespeare. Wide indeed is the distance which separates them, for

the characters of Shakespeare are essentially consequent in what they

do; they remain staunch to their master passion; in what they are and

in what confronts them, nothing makes them veer round but what is in

strict accord with their rigidly determinate character.

(_β_) The more particular, then, the character is, which relies purely

on itself, and consequently readily approaches evil, to that extent

it is forced in the concrete world of reality to maintain itself, not

merely against the obstacles which lie in its path and prevent the

realization of life's aims, but so much more by this very realization

such is driven headlong to its downfall. In other words, on account

of the fact that it achieves its object, the fate that has its origin

in the specific nature of its character itself, deals it a blow in a

mode of destruction it has itself prepared. The development of this

fatality is, however, not merely a development from the _action_ of the

particular personality, but quite as much a growth of the soul[274],

a development of the _character_ itself in its headlong movement,

its running wild, its shattering in pieces or exhaustion. Among the

Greeks, for whom pathos, the substantive content of action, rather

than the personal character, is the important feature, a destiny

affects the character that is thus sharply defined to a less degree for

this reason, that it is not further evolved within the sphere of its

activities, but remains at their conclusion what it was at the start.

In the compass of our present subject-matter, however, by the carrying

through of the action itself, the inner life of the personality is

evolved quite as much as the progress of the action; the advance is

not simply on the outside. The action of Macbeth appears at the same

time a descent of the soul into savagery, accompanied by a result

which, when all irresolution is thrown to the winds, and the dice is

cast, leaves nothing further able to restrain it. His wife is from the

very first decided: development is shown here merely as the anxiety

of the soul, which is carried to the point of physical and spiritual

ruin, the madness, in short, which strikes her down. And this is the

kind of process which we can follow in the majority of Shakespeare's

characters, whether important or unimportant. The characters of ancient

drama assert themselves, no doubt, also on fixed lines, and we find

them even face to face with opposed forces, relief from which is no

longer possible except through the advent of a _deus ex machina._ Yet

this stability, as in the case of Philoctetes, is united to a content,

and, on the whole, penetrated with a pathos which may be vindicated on

ethical grounds.

(_γ_) In the sphere of presentation we are now considering, owing to

the contingent nature of all that the characters which belong to it

seize upon as their aim and the independence of their individuality,

no _objective reconciliation_ is possible. The environment of all that

they are, and what opposes their progress, is in part without defined

lines, but also in part we see that there is neither a "Whence" nor a

"Whither" unriddled for themselves. Here we have once more presented

to us that Fate which is the most abstract form of Necessity. The only

reconciliation of the individual issues from the infinite mode of his

soul-life, his own steadfastness, in which he stands supreme over his

passion and his destiny. "Thus it came to pass,"[275] whatever falls

in his way, whether it be due to a controlling destiny, necessity or

accident, there is his "Wherefore"; he accepts it at once without

further reflection. It is fact, and man adjusts himself thereto, and

tries to make himself as stone toward its authority.

(_b_) In absolute contrast to the above, however, there is a further

or _second_ mode in which the formal aspect of character may find its

seat within the _innermost_ of soul-life, and in which the individual

may remain fixed without being able to extend its range or execute its

effects.

(_α_) Such are those spiritual natures of intrinsic substance, who,

while self-absorbed in a complex whole, are only able in the simplicity

of their compactness[276] to perfect that profound activity within the

shrine of the soul without further development or explication in the

world around them. The formalism which we have hitherto been examining

was relative to the defined character of the content, the entire

self-concentration[277] of the individual upon one object, which it

makes to appear in all its unrelieved severity, a concentration which

expressed itself, was carried out, and in which, just as circumstances

fell out, either collapsed or held on to the end. This further mode

of formalism is emphasized in a converse way by its undisclosed and

formless character, and by its defect of expression and expository

power. A soul of this type is like some precious jewel, which is only

visible at certain points, a manifestation which is that of a lightning

flash.

(_β_) And the reason that such state of self-seclusion should still be

of worth and interest to us is due to the fact that it presupposes a

secret wealth of the soul, which, however, only permits its infinite

depth and fulness, and precisely, by means of this silence, to show

itself in a few and so to speak half-muted ways of expression. Such

simple natures, unconscious of what they possess, and without speech,

may exercise an extraordinary fascination. But that this may be so

their silence must be like the unruffled stillness of the sea upon

its surface, over its unsounded depths, not the silence of all that

is shallow, hollow, and stupid. It is quite possible sometimes for

the dullest fellow to succeed by means of an external demeanour that

manages very little to expose itself, and merely presents now and

again something that is but half intelligible, to awake in others

the opinion that it is the veil of a profound wisdom and spiritual

depth, so that people wonder what in the world lies hidden in such a

heart and soul, where we find in the end there is just nothing. The

infinite content and profundity of _silent_ souls of the genuine type

is made clear to us--and to declare it makes the greatest demand on

the intuitive powers and executive ability of the artist--by means of

isolated, unrelated, naïve, and involuntary expressions of soul-life,

which quite unintentionally make it plain to all who can grasp their

significance that such a soul has seized upon the substantial import

of all that confronts it with the richest quality of spiritual

insight, that its reflective capacity, however, is not carried further

by positive expansion into the general environment of particular

interests, motives, and finite aims, but rather preserves its original

purity that the fact it refuses to have its powers dissipated by the

commonplace excitements of the heart and the serious quests and modes

of sympathy which are thus inevitable, may remain unknown to the world.

(_γ_) A time must, however, arrive for a soul of this type in which

it becomes uniquely affected at one definite point of attachment in

that inward worlds it concentrates the whole of its undivided powers

in one supreme form of emotion that dominates its life-current; it

adheres to this with a force that refuses to be diverted, and secures

happiness therein, or goes to ground from lack of support. To retain

a hold on life a man requires a constantly expanding breadth of

ethical sustenance, which alone supplies an objective stability. To

this type of character belong some of the most fascinating figures in

romantic art, whose full perfection of beauty we shall find among the

creations of Shakespeare. As an illustration we may take the Juliet

in his "Romeo and Juliet." It is possible at this moment to see a

reproduction of this play in this city[278]. It is well worth going

to. The picture we have given us there of this character is a moving,

lifelike, passionate, talented, highly finished and noble one. But for

all that it is possible to entertain a somewhat different conception

of the part. In other words, we may figure for ourselves a maiden in

the first instance simple as a child, of only fourteen or fifteen years

of age, who, it is quite clear, has as yet no self-knowledge or world

wisdom, no emotional activity, no strong inclination or wishes of the

heart, but has rather glanced into the motley show of the world as into

some _laterna magica_ without learning anything from it, or reflecting

upon what is seen there. All in a twinkling we behold the development

of the entire strength of this soul, of its artfulness[279], its

circumspection, its force; it is prepared to sacrifice everything and

to submit itself to the severest ordeals, so that in its entirety it

now suddenly appears to be the first breaking forth of the full rose

in all its petals and folds, an infinite outburst of the innermost

purity which gushes from the spring source of the soul, in which it

had held itself back previously as yet undiscerned, unmoulded and

undeveloped; which moreover, as the now existing creation of _one_

awakened interest, betrays itself unpremeditated in the fulness and

strength of its beauty from the previous seclusion of spirit. It is

a brand which one spark has kindled, a bud which at the first bare

touch of love breaks unawares before us in full bloom. And yet the

faster it unfolds the more rapidly it also sinks, and its petals

fall from it. An impetuous progress is still more conspicuous in the

case of Miranda. Brought up in seclusion we have her portrayed for

us by Shakespeare at the critical moment when she first makes the

acquaintance of manhood[280]. He depicts her in a few scenes, but in

those we get a picture that is complete and unforgettable. We may

also include Schiller's Thecla under the same type, despite the fact

that it is rather the creation of a reflective kind of poetry[281].

Though placed in the midst of a life of such amplitude and richness she

remains unaffected by it; she remains within it without vanity, without

reflection, purely absorbed by the one interest which alone dominates

her soul. And as a general rule it is chiefly the beautiful and noble

natures of women, in which the world and their own heart-life blossoms

for the first time in love, so that it is as though their spiritual

birth here takes its rise.

Under the same type of spiritual intensity, which is unable fully to

unfold itself, we may for the most part classify those folksongs, more

particularly our German ones, which, in the copious compactness of the

soul-life therein reflected, and however much such is displayed to

us as carried away by any one absorbing interest, are yet unable to

express the same except in broken flashes, and thereby fully reveal

just this very depth. It is a mode of artistic presentment, which in

its reserve is apt to fall back on the effects of symbolism. What it

offers us is not so much the open, transparent display of the entire

inward life as it is purely a _sign_ and indication of that life.

But we do not get, however, from it a symbol, the significance of

which, as was the case previously, remains a general abstraction, but

an expression the inward content of which is nothing more nor less

than this personal, living, and actual soul. In times like our own,

dominated by a critical reflectiveness, which lies so far removed from

a self-absorbed _naïveté_ of this kind, such presentations are of the

greatest difficulty, and if successful, are a sure proof of an original

creative genius. We have already seen that Goethe, more particularly in

his lyrics, has shown himself a master in this respect, namely, that he

can depict and unfold to us in a symbolical way, in other words with a

few simple, apparently external and insignificant traits, the entire

truth and infinite wealth of a soul. His poem, "The King of Thule," one

of his most lovely bits of poetical work, is of this class. The king

here makes us aware of his love by just one thing only, namely, the

drinking cup which the old man preserved as a gift of his beloved. The

old carouser stands up there on the point of death in his lofty palace

hall; his knights, his kingdom, his possessions are around him; and

he bequeaths them all to his heir, but the goblet he flings into the

waves; no one shall have that.

/$

Er sah ihn stürzen, trinken,

Und sinken tief in's Meer,

Die Augen thäten ihm sinken,

Trank nie ein Tropfen mehr[282].

$/

A soul, however profound and still of this kind, which retains its

energy of spirit pent up like the spark in the flint, unopened to

form, which does not elaborate its existence and reflection beyond its

own boundaries, has also failed to free itself by such expansion. It

remains exposed to the remorseless contradiction that, if the false

note of unhappiness ring through its life, it possesses no remedial

aptitude, no bridge as a way of passage between the heart and reality;

it is equally unable to ward off external conditions from itself, and

by so doing to preserve an independent ground of vantage in its own

self-reliance. When the collision comes therefore it is helpless; it

acts hastily and without circumspection, or bows passively to the

movement of events. So, for example, we have in Hamlet a beautiful

and noble soul; one not so much spiritually weak, but one that

wanders astray without a strong grasp of life's realities, moving in

an atmosphere of dejection, a sombre and half articulate melancholy.

Gifted with a finely intuitive sense he feels that all is not well with

him, that things are not as they should be though he has no external

sign, no single ground for suspicion; nevertheless he surmises the

atrocious deed that has been perpetrated. The ghost of his father

gives yet closer embodiment to his feelings. He is at once ready in

spirit to revenge, his sense of duty is always before him reflecting

the innermost craving of his heart, but he is not carried away with

the flood, as Macbeth; he cannot either kill, rage, or strike with the

directness of a Laertes; he persists in the inactivity of a beautiful,

introspective soul, which can neither realize its aims nor make itself

at home in the conditions of actual life. He dallies, seeks for more

positive certainty buoyed up by the fair integrity of his soul; he

can, however, come to no firm decision, much as he has sought it,

and permits himself to follow the course of external events. In this

atmosphere of unreality he goes yet further astray in matters that lie

directly in his path; he kills the old Polonius instead of the king;

he acts in a hurry where he should have been more circumspect, yet

persists in his self absorption, where decided action is essential;

until at length, without any action on his part, the fated _dénouement_

of the entire drama, including that of his own persistently

self-retiring personality, has unravelled itself on the broad highway

of Life's external incidents and accidents.

We are particularly presented with this attitude in modern times

among men of the lower levels of life, who are without an education

which extends to aims of universal significance, or are devoid of the

variety of objective interests. Consequently when some _particular_

aim of their life fails they are unable to secure any further stay of

their spiritual forces and a centre of control for their activities.

This lack of education tends to make reserved natures, in proportion

as it is undeveloped, adhere with the more rigidness and obstinacy to

that which, through its appeal to their entire individuality, makes

a claim upon them however limited in its range it may be. We find

pre-eminently such a monotonous attitude incidental to this class

of self-absorbed and speechless men among German characters, who

for this reason appear in their seclusion inclined to stubbornness,

ready to bristle up, crabbed, inaccessible, and in their dealings and

expressions wholly unreliable and contradictory. As a master in the

delineation and exposition of such obtuse characters of the poorer

classes we will mention but one example, Hippel, the author of "Life's

Careers in the Line of Ascent,"[283] one of our few German works

stamped with original humour. He keeps himself wholly removed from

Jean Paul's sentimentality and want of taste in plot construction,

and possesses moreover an astonishing individuality, freshness, and

vitality. He understands, in quite an exceptional way, and one that

seizes on our interest at once, how to depict the thickset type of

people who are unable to breathe freely and who consequently, when

they do give themselves the rein, do so with a violence that is

simply fearful. They put an end of their own accord to the infinite

contradiction of their spiritual life and the unhappy circumstances

in which they are involved in an appalling manner; and bring about by

such means that which is otherwise the result of an external fate, as

we find, for instance, in "Romeo and Juliet," where external accidents

mar all the wise and able offices of the holy father's intervention and

cause the death of the lovers.

(_c_) We find, then, that characters of this formal quality generally

either expose merely the infinite volitional force of the individual's

personality, which asserts itself frankly just as it is and storms

ahead in the bare impulse of the will; or, to take the further

aspect, present to us an essential self-contained[284], if not wholly

articulate soul, which, affected as it becomes by one specific aspect

of its spiritual experience, concentrates the entire breadth and

depth of its personality on this point, yet, owing to the fact of its

possessing no development externally, is unable to find its proper

place or to act with practical sense when it comes into collision

with that world. We have yet a _third_ point[285] to mention, which

consists in this, that when characters of this type, wholly one-sided

and restricted as they are in respect to their aims if at the same time

fully developed in mental power, awake in us not merely a _formal_,

but also a _substantial_ interest, we cannot fail to receive the

impression that this limitation of their personal life is itself only

a condition that is inevitable; in other words it is a result which

grows out of the particular way in which their character is defined

along with the profounder content of their personal life. Shakespeare

in fact enables us to see this depth and wealth in such characters.

He presents them to us as men of imaginative power and genius by

showing how their reflective faculty commands them and lifts them

above that which their condition and definite purpose would make them,

so that they are all the while as it were forced by the misfortune

of circumstances and the obstacles of their position into doing that

which they accomplish. At the same time we do not mean this to the

extent of asserting, for example, that the bad witches were to blame

for all that Macbeth dared after consulting them. These witches are

rather to be looked at as the reflex of his own obstinate will. All

that the characters of Shakespeare execute, that is the particular

purpose they propose, originates and finds the taproot of its force in

their own personality. But along with this they maintain in one and

the same individuality a loftiness, which brushes aside that which

they actually are, so far as their aims, interests, and actions are

concerned, and which amplifies them and exalts them above themselves.

In like manner Shakespeare's more vulgar characters, such as Stephano,

Trinculo, Pistol, and that hero among them all, Falstaff, though

saturated with their own debasement, assert themselves as fellows of

intelligence, whose genial quality is able to take in everything,

to possess a large and open atmosphere of its own, and in short

makes them all that great men are. In the tragedies of the French on

the contrary even the greatest and most worthy characters only too

frequently, if viewed critically, assert themselves as so many evil

offshoots of the brute creation, whose only intelligence consists in

this that it can furnish dialectical arguments in its vindication.

In Shakespeare we find neither vindication nor damnation, but merely

a review of the general condition of destiny, which inevitably places

such characters uncomplaining and unrepentant where they are, and from

the starting-point of which they see everything, themselves included;

and yet as independent spectators of themselves decline and fall.

In all these respects the realm which is peopled by such individual

characters is an infinitely rich one, a kingdom, however, which very

easily collapses in hollowness and dulness, so that only quite a few

masters have received the gifts of poetical and intuitional power

sufficient to enable them to reveal its truth.

2. THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE

Now that we have examined the aspect of the inward soul-life, which

may, at this stage of our inquiry, be presented by art, we must direct

our attention to that which lies without it, to the particularity

of circumstances and situations which affect character, also to the

collisions in which its development proceeds, and finally review the

entire collective form, which this inward life assumes within the

boundaries of concrete reality.

It is, as we have more than once pointed out, a fundamental determinant

of romantic art, that the spiritual sense, in other words, the soul

in its aspect of self-reflection, should constitute a whole, and

relates itself for this reason to the external world, not, in its own

reality, inter-penetrated by this world, but as though related to

something purely external and separated from it, which goes on its way

independently disjoined from Spirit, is thus evolved, and thus disposes

of itself as a finite and continuously fluid, changing, and complicate

object of contingent causality[286]. To the self-absorbed soul it is

as wholly a matter of indifference what particular circumstances it

confronts, as it is an affair of chance what those circumstances are

which appear before it. For in its action it is less a matter of

importance that it should carry out a work whose essential basis is

rooted in itself and owes its subsistency to its own character than

that it should generally make itself effective in action.

(_a_) We have, in short, before us here a process which we may from

one point of view describe as the rejection of the Divine from

Nature. Spirit has here withdrawn itself from the externality of

phenomena, which, for the reason that the inward life no longer sees

itself reflected in this sphere[287], is now independently clothed

on its part under a relation of indifference exterior to the subject

of consciousness. Relatively to its truth Spirit is, no doubt, in

its own medium mediated and reconciled with the Absolute: but in so

far as we now take up our position on the ground of self-subsistent

individuality, which proceeds from itself as it discovers itself in

its immediacy, this divesting of the Divine[288] affects character in

its active capacity. It moves forward, that is to say, with its own

contingent aims into a world equally subject to chance, with which

it fails to unite itself in an essentially harmonious whole. This

relative character of purpose in an environment which is relative,

whose determination and development does not subsist in the individual

mind, but is defined externally and contingently and is responsible for

collisions equally adventitious, which appear as offshoots that are

unexpectedly interwoven with it, creates that to which we give the name

of "the adventurous," which supplies the _fundamental type_ of romance

for the mode of its events and actions.

It is necessary that the action and dramatic event in so far as they

apply strictly to the Ideal and classic art, should be referable

to an essentially true or, in other words, independently explicit

and necessary end, in whose conformation that which is also the

determinating factor for the external form, for the particular type and

mode of execution, is an object of real existence. In the case of the

acts and events of romantic art this is not the case. For, although

essentially universal and substantive ends are also presented in their

manner of realization by this type, the definition of the action which

is referable to such ends, and the principle of co-ordination and

articulation which appears in its progress on its spiritual side[289]

is not the direct result of those ends themselves; this aspect of

realization is inevitably left independent and subject to the operation

of contingency.

(_α_) The romantic world had one and only _one absolute_ work to

accomplish, namely, the extension of Christendom, and the bringing into

manifest performance the spirit of the community[290]. Situated in the

midst of a hostile world consisting in part of the unbelieving ancient

_régime_, and in part of a human life which was barbarous and coarse,

the character of its actual accomplishment, in so far as it passed

from mere theory to deeds, was, in the main, the passive endurance of

pain and torture, the sacrifice of its own temporal existence for the

eternal salvation of the soul. A further product of its energies, which

is equally a portion of the same essential content, is, in the Middle

Ages, that carried out by Christian Chivalry, the driving forth of the

Moors, Arabs, and Mohammedans generally from Christian countries, and,

above all, along with it, the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre in the

Crusades. This, however, was not an object which affected man simply as

human[291], but one which a mere collection of isolated individuals had

to accomplish under conditions in which the individuals which composed

it streamed together at their own free will and pleasure as such. From

such a point of view we may call the Crusades the collective adventure

of the Christian Middle Ages; an adventure, which was essentially

subject to lapses[292], and fantastical, of a spiritual tendency, and

yet devoid of a truly spiritual aim, and in its relation to action and

character delusive. For in its relation to the processes of religion,

the supreme object of the Crusades is in the highest degree empty and

external. Christianity purported to secure its salvation solely in

Spirit, in Christ, who is raised to the right hand of God; it finds

its living reality and stay in Spirit, not in the grave of Spirit, or

in the sensuous, immediately present localities of its former temporal

abiding-place. The impulse and religious yearning of the Middle

Ages, however, was centred on the spot, the external locality of the

Passion and the Holy Sepulchre. In just the same direct contradiction

with the religious object we find that wholly worldly one which was

bound up with conquest; a possession, which in its relation to the

secular world, carried a totally different character to that of a truly

religious purpose. Men would fain win for themselves what was spiritual

and health to their souls, and they set before them as an aim a purely

material locality, from which Spirit had vanished; they strained after

a gain that was temporal, and united this which was of the world to the

pure substance of religion. It is this distraction which gives us the

discordant and fantastic note in such enterprises in which we find that

which is of the world confound the life of soul, or the latter prove

the confounding of the former instead of a harmony which is the result

of both. And for the same reason much that is contradictory appears in

the execution unresolved. Piety is carried to the point of rawness and

barbarous cruelty. And this rawness permits every kind of selfishness

and passion to break forth, or casts itself conversely once more upon

the eternal depths which either move or bruise the human spirit, and

which are, in truth, the heart and substance of the matter. In the

medley of elements so discrepant, there is also an absence of all unity

in the object proposed by the exploits and events themselves, or in

the consequential power of authority. The host of men is diverted and

split up in single adventures, victories, defeats, and a variety of

accidents; and the outcome of it all fails to correspond to the means

and enormous preparations which were involved. Nay, the object itself

is stultified in the execution. For the Crusades would once again bring

truth to the sentence: "Thou couldst not leave him in peace in the

grave, thou didst not suffer thy holy one to see corruption." But it

is precisely this longing to find Christ and spiritual content in such

places and spaces, even the grave itself, the place of death, which

is itself, whatever essential worth even a Chateaubriand may make out

of it, a corruption of Spirit, out of which Christianity must rise in

resurrection in order to return once more to the fresh and abundant

life of the concrete world.

An object of much the same kind, mystical from one point of view,

equally fantastical from another, and adventurous in its undertaking,

is the search of the Holy Grail.

(_β_) A more exalted emprise is that which every man has to go through

in his own domain, his life, in the course of which he determines

his eternal destiny. It is this object which Dante has, consistently

with the catholic standpoint, seized upon in his "Divine Comedy" as

he conducts us in turn through hell, purgatory, and paradise. In this

poem, too, despite the strenuous co-ordination of the whole, we have

abundant evidence of conceptions which are fantastic[293], aspects that

are suffused with the spirit of adventure, in so far, at any rate, as

this work in its blessing and cursing is not carried through merely in

the explicit form of universal statement, but as referable to an almost

innumerable company of distinct personalities, not to mention the fact

that the _poet_ takes upon himself the _fiat_ of his church, seizes

the keys of heaven in his hand, adjudicates both bliss and damnation,

and so constitutes himself the judge of the v world, who places the

best known individuals both of the ancient and Christian eras, whether

poets, citizens, cardinals, or popes, respectively in hell, purgatory,

or paradise.

(_γ_) The remaining material, on the basis of the _worldly_ life, which

leads up to action and event, consists in the infinitely manifold

and venturesome experiments of imaginative idea, all that element of

chance in what arises either without or within the soul from love,

honour, and fidelity. At one time we may see men thus affected box

the compass for their own reputation's sake, at another leap to help

persecuted innocence, carry out amazing exploits in defence of the

honour of their lady, or vindicate some right that is invaded with the

strength of their own arm, and the able use of their own weapons; and

this albeit the innocence which is delivered prove only a company of

knaves. In the majority of such cases there is absolutely no condition,

no situation, no conflict before us in virtue of which we can assert

that action follows as a _necessary_ result. The soul simply wills it

and _intentionally_ looks out for adventure. The exploits of love,

for instance, in such cases have for the most part, if we look at

their more specific content, no other real principle of determination

beyond the effort to give proof of the steadfastness, fidelity, and

constancy of love, to testify that all the surrounding world, together

with the entire complexus of its relations, is merely of value as so

much material in which love may be brought to light. For this reason

the specific act of such manifestation, since the only thing that

matters is the proof, is not determined by its own course, but is left

dependent on a freak of chance, the mood of the lady, the caprice of

external accidents. The same principle holds where the objects are

honour or bravery. They are proper to an individual who holds himself

far aloof from all further content of a more substantive character, who

is perfectly able to enter into any and every content as it may chance

to occur, to find himself the object of insult therein, or to look for

an opportunity in which he may display his courage and shrewdness.

As we have here absolutely no criterion as to what should or what

should not form part of this content, in the same way also we have no

principle in accordance with which we can fix what in each case is

really an attack upon honour or the true subject-matter of bravery. It

is just the same with the treatment of _right_, which is likewise an

object of chivalry. In other words, right and law are here not as yet

asserted as a condition and object which is of essentially independent

stability, or as a system which is continuously made more perfect in

accordance with law and its necessary content, but as themselves purely

the product of individual caprice, so that their interposition, no

less than the judgment passed upon that which in every particular case

is held to be right or wrong, is throughout relegated to the entirely

haphazard criteria of individual judgment.

(_b_) What we have before us generally, more particularly on the

secular field, in chivalry and the formalism of character above

indicated, is not merely, to a more or less degree, the contingency of

the circumstantial conditions of human action, but also that of the

soul in its attitude of volition. For individuals of this one-sided

characterization are capable of accepting as the substance of their

life that which is wholly contingent, conduct that is only sustained

by virtue of the energy of their character, and is carried out, or

fails in its contact with the inevitable collisions which the condition

of the world opposes to it. The same thing is true of the chivalry

which receives in honour, love, and fidelity a more lofty ground of

justification, and one entitled to rank with a truly ethical basis. On

the one hand, it is still emphatically a matter of chance on account of

the particular aspect of the circumstances on which it reacts; we find

that here the object is to carry out aims peculiar to some particular

person, instead of some work of general significance, and the modes

of its attachment with the rest of life fail to possess independent

stability. On the other hand, precisely at the point where we consider

such action as part of the personal life of individuals, we are aware

of the presence of caprice and illusion in respect to all that it

either projects, originates, or undertakes. The net result of such a

spirit of enterprise consequently, through all that it performs or

enters upon, no less than in its ultimate effects, is no other than a

world of events and fatalities which is self-dissolvent, a world of

comedy for this very reason.

This self-dissolution of Chivalry we find set before us and

artistically reproduced, pre-eminently and with unsurpassed adequacy,

by Ariosto and Cervantes, and, so far as it affects the fate of

such highly individual characters as those above described in their

isolation, by Shakespeare.

(_α_) In Ariosto, more particularly, an attempt is made to delight the

reader with the infinitely varied developments of personal destiny and

aims, the fabulous complexity of fantastic relations and ludicrous

situations over which the adventurous fancy of the poet plays to

the point of absolute frivolity. The heroes of these dramas are

seriously engaged in what is often unadulterated folly and the wildest

eccentricity. And, to note especial points, love is frequently degraded

from the Divine love of a Dante, or the romantic tenderness of a

Petrarca, to sensual tales and ludicrous collisions; or heroism appears

to be screwed up to a pitch that is so incredible it ceases to amaze,

and merely excites a smile over the fabulousness of such exploits. By

virtue, however, of this indifference in respect to the particular

manner in which dramatic situations are brought about, astonishing

complications and conflicts are introduced, broken off and once more

interwoven, chopped about, and finally resolved in a surprising way;

yet, despite his ludicrous treatment of chivalry, Ariosto is as able

to secure and display to us the true nobility and greatness which we

may find in chivalry, or the exhibition of courage, love, honour, and

bravery, as he can on occasion excellently depict other passions,

cunning, subtlety, presence of mind, and much else.

(_β_) Just as Ariosto inclines more to the _fabulous_ element in this

spirit of adventure, Cervantes develops that aspect of it which is

appropriate to _romantic_ fiction. We find in his Don Quixote a noble

nature in whose adventures chivalry goes mad, the substance of such

adventures being placed as the centre of a stable and well-defined

state of things whose external character is copied with exactness

from nature. This produces the humorous contradiction of a rationally

constituted world on the one hand, and an isolated soul on the other,

which seeks to create the same order and stability entirely through

his own exertions and the knight-errantry which could only destroy

it. Despite, however, this ludicrous confusion we have still in Don

Quixote that which we have already eulogized in Shakespeare. Cervantes

has created in his hero an original figure of noble nature endowed

with varied spiritual qualities, and one which at the same time

throughout retains our full interest. In all the madness of his mind

and his enterprise he is a completely consistent[294] soul, or rather

his madness lies in this, that he is and remains securely rooted in

himself and his enterprise. Without this unreflecting equanimity

respectively to the content and result of his actions he would fail

to be a truly romantic figure; and this self-assuredness, if we look

at the substantive character of his opinions, is throughout great and

indicative of his genius, adorned as it is with the finest traits of

character. And, further, the entire work is a satire upon the chivalry

of romance, ironical from beginning to end in the truest sense. In

Ariosto this genius of adventure is merely the butt of frivolous jest.

From another point of view, however, the exploits of Don Quixote are

merely the central thread around which a succession of genuinely

romantic tales are intertwined in the most charming way, in order

to unfold the true worth of that which the romance in other respects

scatters to the winds with the genius of comedy.

(_γ_) In somewhat the same way as we thus have seen chivalry, even

in respect to its most momentous interests, overturned in comedy,

Shakespeare, too, either places the characters and scenes of comedy in

juxtaposition to his downright and stable individualities, and tragic

situations and conflicts, or exalts the essential figures of his drama

through a profound humour above themselves and their uncouth, limited,

and false purposes. Falstaff, the fool in "Lear," the musician scene in

"Romeo and Juliet," will sufficiently illustrate the first alternative,

and Richard III the second.

(_c_) The dissolution of romance, in the sense we have hitherto

regarded it, introduces us finally and in the third place to the

spirit of the _novel_[295], in our modern sense of the term, which

historically the knight-errantry and pastoral romances precede. This

spirit of modern fiction is, in fact, that of chivalry, once more

taken seriously and receiving a true content. The contingent character

of external existence has changed to a stable, secure order of civic

society and state-life, so that now police administration, tribunals

of justice, the army and political government generally take the place

of those chimerical objects which the knight of chivalry proposed to

himself. For this reason the knightly character of the heroes who

play their parts in our modern novels is altered. Confronted by the

existing order and the ordinary prose of life they appear before us as

individuals with personal aims of love, honour, ambition, and ideals of

world reform, ideals in the path of which that order presents obstacles

on every side. The result is that personal desires and demands unroll

themselves[296] before this opposition to unfathomable heights. Every

man finds himself face to face with an enchanted world that is by no

means all that he asks for, which he must contend with for the reason

that it contends with himself, and in its tenacious stability refuses

to give way before his passions, but interposes as an obstacle the

will of some one else whoever it may be, his father's, his aunt's, or

social conditions generally. For the most part such a knighthood will

consist of young people, who feel it incumbent upon them to hew their

way through a world which makes for its own realization rather than

that of their ideals, and who hold it a misfortune that there should

be family ties, civic society, state laws, professions, and all the

rest of such things at all, because conditions of such solidity and so

inevitably restricted are so cruelly opposed to their ideal dreams and

the infinite claims of their souls. The main object now is to drive a

breach through this wall of facts, to change, to improve, or at least

carve for themselves in despite of it some little heaven on earth such

as they seek for, their ideal maiden, discover her, win her from the

clutches of her wicked relations or her evil circumstances, carry her

off and lay the balm of love on her wounds. Conflicts of this kind,

however, in our modern world are the apprentice years, the education of

individuality in the actual world; they have no further significance,

but the significance has, nevertheless, a real value. The object

and consummation of such apprenticeship consists in this, that the

individual drops his horns and finds his own place, together with his

wishes and opinions in social conditions as they are and the rational

order which belongs to them, that he enters, in short, upon the varied

field of life, and secures that position within it which is appropriate

to his powers. However soundly he may have rated the world and have

been shoved on one side, the day comes at last with the most of us

when the maiden is discovered and some kind of place in the world, he

marries, and is as much a Philistine as the rest of his neighbours. His

wife takes charge of his domestic arrangements; children do not fail to

put in an appearance; the adorable wife who was so unique, an angel,

acts very much as other wives do; the profession supplies its toils

and vexations, the married tie its domestic sorrows, and, in short, we

have the entire process of marital caterwauling once more illustrated.

In this history we may see the same old type of the adventurous spirit

with this distinction, that here that spirit discovers its real

significance, and all that is wholly fantastic in it receives its

necessary correction.

3. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ROMANTIC TYPE OF ART

The last point which we have to establish still more closely is

that relatively to which the romantic spirit, for the reason that

it already is _intrinsically_ the principle of the dissolution of

the classic Ideal, manifests, in fact, this _dissolution_ clearly as

such a process. In this connection it is of the first importance to

consider the ultimately complete contingent and external character

of the material, which the activity of the artist seizes on and

informs. In the plastic material of the plastic arts the spiritual

conception is so related to the external medium that this external

show is the embodiment which uniquely belongs to that spiritual

significance itself, and possesses no real independence apart from

it. In romantic art, on the contrary, in which we find the inwardness

of Spirit withdraws within its own domain, the entire content of the

_external_ world secures the freedom of unfettered independence and the

assured subsistency of its own peculiar character and particularity.

Conversely, as we have seen, if the personal life of soul forms the

essential feature in the artistic product, it is a question of similar

indifference with what specific content of external reality and the

spiritual world the soul is vitally connected. The romantic Idea can

therefore assert itself through _every_ sort of condition; can embrace

every conceivable position, circumstance, relation, aberration,

confusion, conflict, and means of satisfaction; it is simply its own

personal and self-subsistent mode of conformation, the expression and

receptive form of the soul rather than any objective independently

valid form which is the object of search and is made good. In the

representation of romantic art therefore everything has its due place,

all the departments and phenomena of life, the greatest and the least,

the highest and most insignificant, what is moral with that which

is immoral and evil. And we may further note in particular that the

more secular the art becomes, the more it amasses the finite wealth

of the world, the more it takes to it with, delight, bestows upon

it a validity that is without reserve and exists for the artist in

such a world under the sole condition that it is reproduced in its

naked reality, so much the more is art at home with itself. Thus we

may observe in Shakespeare, on account of the fact that with him the

action as a rule runs its course in the most realistic association

with objective life, and is isolated and broken up in a mass of purely

accidental relations, and conditions of every kind, the least important

and most incidental no less than the most sovereign flights and most

weighty interests of poetry are each and all substantiated. So in

"Hamlet" we have the sentry on watch no less than the royal court;

in "Romeo and Juliet" the domestic _ménage_; in other pieces, not to

mention clowns, swashbucklers, and all the vulgarities of ordinary

life, we have pot-houses, carriers, chamber-pots and fleas, much as

in the representations by romantic art of the birth of Christ and the

adoration of the kings we do not fail to find oxen and asses, mangers

and straw[297]. And this is the kind of thing throughout, that the

scriptural text may receive its fulfilment, too, in art, "they that are

of low estate shall be exalted." It is from out this contingent sphere

of its subject-matter, which in a measure asserts itself as merely the

environment of a content intrinsically more important and in part also

in absolute independence, that the _downfall_ of romantic art issues,

to which we have already above adverted. In other words we have, on the

one hand, objective reality placed before us in what is from the point

of view of the Ideal its _prosaic objectivity_, that is, the content of

everyday life, which is not grasped in the substantive form in which

it adumbrates what is both moral and divine, but rather in that which

is for ever changing and which as temporal passes away. And, in the

further aspect of it, it is also the _subjective condition_, which,

with its emotion and insight, with the principle and authority of its

wit or humour, is able to exalt itself in mastery over the entire world

of the real, a mastery which leaves nothing in the ordinary connections

and significance where the commonsense consciousness finds it, and

is not fully satisfied until it has proved that everything which is

a part of that world is, by virtue of the form and relative position

which it receives from the view of it, mood and supreme gifts of the

artist[298], itself intrinsically capable of being broken up, and, as

such, is for the artistic vision and feeling dissolved. We have now, in

this connection, first, to add a few words on the principle contained

in those very varied works of art whose level of representation

approximates closely to the ordinary appearance of objective or

external reality, what in common parlance is called the imitation of

Nature.

_Secondly_, we shall have to discuss humour as a personal quality

in the artist. It plays a very considerable part in modern art, and

is that which in the case of many poets distinctively supplies the

fundamental character of their work.

_Thirdly_, it remains for us to offer a few suggestions, in conclusion,

on the point of view from which it is still possible for the art of

to-day to find a field for its activities.

(_a_) _The Artistic Imitation of what is Immediately presented by

Nature_

The realm of subjects which may be included in this sphere v of

artistic activity may be extended indefinitely for the reason that Art

takes for its content here not that which is by its own inherent law

necessary[299], the range of which is essentially self-contained, but

the contingent phenomena of reality in their unlimited modifications

of form and relation, Nature and her kaleidoscopic play of separate

pictures, the everyday action and affairs of man in his dependence

on natural conditions and their means of his satisfaction, in his

accidental habits also, attitudes, activities of family life, his

business as a citizen, and, generally, the incalculable variety of

all that shifts and changes in the world around us. And for this

reason this art is not merely, in the broad sense that applies more

or less to the romantic spirit in all its manifestations, a type

of portraiture: rather it tends to lose itself completely in the

mode of its portrayal, whether it be in sculpture, painting, or in

the descriptions of poetry. The tendency is to return to the exact

imitation of Nature, in other words, to the intentional approach to

the contingent aspects of what is immediately before the vision and

independently thus presented, prosaic existence in all its ugliness no

less than its beauty. The question, therefore, at once suggests itself

whether productions of this character have any right to be called art

at all. No doubt, if we simply fix before our attention the notion of

artistic work which fully corresponds to the Ideal, work which from one

point of view it is of the first importance that their content shall

not be thus intrinsically accidental or evanescent, and from another

point of view that their mode of presentation must be adequate in all

respects to such a content, then such artistic productions as we are

now considering will unquestionably appear to fall short. On the other

hand, there is another fundamental aspect of art which assumes here

an exceptional importance. This is the conception and execution of a

work of art which are personal to the artist, the aspect, that is, of

an individual talent, which is able to remain true to the inherently

substantive life of Nature no less than the embodiments of spiritual

experience though carried to the very limits of contingent condition

with which they may be involved, and which is further competent through

the vividness of its truth to import a significance into that which

is by itself insignificant, no less than by the amazing ability of

the technical execution itself. We have consequently to consider here

the degree in which the soul, that is, the genius and vitality of the

artist, is able to enter into the very being of such objects--whether

we consider their dominant idea[300], or the purely external form

of their appearance--and thus makes them visible in his art to our

eyes. And if we look at it from this point of view it will be found

impossible to deny that such creations have a genuine claim to the name

of art-products.

If we approach such more closely we shall find that among the

particular arts poetry and painting are the ones which are most

occupied with their subject-matter. For, on the one hand, we see here

that it is that which is itself essentially particular which supplies

their content, and on the other hand it is the accidental though in

this type of art the genuine peculiarities of the objective appearance

which is sought for as the mode of the reproduction. Neither the arts

of architecture, sculpture, or music are adapted to the fulfilment of

such a task.

(_α_) In poetry it is ordinary domestic life--the main source, that is,

of the probity, commonsense spirit, and the morality of everyday[301]

life--which is presented by art in the usual developments of civic

life, in scenes and characters selected from the middle and lower

classes. Among the French Diderot stands out conspicuous for the way

in which he has thus insisted on natural effects and the imitation

of the bluntness of fact. Among Germans it was Goethe and Schiller

who, with more lofty aim, struck out a path somewhat similar in their

youth, but rather, within this naturalness of life itself and its

particular detail, sought after a profounder content and conflicts

of essential significance. And in contrast to them we have Kotzebue

and Iffland, both of whom, in their several ways, the first with a

superficial rapidity of conception and execution, the second with a

more conscientious accuracy of detail and a homely kind of morality,

gave us the counterfeit of the daily life of their time in the prosaic

picture of its more limited aspects, with but a limited sense, either

of them, for genuine poetry. And generally, we may say, that it is

German art more than any other, and particularly that of our own times,

which has fastened with delight on this kind of treatment till it has

reached a sort of. virtuosity in it. In fact for a long period back Art

was more or less something of a stranger and a guest in our country,

not the child of our own loins.

Further, we may observe that in this attraction to the reality that

lies actually before us it is essential that the material assimilated

by such an art be cognate with such reality and at home in it[302];

it must be the national life of the poet and his immediate public.

It is on this very point of the kind of appropriation suited to an

art such as our own, which carried the purpose both in its content

and its methods of representation of making us feel at home in it,

even to the extent of sacrificing both beauty and ideality, that the

impulse originated which led to such a type of artistic production.

Other nations have been inclined to reject such material with scorn,

or only in more recent times have taken a more vital interest in such

opportunities as the ordinary course of human life offers.

(_β_) If we desire, however, to see what is most worthy of our

admiration in such productions, we must turn our attention to the later

genre-painting of the Dutch. We have already in the first part of this

work, when examining the intrinsic character of the Ideal, indicated,

so far as the general spirit of it is concerned, what we take to be

the substantial basis of such work[303]. That contentment in life

under its presentment of direct experience down to the most ordinary

and most insignificant detail is mainly due to the fact that this

people was obliged to work out for itself only after severe struggles

and hard labour that which Nature supplies with far less reserve to

other peoples. Further, circumscribed as it is by local conditions,

it has become great in this very concern for and appreciation of the

least things. From another point of view it is a people of fishermen,

sailors, citizens, and peasants, and for this reason is forced from

the start to rate highly all that may be useful and necessary both in

matters of greatest and least importance which it knows how to secure

with the most assiduous industry. As a further essential feature of its

development the religion of this Dutch folk was Protestantism, and it

is an exclusive characteristic of this form of religion that it seeks

to find a home in the prose of life and suffers the same to remain

just as it is by itself, and independently of religious associations,

and to retain its forms of growth in unrestricted freedom. It would

be quite impossible for any other nation, situated in other external

conditions, to create works of art of such pre-eminent quality from

the kind of material which we have placed before us in the Dutch

school of painting. And, moreover, despite the peculiar nature of this

artistic interest, the Dutch have not by any means discovered their

whole life-in what was necessitous or barren in the conditions of their

existence and what tended to oppress their vitality: on the contrary,

they have reformed their church itself, have overcome a religious

despotism precisely as they overcame the world-power and majesty of

Spain, and have finally through their exertions, their industry, their

bravery and thrift secured for themselves, in the consciousness of

their self-attained liberty, prosperity, comfort, rectitude, courage,

joviality, nay, even a superabundant sense of the joys of ordinary

existence. Herein lies the vindication of the typical subject-matter of

their art. The material of such an art will not, however, satisfy that

profounder significance which is due to a content that is essentially

true. If, however, neither our emotional nor our critical faculties

are wholly content with it the more we consider it closely the more

we shall feel reconciled to such defects. It is an essential part of

the art of painting and the man who paints that they should please and

carry us away with that sense of pleasure. And, to put it bluntly, if

we would really know what painting is, in looking at any particular

canvas we must be, at least, able to say of the master in question:

"Ah, this man can paint." The main point, therefore, does not turn on

the question how far the artist in his work is able to give us an exact

transcription of the object he presents before us. We have already the

completest vision of grapes, flowers, stags, sand-hills, sea, sun,

sky, the finery and decoration of ordinary life, horses, warriors,

peasants, smokers, teeth-extraction, and every kind of domestic scene.

We have only to go to Nature for such things and others like them. What

ought to captivate us is not the content in its bare reality. Rather

it is the appearance, which in comparison with the object is wholly

without interest[304]. This appearance is, moreover, by itself fixed

independently of the beautiful[305], and art consists in the mastery

of its reproduction of all the mysteries of the ever self-deepening

appearance of external phenomena[306]. And, above all, the function of

art consists in this that, armed with an exceptionally fine sense for

such things, it lies in ambush for the momentary and wholly transient

traits which it finds upon the surrounding world observed in its

individual aspects of life, aspects which, however, completely coincide

with the universal laws that dominate the appearance, and can retain

true and secure the most fading apparition. A tree, a landscape, is

something of independent and permanent stability. But to seize upon the

flash of a metal, the gleam of light through the grape, a vanishing

glance of the moon or the sun, a smile, the expressions of spiritual

life which are no sooner seen than they vanish, or ludicrous movements,

situations, and attitudes, to master such evanescent material as this

is the difficult task of this type of work. If classic art in its

Ideal has essentially confined its embodiment to that which is purely

substantive so here we have opened to our vision the changes of Nature

in their fleeting forms of expression, a stream of water, a waterfall,

waves of foam on the sea, still life with the accidental flashes of

glass, plate, and things of like nature, the outward appearance of man

in the most exceptional situations, a wife, for instance, threading her

needle by candle-light, a halt of robbers suddenly surprised, the most

instantaneous fraction of some human posture, the smile or sneer of a

peasant, all the things, in fact, in which men like Ostade, Teniers,

or Steen are masters. It is the triumph of art over the Past, in which

the substantive is likewise filched of its power over that which is

accidental and transitory.

And just as the appearance simply as such reflects the real content

of objects, so we may say that Art, in giving a permanent form to

the evanescent show of things, goes a step further. In other words,

quite apart from the objective realization, the means adopted in the

reproduction are themselves independently an end, in the sense that

the individual ability of the artist, and his use of the means his

art supplies, may itself rank as one of the objects aimed at by the

art product. In quite the early days of the school the artists of the

Netherlands studied profoundly the qualities of colour in its relation

to material substances[307]. Van Eyck, Hemling, and Schoreel[308] were

all of them capable of imitating in the most realistic way the sheen

of gold and silver, the varied light effects of jewels, silk, velvet,

and fur-stuffs. A mastery of this kind which, by the magic of colour

and the mysteries of its enchantment, is able to bring about artistic

results so entirely surprising requires no further vindication; it

justifies itself. As Spirit in thought and in its grasp of the world

by means of ideas and thoughts reproduces itself, so what is most

important here is the individual recreation of the external world,

independently of the bare object itself, in the sensuous medium, of

colours under effects of light and shade. It is in fact a kind of

objective music, a system of colour tones. In music the single tone is

of no value and only produces the musical effect in its relation to

some other, in its opposition, concord, modulation, and unison. It is

precisely the same thing with the music of colour. If we consider the

appearance of painted colour closely such as the gleam of gold or the

flash from the steel of battle we shall only see a number of white or

yellow dashes, points, coloured surfaces. The single colour alone does

not possess this gleam which we gather from the picture. It is only

by its association with other tints that we get the effect of glitter

and flash. Take for example the Atlas of Terburg; every individual

strip of colour here alone is simply a dull gray, more or less whitish,

bluish, or inclining to yellow: only when we take in the entire effect

from a distance, which gives us the relative contrast of each part to

the rest, dawns upon us the beautiful soft sheen which is true of the

genuine Atlas. And it is just the same with our velvet effect, play

of light, exhalation of cloud and so on through all pictorial effect

whatsoever. It is not so much the reflex of the artist's mood[309],

which, as is no doubt frequently the case with landscape, transfers

itself to the objects delineated, as it is the entire ability of the

artist, which seeks to make itself felt in this objective way as the

use of the means at his disposal in such a vital interaction that they

themselves straightway of their own cunning bring to birth a world of

objects.

(_γ_) And consequently the interest in the objects delineated tends to

revert to the fact that it is the unique powers of the artist himself

which are thus consciously displayed, and for which the embodiment of

a work of art, independently complete and self-composed, is not of so

much importance as a production in which the creative artist unveils

to us simply his genius. In so far as this _personal_ aspect is no

longer concerned with the external means of presentation but affects

the _content_ itself of the work, the art becomes thereby the art of

caprice and humour.

(_b_) _The Humour of Personality_[310]

In humour it is the personality of the artist, which so reproduces

itself both in its particular idiosyncrasies and profounder content,

that the main thing of importance is the spiritual value of this

personality.

(_α_) Inasmuch as humour does not so much propose to itself the task

of unfolding and informing an objective content according to its own

essential character, and, by artistic means, of articulating and

rounding it off in such a self-evolved process, as it consists in the

artist's own self-manifestation in the material, he will be mainly

concerned to let everything which tends to become an object and to

secure the rigid lines of reality, or which appears in the external

world, fall away and dissolve under the powerful solvent of his own

fancies, flashes of thought and arresting modes of conception. By this

means every appearance of self-subsistency in such a content, the

embodiment of which is secured in its coalescence through means of a

given fact, is entirely destroyed, and the product is now simply a play

with certain objects, a derangement or a turning upside down of a given

material, the enterprise of a rover throughout such, the interwoven

woof of the artist's own expression; views and moods, through which

he gives free scope to himself quite as much as to his immediate

subject-matter.

(_β_) The illusion which readily springs from such a type of art

consists in this, that though it is a very easy matter to make either

oneself or the object given the butt of drollery and wit, and for this

reason the form of humorous composition is that frequently adopted,

yet quite as often as not we find that the humour is dull enough when

our artist gives free rein to any chance conceits or jest which may

occur, which in their loose and patchy connections range to excess

beyond all reasonable limits, and with intentional eccentricity bind

up frequently together the most alien matter. Some nations have

proved themselves indulgent to such artistic experiments, others are

more severe. Among the French such attempts at humorous composition

have not as a rule been successful; we Germans have done better, and

we are more tolerant to the defects of such a style. Jean Paul, for

instance, is a much admired humourist among us; and yet it would be

difficult to point to any writer who is more eccentric in the way he

brings to the common fund what is most remote from his subject, and

patches together an incredibly motley assemblage of subjects, whose

sole bond of relationship is one of the artist's own fancy. The story,

the matter and progress of events are the features of least interest

in his romances. The main attraction throughout is the sportive

procession of his humour which uses everything in its course as a means

to establish his own triumph as a humourist. In this subordination

to itself and concatenation of every conceivable stuff that can be

raked out of the four quarters of the world, or the realm of the real,

the material of humour approximates once more to that of symbolism,

wherein significance and conformity likewise are disjoined, with this

difference, however, that in the former it is purely the personality

of the poet which commands the material no less than the significance,

co-ordinating them according to his own caprice[311]. Such a series

of freaks and fancies soon tires us, more particularly when we are

expected to live as best we can in the not unfrequently barely

decipherable combinations which have passed somehow or another in the

clouds of the poet's brain. With Jean Paul, as with scarce another, one

metaphor, sally of wit, drollery, or simile proves the death of its

neighbour. Nothing grows; there is an explosion, that is all. A plot,

however, which purports to have a _dénouement_ must first be unfolded

and prepared for such solution. From another point of view, when the

artist in question is essentially devoid of the solid core and support

of a mind and heart overflowing with the real actualities of existence,

his humour very readily lapses into what is sentimental and morbid.

And in this respect Jean Paul is no less an example.

(_γ_) In a humour of the best kind, which keeps itself aloof from

such excrescences, we must therefore have a genuinely spiritual

depth and wealth, able to exalt that which issues as the emanation

of a personality to the rank of real expression, and capable of

making that which is truly substantive arise from that which the

chance suggestions, the mere caprices of the artist, dictate. The

self-abandonment of the poet in the course of his exposition must

be, as it is with humourists such as Sterne or Hippel, a wholly

unembarrassed, easy-going, scarce perceptible kind of saunter[312],

which, insignificant though it appear, manages precisely by that means

to strike at the root of the main idea; and, for the reason that what

thus bubbles up in haphazard fashion are matters of detail, it is

essential that the conception, which binds the whole ideally together,

should have the deeper foundation, and that such detail should simply

flash forth the focal spark of genius.

We have now arrived at the point where romantic art itself for the

present terminates. It is the standpoint of our most modern outlook,

whose distinctive characteristic we shall find to be mainly this, that

the individual personality[313] of the artist stands supreme above both

the material he informs and his creation. He is no longer dominated by

the conditions of an essentially restricted sphere, in which he must

accept as given both the content and form of his work; it now lies in

his power to choose either as he wills, and to retain both on similar

terms.

(_c_) _The End of the Romantic Type of Art_

Art, in so far as it has hitherto been the subject of our inquiry, had

for its fundamental basis the unity of significance and form, and, as a

further type of it, the unity of the personality of the artist with the

work he embodies and creates[313]. More closely defined we may say that

it was the specific type of this union, which supplied the content and

its appropriate artistic presentment with the substantive and directive

principle running through all the images therein.

We found at the commencement of our inquiry with reference to the

origins of art that in the Eastern world Spirit was not as yet

independently free. It still sought that which it conceived to be the

Absolute in the domain of Nature, and apprehended the natural as itself

essentially Divine. At a further stage the outlook of classical art

set before itself the vision of the Greek Pantheon as unconstrained

and inspired beings, but still in all essential features formed as our

humanity, as individuals charged with a positive physical process[314].

Finally it was romantic art which first permitted Spirit to penetrate

the depths of its own world, in contrast to which flesh, the external

reality and frame of this world generally, albeit the fact that the

spiritual and absolute could alone manifest itself in this world, in

the first instance was divested of all claim to reality[315], but for

all that afterwards asserted such a positive claim with increasing

strength and urgency.

(_α_) These distinctive views of the world process constitute religion,

the substantive Spirit or genius of peoples and eras; they not merely

influence art, but are threads of life which permeate every other

domain or province of the living present to which they belong. As

every man, in every sphere of activity, whether it be on the field of

politics, religion, art, or science, is a child of his own age, and

receives the task to elaborate the essential content and consequently

the inevitable plastic form of that age, so, too, the aim that

determines the content of art is no other than that of finding in its

own medium and resources some adequate expression for the spirit of a

nation. So long as the artist is in immediate identity and unshaken

faith inextricably one with the determinate content of such a view of

the world and the religion where it culminates, to that extent this

content and the mode of its presentation will call forth his most

_serious_ powers; in other words this content remains for him the

infinite substance and truth of his own consciousness, a content,

with which he lives, down to the inmost recesses of his spiritual

nature, in original unity; and, moreover, the embodied presence in

which he reveals the same is for him as such an artist[316] the final,

necessary, and highest type of such a form, namely that of bringing

before the aesthetic sense the absolute being[317] and the ideal

significance[318] of the subject-matter of his art. It is through

that aspect of his material which is no other than his own immanent

substance[319] that he finds that which binds him to the specific

mode of his exposition. For the material, and with it the form that

appertains to it, carries the artist directly into himself[320], as

being the real essence of his determinate being, which he does not

imagine but rather actually is, and consequently has only to make this

essential part of him an objective fact to himself, to conceive and

elaborate such in a vital form from his own resources. Only under such

conditions is the enthusiasm of the artist fully awakened for either

the content or manifestation of his art; only thus his creations become

no mere product of caprice, but spring up within him, out of him,

out of this living field of his substance, this spiritual capital,

whose content never ceases to be active, until, through the efforts

of the master, it has attained a defined form adequate to its own

ideal notion. When, however, we of to-day would seek to make a Greek

god or, as our own Protestants try to do, a Virgin Mary the object of

a piece of sculpture or a picture, it is impossible for us to treat

such a material with entire seriousness. It is the faith of our inmost

heart which fails us here, albeit even in ages of absolute belief the

artist was by no means necessarily what is commonly understood as a

pious mart, any more than at any time artists generally come in an

exceptional sense under that category. The demand is rather simply

this that in the view of the artist his content should be no other

than the substantive significance, the most spiritual truth of its

own conscious life, and that it should unfold the necessary laws of

its mode of presentation. For an artist is, in his creative activity,

a child of Nature; his ability is in one aspect a talent he receives

from _her._ His method of working is not the pure activity of rational

apprehension, which places itself in direct opposition to its material,

and unites with it in the medium of free thoughts and pure thinking.

Rather, as one not yet released from the natural aspect, it[321]

coalesces immediately with the object, in full faith, and is identical

with it heart and soul. The artistic personality reposes frankly in the

object, the work of art proceeds in like manner absolutely from the

unimpaired spiritual depth and power of genius; the product is _ferme_,

unwavering, and its entire intensive effect preserved. And this it is

which supplies the fundamental condition of the final demand that Art

be presented us in its flawless totality.

(_β_) The situation, however, has entirely changed in view of the

position we have been forced to indicate as that occupied by Art in

this its final stage of evolution. We have, however, no reason to

regard this simply as a misfortune which the chance of events has

made inevitable, one, that is to say, by which art has been overtaken

through the pressure of the times, the prosaic outlook and the dearth

of genuine interests. Rather it is the realization and progress of art

itself, which, by envisaging for present life the material in which

it actually dwells, itself materially assists on this very path, in

each step of its advance, to make itself free of the content that

is presented. In the very fact that we have an object set before

our ocular or spiritual vision, whether it be by Art or the medium

of Thought, with a completeness which practically exhausts it, so

that we have emptied it, and nothing further remains for our eyes to

discover or our souls to explore, in that alone the vital interest

disappears. Our interest only continues where our faculties are kept

fresh and alive. Spirit only concerns itself actively with objects so

long as there is still a mystery unsolved, a something unrevealed.

And this is so so long as the material remains identical with our

own substance. A time comes, however, when Art has displayed, in all

their many aspects, these fundamental views of the world, which are

involved in its own notion, no less than every province of the content

that is bound up with such world-views: when that time arrives such

art is necessarily cast loose of that which has been its previous

specific content for any particular people or age; in such a case the

renewed craving for material to work upon only fully awakes when it

is accepted as inevitable that we must first bid farewell to all that

its activity has previously substantiated: just as in Greece, for

example, Aristophanes opposed a resolute face to his age, and Lucian to

the entire historical Past of his country; or in Italy and Spain, in

the decline of the Middle Ages, both Ariosto and Cervantes opened the

attack on Chivalry.

In opposition to the age, then, in which the artist, by virtue of

the concrete content of his nationality and times, stands within

a definite outlook upon the world and its modes of embodiment, we

become aware of a point of view diametrically antagonistic, which, so

far as its complete enunciation is concerned, has only in the most

modern times received its due significance. It is only in our own days

that we find the artist no less than the man of science among pretty

nearly all civilized nations, has mastered the cultivation of his

reflective faculty, the art of criticism, and among us Germans the

absolute freedom of thought, and has made this critical apparatus,

both relatively to the material and the form of its production, having

already run through all the necessary phases or types of romantic art,

a kind of _tabula rasa._[322] The specific mode of association for any

particular context, and a manner of presentment exclusively pertinent

to that and no other material, are things which the artist of to-day

looks upon as obsolete. Art has become a free instrument which is

qualified to exercise itself relatively to every content, no matter

what kind it may be, agreeably to the principles or criteria of the

artist's own peculiar craftsmanship. The artist stands superior to all

specific modes and conformations, however much hallowed in the usage,

and moves forward free and independent, untrammelled by either form or

presentment such as previously have brought before man's vision and

mind the one holy and eternal substance. No content, no form is any

longer identical directly with the inmost soul of the artist[323],

his nature, his unaware[324] and substantive essence; every material

he may treat with indifference, if he only keep true to the formal

principle that he make his work consonant with beauty and a really

artistic execution. There is, in short, no material nowadays which we

can place on its own independent merits as superior to this law of

relativity; and even if there is one thus sublimely placed beyond it

there is at least no absolute necessity that it should be the object

of _artistic_ presentation. For these reasons the artist is situated

relatively to the content of his work much as the dramatist who places

before us and develops other and alien characters. It is quite true

that even our poet of to-day interposes the atmosphere of his genius

within his delineations, and the warp that he weaves is in fact that

of his own substance; but this only applies to what is universal there

or wholly accidental. The closer traits of individualization are not

his own, but rather he makes use of in this respect his stores of

images, modes of metaphor, earlier types of art, which by themselves he

does not care for, and whose significance is exclusively dependent on

the fact that they turn out to be the most suitable for this or that

matter in hand. In most of the arts, and particularly in the plastic

types, the subject-matter is, apart from this, supplied from outside

to the artist. He works to order, and when occupied with whatever

tales, scenes, and portraits thus come in his way, whether sacred or

profane, has merely to look to it that he can make something out of

them. For, however much he leaves the impress of his genius on a given

content, it remains throughout for all that a material which is not

itself directly the substance of his own conscious life. Nor is it of

any real assistance to him, that he further appropriates, so to speak,

with his soul and substance views of the world that belong to the Past,

in other words, tries to root himself in one of such, and, let us say,

turns Roman Catholic, as not a few have done in recent times for Art's

sake, in order to give their soul some secure foundation, and enable

the definite lines of their artistic product to become themselves

something which shall appear to have an independently valid growth. It

is not a prime condition of the artistic state that the artist should

come completely to terms with his own soul, or should be obliged to

look after his own salvation. What is important is that his soul in

its greatness and freedom should from the first, before it thinks of

creating, both know and possess that whereof it is, should stand fast

by it and reliant within it; and, above all, is it indispensable that

the spirit and mind of the great artist of to-day should have a liberal

education, one in which every kind of superstition and belief which

remains limited to circumscribed forms of outlook and presentment,

should receive their proper subordination as merely aspects or phasal

moments of a larger process; aspects which the free human spirit has

already mastered when it once for all sees that they can furnish

it with no conditions of exposition and creative effort which are,

independently for their own sake, sacrosanct; and only ascribes to them

value in virtue of the loftier content, which itself, as creator and

worker, he reposes in them, making them thus what they ought to be[325].

It is somewhat in this way nowadays that any and every form and

material may prove of service to and under the control of the artist

whose executive talents and genius have been liberated in their

independence from the former limitation to a specific mode of artistic

work.

(_γ_) If we ask, then, in conclusion what are the content and the

modes which may be considered _peculiar_ to the present sphere of our

inquiry, the result will be approximately as follows.

The universal types of art were pre-eminently related to the absolute

truth to which Art attains, and they discovered the source of their

differentiation in the specific grasp they respectively supplied of

that which passed for the Absolute in the human consciousness, and

which itself carried the principle of its manner of embodiment. In

this respect we have already seen in symbolism Nature's significances

pass before us as content, and her facts and human personification as

the mode of presentation; similarly in the classical type, we have

passed in review spiritual individuality, but as bodily presence which

carried no memory with it[326], and over which the abstract necessity

of Fate stood paramount. In the romantic the intellectual being of the

personal consciousness was asserted inherent in its own substance, and

for the inmost content of which the external form remained entirely

contingent. In this concluding type as in the earlier ones the object

of art was the Divine in its explicitly unfolded nature. This Divine

had however to make itself an object, to define itself, and in the

process to pass from its own immediate substance to the secular content

of the personal consciousness. In the first instance the infinite

essence of personality was reposed in honour, love, and fidelity;

after that in the particular individuality, the specific character

which happened to coalesce with the particular mode of human life in

question. This coalescence, together with the specific limitation of

content appropriate to such, was finally put an end to by humour,

which proved itself capable of dissolving or making pliable to its

purpose any or every line of stable definition, and by so doing made

it possible for art to transcend its own limitations. In this passing

away of Art beyond itself, however, Art is quite as truly the return

of man upon himself, a descent into his own soul-depths, by which

process art strips off from itself every secure barrier set up by a

determinate range of content and conception, and unfolds within our

common humanity[327] its new holy of holies, in other words the depths

and heights of the human soul simply, the universal shared of all men

in joy and suffering, in endeavour, action, and destiny. From this

point onwards it is from himself that the artist receives his content,

is in truth the Spirit of man assigning to himself his own boundaries,

contemplating, experiencing and giving utterance to the infinitude of

his emotions and situations, a spirit to which nothing is any more

alien which can possibly emanate as life from the human soul. A

content of this nature is one which cannot persist under the defined

modes of art independent and apart from the activity of the artist.

Rather the definition of content and its elaboration is transferred by

it to the caprice of his invention. But, despite of this, it excludes

no vital interest, because Art is no longer under constraint to

represent that, and only that, which is completely at home in one of

its specific grades. Everything is now possible as its subject-matter,

in which man, on whatever plane of life he may be, possesses either the

need or the capacity of making his abode.

Confronted with a material of such a wide range and multiplicity, it is

above all of first importance that in respect to the mode of artistic

treatment the Spirit that is now active in our present life should

throughout declare itself as such. Our modern artist may no doubt join

the company of ancients and elders. It is a fine thing to be one of

the Homerides, though we stand last of the line; pictures, too, that

reflect for us once again the atmosphere of romantic art in the Middle

Ages will have a worth of their own. But this universal sufficiency,

depth, and unique suitability of a given material such as we above

described is another thing altogether, and equally so its mode of

presentation. Neither Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Ariosto, nor Shakespeare

can reappear in our times. What has been sung so greatly, what has been

expressed with such freedom, has been sung and expressed once for all.

Only the Present blows fresh; all else is faded and more faded. In the

matter of history we must fain make it something of a reproach to the

French, and we may add to it a criticism on the score of beauty, that

they have presented on their stage Greek and Roman heroes, Chinese, and

Peruvians as so many French princes and princesses, and moreover have

given them the motives and views peculiar to the age of Louis XIV or

Louis XV. Yet, after all, had these very motives and opinions only been

intrinsically deeper and more beautiful than they are we should have

had little fault to find in the fact that the Past is here translated

into Art's present life. On the contrary all material whatsoever, it

matters not from what age or nation it hails, only retains its truth

for art as part of this vital and actual Present, in which it floods

the human heart with the reflected image of its own life, and brings

truth home to man's senses and mind. It is just this revelation and

renewed activity of that humanity which is immortal in all its varied

significance and infinite reconstruction, which, in this its receptacle

of human situations and emotions, forms the possible no less than the

absolute content of the art of our time.

If we now take a glance back, having established in a general way the

content which distinguishes the subject-matter of this portion of

our inquiry, at that which we finally considered to be the modes of

romantic art's dissolution, we may recall the fact that we then defined

them under a term applicable to all, as the falling to pieces of Art,

a process which, in one of its aspects, was due to an imitation of the

objects of Nature in all the detail of their contingent appearance,

and in another was referable to humour, that unfettered activity of

the individual soul in all its capricious mastery. In conclusion,

we may still draw attention to a further way of fixing on our minds

that _terminus_ of romantic art without prejudice to our previous

remarks upon it. In other words, just as in our advance from symbolism

to classical art, we considered the transitional forms of image,

simile, and epigram, we have also here in romantic art a form somewhat

similar worthy of attention. In those previous modes of conception the

important thing was the falling asunder of the spiritual significance

and the external form, a severation which in part was cancelled by

the activity of the artist's own mind, and in the exceptional case

of the epigram could possibly be converted into complete identity.

Romantic art was from the beginning the profounder disunion of that

inmost soul-life which finds its satisfaction in its own wealth, which,

moreover, for the reason that generally the objective world does not

completely satisfy the demand of Spirit essentially as such, persisted

in its discordance with or indifference to it. This opposition in the

evolution of romantic art finally led us perforce to the point where

we found that the interest was exclusively centered on the contingent

aspects of externality, or the equally capricious activity of the soul.

When, however, this exclusive attention to either side, whether it be

the externality or purely personal presentment, agreeably to the main

principle of romantic art, is carried so far that it becomes a real

penetration of the soul within the object, and the aspect of humour in

its relation to the object and its embodiment within the sphere of its

own individual reaction[328] assumes a real importance, in that case

we are face to face with what is a coalescence[329] with the object,

and is nothing less than an _objective_ humour. Such a coalescence,

however, can only be of limited range, and find expression merely, say,

within a lyric, or at most in but a portion of a larger composition.

For if its boundaries widened, and it was carried throughout the

object-matter in question, it would necessarily become identical

with the action and event, become, in short, a completely objective

representation. What we have to consider here is rather a sensitive

self-abandonment of the artist's soul in his object, which no doubt is

unfolded in some kind of process, but nevertheless remains a movement

of the imagination and heart indicative rather of _individual_ genius;

a caprice in some sort, and yet not entirely capricious or intentional,

but rather a sympathetic expansion of the artist's genius, which

devotes itself solely to its subject-matter, and makes it exclusively

its interest and content.

We may usefully compare with such a spirit the last blooms of the

ancient Greek epigram, in which this type appears in its first and

simplest features. The mode we have here in our mind is in the first

instance apparent when the reference to the object is not a mere

statement of fact, is not merely an inscription or transcript which

states what the object is, but is associated with a deeper emotion,

a sleight of witticism, an ingenious fancy, or a real flash of

imaginative power, any or all of which through their poetical grasp

give life to and expand the minutest detail. Poems of this description,

it matters little what their subject-matter may be, whether a tree, a

mill-stream, spring, dead things or alive, are of infinite variety and

may be found in the literature of all nations. They are, however, a

subordinate grade of poetry, and very readily come off halting. For at

least in a country of cultivated speech and reflection there are few

objects and conditions, indeed, which will not offer some further link

of association to every man. And just as the average man thinks himself

qualified to write a letter he will rate his capacity to express such

ideas. One is very easily tired of a universal spirit of sing-song such

as this, even though a stray novelty of touch may be here and there

thrown in. The importance of such a class of composition, therefore,

depends almost entirely on the question how far the artist's soul,

with its full intensity of life, and with a spiritual and intellectual

wealth that is both profound and extensive, has without reserve entered

vitally into such conditions, situations, and so forth; has made a home

there, and from the object in question created something unseen before,

something beautiful, something essentially worth our attention.

To this end the Persians and Arabians pre-eminently in the oriental

splendour of their images, in the unfettered enjoyment of their

imagination, which enters into the being of its subject-matter in the

purest spirit of contemplation, offer, even for present times and our

own intensity of spiritual penetration, a glorious exemplar. Both the

Spaniards and Italians, too, have done excellent things in the same

direction. It is true that Klopstock says of Petrarch:

/$

--Laura besang Petrarca in Liedern,

Zwar dem Bewunderer schön, aber dem Liebenden nicht[330].

$/

but Klopstock's own love-odes are themselves full of moral reflections,

troubled yearning and passion that is for ever writhing after

immortality of happiness. What we admire most in Petrarch is the

free atmosphere of essentially noble emotion, which, however much it

expresses the longing for the beloved, can none the less repose on its

own heart. For this kind of longing, indeed sensual desire itself, is

far from being absent in the range of the art we now are considering,

when the subject is restricted to wine and love, the tavern and the

glass; the excessive voluptuousness of the images of Persian writers

themselves are in fact an illustration of this; but in this case the

imagination, in the interest it possesses for the intelligence, removes

the object entirely from the sphere of desire which has a practical

aim. It possesses an interest merely in the realm of its own exuberant

activity, finding its delight freely in its own countless freaks and

fancies, and making joys and griefs alike the subject of its sport

Among our modern poets the two who preeminently combine a similar

buoyancy of genius with a more intimate and spiritually searching depth

of imagination are Goethe in his "Westöstlicher Divan" and Rückert.

The essential contrast between Goethe's poetry in the "Divan" and his

more early efforts is quite remarkable. In his "Welcome and Farewell,"

for instance, the language and description are no doubt fine in

their way, true feeling is there. In other respects the situation is

commonplace, the climax is poor, and of imagination in the full and

free sense there is no further trace. The poem in the "Divan" entitled

"Recovery"[331] is composed in a totally different spirit. Love is here

wholly absorbed in the imagination, and the movement, happiness, and

bliss of the latter are throughout predominant. And, to speak generally

of artistic productions of this class, we may affirm that we find

in them no personal craving, no indications of enamourment, no mere

desire, but a pure delight in the objects delineated, an inexhaustible

self-absorption of imagination, an innocent play, a free surrender to

the coquettish humours even of rhyme and ingenious versification; and

withal an intense jubilation of the soul in its own free movement, a

spirit, which, by means of this very exhilaration induced by artistic

form[332] lifts the soul high above all its painful perplexity into the

ordered limits of the real.

And here we must close our consideration of the particular types

according to which the Ideal of art throughout its process is

self-differentiated. We have made these several modes the subject of

a more extensive inquiry, with a view to unfolding the content of the

same, a content from which the proper modes of artistic presentment

are themselves also deducible. For in Art, too, as in all other human

production, it is the content which is finally decisive. In fact Art,

if we consider the true notion of it, has one and only one supreme

function. It has to set forth in adequate form, within the grasp of our

actual senses, what is itself essential content; and the Philosophy of

Art should consequently regard it as its main business to comprehend

in Thought what this abundance of content and its beautiful mode of

manifestation verily is.

[Footnote 256: _Subjektivität._]

[Footnote 257: _Für andere_, that is for other spiritual beings than

the absolute Spirit as such.]

[Footnote 258: _Die Innigkeit._]

[Footnote 259: _Aus dem Innern exzeugten._]

[Footnote 260: _Sich in sich hineinbildend._ That is by continually

supplying new modes to the subjective spiritual content--until we

arrive at the almost purely spiritual mode of music.]

[Footnote 261: _Die innere Auflösung._]

[Footnote 262: The phenomenal world of Nature.]

[Footnote 263: _Die Verwickelungen._]

[Footnote 264: _Die Abentheuerlichkeit._ Hegel means that it is like

the result of an adventure--unforeseen rather than "fantastic."]

[Footnote 265: _Ein individuelles Subjekt._]

[Footnote 266: That which supplies its own justification.]

[Footnote 267: Lit., unenclosed, that is open indefinitely and so

undefined, unsounded.]

[Footnote 268: That is, it is open to extraneous causes that cannot be

predicted from the mere essential notion of them.]

[Footnote 269: I presume this is the meaning of the expression _das

Aussergöttliche_ and _das partikulär Menschliche._]

[Footnote 270: _Pralle_--stiff, metallic in its steeply rigidity.]

[Footnote 271: Act I, sc. 5.]

[Footnote 272: _Miserabilität._ One of Hegel's own coinage.]

[Footnote 273: An unknown work to me.]

[Footnote 274: _Ein inneres Werden._]

[Footnote 275: One is reminded of the Mohammedan fatalism. It is Allah.]

[Footnote 276: _In einfacher Gedrungenheit._ Hegel means that it is

tightly self-sealed, that and nothing more.]

[Footnote 277: _Hineingelegtseyn._ The reference of the whole being to

one object.]

[Footnote 278: This was the representation which took place in Berlin

in 1820, with Mademoiselle Erelinger as Juliet.]

[Footnote 279: _List_, usually in depreciatory sense, here otherwise.]

[Footnote 280: With the exception, of course, of her presumed father

Prospero.]

[Footnote 281: That is, a poetry based rather on the reflective faculty

than the creative imagination.]

[Footnote 282:

/$

"He saw it plunge, drink boldly,

Then sink in sea-depths lost;

And what his eyes saw loosed him,

No drop the king drank more."

$/

]

[Footnote 283: _Lebensläufe in aufsteigender Linie._]

[Footnote 284: _In sich totales, unbeschränktes Gemüth._ The

expressions would appear to contradict one another, but the emphasis is

on the unity of a whole which is itself not fully defined.]

[Footnote 285: It is not so much a third type as a way of looking at

the previous ones.]

[Footnote 286: It is contingent, of course, to the individual. Hegel

does not mean that it is without causality.]

[Footnote 287: The sphere of objective fact.]

[Footnote 288: From Nature, that is.]

[Footnote 289: _Ihres inneren Verlaufs._ I suppose Hegel means

action under the aspect in which it forms a part of the individual

development--regarded in its relation to will and consciousness.]

[Footnote 290: That is, the Christian community.]

[Footnote 291: _Den Menschen als Menschheit_, that is in his generally

secular aspect.]

[Footnote 292: I presume this is the sense of _gebrochen_ here. But

lower down it would mean apparently _discordant._]

[Footnote 293: By "fantastic" Hegel seems to me to mean that which is

based on a fancy or imagination that is wholly personal to the artist,

and so adventitious in its results.]

[Footnote 294: _Sicheres Gemüth_--"consistent" both in its literal and

metaphorical senses--one that holds together and is thus self-assured.]

[Footnote 295: _Das Romanhafte._ I cannot think of an English

expression which exactly corresponds.]

[Footnote 296: _Sich schrauben_, like the winding smoke from a

bottle--the corkscrew---ironical of course.]

[Footnote 297: One of the finest illustrations of such a universality

of interest may be found in Ruskin's description of Tintoret's

"Adoration of the Magi."]

[Footnote 298: _Genialität_ and _genial_ mean a good deal more than our

English words geniality and genial--they refer directly to genius.]

[Footnote 299: _Das in sich Nothwendige._ The reference is mainly to

the stricter principles of classical art.]

[Footnote 300: _Nach ihrer ganzen Inneren._]

[Footnote 301: Lit., "Which possesses for its substantial content

(_Substanz_) the integrity (_Rechtschaffenheit_), world-wisdom [here I

think no more is meant than "good sense"] and the morale of daily life

(_des Tages_)."]

[Footnote 302: Lit., "That the material, so far as art appropriates it,

be immanent and at home in that reality." _Immanent_ must I think refer

back to _die vorliegende Werklichkeit._]

[Footnote 303: Vol. I, pp. 229, 230.]

[Footnote 304: That is it has no interest _quâ_ a natural object.]

[Footnote 305: _Scheinen_ must mean here natural rather than artistic

appearance. Natural appearance is not _necessarily_ beautiful.]

[Footnote 306: _Des sick in sich vertiefenden Scheinens._ It is

self-deepening in proportion to the _feiner Sinn_ below mentioned.]

[Footnote 307: I think this is the meaning of the expression _das

Physikalische der Farbe_--not so much the material constituents of

colour as the effect of colour on physical substances. But either

interpretation makes sense.]

[Footnote 308: An artist unknown to me.]

[Footnote 309: _Gemüth_. I think Hegel uses the word here in the

narrower sense rather than "soul" generally.]

[Footnote 310: _Der subjektive Humor._]

[Footnote 311: Lit., "And arranges them side by side in an alien

order." That is, under a principle of co-ordination which does not lie

in the subject-matter.]

[Footnote 312: _Unscheinbares Fortschlendern._]

[Footnote 313: _Die Subjektivität des Kunstlers._ The expression

as used here and below implies, of course, not so much the formal

personality or character as the individual spirit and its resources.]

[Footnote 314: I presume this is the meaning of _von einem affirmativen

Momente._]

[Footnote 315: Lit., "Was at first posited as naught."]

[Footnote 316: That is, as an artist for whom it is _wahrhafter Ernst._]

[Footnote 317: _Das Absolute_ here is, I think, referable to the

subject-matter of art rather than to be taken as "the Absolute" simply.]

[Footnote 318: _Die Seele._ Perhaps "vital principle" would be better.]

[Footnote 319: That is, Spirit or mind.]

[Footnote 320: There is an uncorrected misprint here, _der_ should be

_den_ and _tragen_ would be an improvement on _trägt._]

[Footnote 321: I am not certain whether the subject is here the artist

himself, or his mode of working. The context would suggest the latter,

the better sense the former.]

[Footnote 322: Reflection has destroyed the _necessity_ of any

particular form.]

[Footnote 323: That is the life of Spirit. _Das Heilige und Ewige._]

[Footnote 324: _Bewusstlosen._ His spiritual nature in its unexplored

universality is, I presume, the sense.]

[Footnote 325: _Als ihnen gemäss._ As adequate to their completely

explicit nature.]

[Footnote 326: _Aber als leibliche unerinnerte Gegenwart._ I am not

sure that I know precisely the sense here, unless it amounts to

this that the Greek gods were without an historical memory. Their

immortality swallowed up in its repose the sense of beings in time, and

assumed to be in human bodily shape.]

[Footnote 327: _Zu ihrem neuen Heiligen den Humanus macht_, an uncommon

phrase.]

[Footnote 328: _Innerhalt seines subjektiven Reflexes._ That is, the

synthetic activity of humour's reflection.]

[Footnote 329: _Verinnigung_, a stronger word than _Vereinigung._]

[Footnote 330: "Petrarch sang songs of his Laura. To him who wonders at

beautiful songs they are beautiful, to the lover they are not so."]

[Footnote 331: "_Wiederfinden_."]

[Footnote 332: I am not quite sure that _die Heiterkeit des Gestaltens_

does not mean "the buoyancy of the created form."]

END OF VOL. II