CHAPTER II

THE BEAUTY OF NATURE

Beauty is the Idea as the immediate unity of the notion and its

objective reality, yet is only the Idea in so far as its unity is

immediately present in shape apprehensible to the senses and as

semblance of the real. The most elementary form of existence, which the

Idea take to itself is _Nature_, and the first form of beauty is that

of _Nature._

A. THE BEAUTY OF NATURE AS SUCH

1. In the world of Nature we must distinguish between the modes

according to which the notion becomes existent reality in order to be

part of the Idea.

(_a_) In the _first_ place the notion is absorbed so immediately in

pure objectivity, that, in its character of subjective and ideal

unity, it wholly fails to assert itself, and passes over instead as a

thing without a soul into the raw _materia_ presented to sense. The

purely mechanical or physical bodies in their isolated singularity

are of this order. A particular metal is, for example, essentially no

doubt a manifold of mechanical and physical qualities; every part of

it, however, has such qualities equally in itself. Such a body not

merely fails to possess any entire articulation of its parts in the

sense that every one of its different parts receives for itself a

particular material existence, but even the negative ideal unity of

such differentiation is absent, which might assert itself as animating

principle[201]. The difference here is a purely abstract multiplicity,

and the unity posited the indifferent equilibrium of identical

qualities.

This is the first mode of the existence of the notion. The differences

here receive no independent existence, and the ideal unity is not found

as ideality. For this reason such isolated bodies are essentially

defective and abstract existences.

(_b_) Natural objects of a higher order suffer the differences asserted

by the notion to appear as free, so that each one as external to

another is itself independently existent. Here we have for the first

time the true character of objectivity. Objectivity is just this

independent assertion of the segregated differences determined by the

notion. On this plane of existence the notion asserts itself in such a

way that it is at least a totality of its differences, which is truly

realized, in so far as the particular bodies, while they each severally

possess independent existence for themselves, are at the same time

members of _one inclusive system._ Of such a character is the solar

system. In one aspect of them the sun, comets, moon, and planets appear

as independent heavenly bodies apart from one another; in another,

however, they derive their definite character from being parts of

one system of such material bodies. Not only their specific modes of

motion, but also their physical qualities, are only to be deduced from

their relation to this system. This nexus which binds them together

constitutes that inward unity which relates these particular existences

together in one whole.

But further than this, in this conception of system the operation of

the notion is not exhausted in the _existent unity_ of independent

bodies as essential parts of it. For just as the differences are real

the unity which relates them to the totality has to assert itself

as real. This unity, in other words, differentiates itself from

the multifold particularity of those objective bodies of which it

is the integrating principle. And on this plane of existence it is

differentiated therefore itself against such a particularity as real,

independent and objective existence. In the solar system the sun exists

over against all particularity related to that system, as such a unity

of the system.

Such a material existence of the ideal unity of the notion is still

very defective; for whereas on the one hand we have this unity posited

in its reality only as the relation or material connection between the

severally independent bodies, on the other we have it posited as a

body which belongs to that system, whose unity, in opposition to its

real differences, it essentially represents. The sun, in short, which

we take to be[202] the soul of the system, has itself an independent

entity apart from the members which form the explicit content of this

soul. It is itself only _one_ particular mode or phase of the notion,

that, namely, of unity in its _difference_ from the actual separation

of the several parts, a unity which remains outside itself, and is

consequently abstract. For however much the sun by virtue of its

physical quality is plainly a principle of unity, the illuminating

body as such, this is after all merely an abstract identity. For light

is simple, undifferentiated appearance and nothing more. We find

therefore in the solar system the unity of the notion indeed objective,

and the totality of its differences explicitly realized, each body

making visible _one_ particular phase[203] of the notion; but here,

too, it lies absorbed in its objective reality, and it fails to assert

itself in such material as is truly inherent and explicit ideality.

The form of its existence which here prevails remains the independent

segregation of its particular phasal units[204].

It is, however, essential to the true existence of the notion, that the

_differences_ of the objectively real, the reality, that is to say, of

the separate independent parts and the equally independent unity that

is therein objectively realized, should as such be together brought

back into unity. Only thus such a totality of innate differences can

make wholly explicit either the notion as the realized differentiation

of its characteristics, or at the same time release each particular

that belongs to it from the element of isolated independence which it

cancels by enabling the ideality, in which these differences recover

their subjective unity, to assert itself fully as the universal

principle of their animated being. In that case they become no longer

_parts_ hanging loosely to one another by a bond that still leaves

their particularity unaffected, but genuine _members_ of one body.

They no longer possess an existence in their isolated singularity,

but retain such truly in the ideal unity which binds them together.

Only in such an organic articulation the ideal unity of the notion is

present to the parts thus integrated. It is at once their support and

immanent soul; here for the first time the notion is not overwhelmed in

objective reality, but passes over into actual existence as the inward

identity and universality, which it essentially is.

(_c_) But this _third_ mode of Nature's manifestation is a determinate

existence of the _Idea_, and the Idea as thus manifested in Nature

is _Life._ Dead or inorganic nature is not adequate to express the

Idea; only the organic life of Nature unfolds its reality. For in life

we shall find, _first_, that the objective reality of the notion as

differentiated is presented as such reality; _secondly_, however, that

the negation of such differences is entirely one of distinction in that

reality[205], the ideal subjectivity of the notion overcoming to itself

this very reality; _thirdly_, the unifying principle of animation is

now the positive appearance of the notion in the form of its bodily

substance, that is to say, the form of infinity, which is sufficiently

powerful to assert itself thus formally in its content.

(_α_) If we ask ordinary consciousness[206] for a definition of Life,

we have two determinations presented, either the imaginative conception

of it as bodily life, or as soul-life. In the same view we distinguish

these two determinations with qualities peculiarly belonging to each.

This _contrast_ we set up between soul and body is also of great

importance in the more philosophical consideration of our subject. And

it is no less part of our inquiry to investigate it. At the same time

we would point out that the philosophical interest concentrates itself

quite as much on the _unity_ which exists between soul and body, a part

of this inquiry which a really adequate survey of the subject has at

all times found beset with the greatest difficulties. It is, however,

precisely in virtue of this unity that Life is the first genuine

appearance of the Idea in Nature. We must consequently apprehend the

identity of soul and body as no fortuitous connection[207], but a

union of profounder significance. In other words, we must recognize

the body and its members as the objective existence of the notion

itself in systematic articulation, which in the members of the living

organism, secures an objective existence for its determinate features,

analogously no doubt, if on a higher plane, to the facts presented

by the solar system. Within this real existence the notion asserts

itself in like manner as the ideal unity of all these determinate

parts. This ideal unity is the soul. The soul is the substantive unity

and interfused universality which is no less a simple relation of

self-determining than it is ideal Being-for-itself or self-coherent

totality. This is the higher view of the union between soul and body.

To put it in other words both are not merely distinct aspects set side

by side; they are one and the same totality of identical determinants.

Just as the Idea generally can only be grasped in its explicit reality

as the notion evolving itself as such[208], in which conception the

differentiation and unity of both sides, that is both the notion and

its objective reality, are inseparably present, in the same way Life

must be conceived as the unity of both soul and body.

And further, the subjective no less than substantive unity of soul

within the body is presented us and exemplified in Feeling. The feeling

of a living organism is, that is to say, not merely an independent

product of a particular member, but it is also this ideal and simple

unity of the entire organism. It is carried through every member of

the body is felt throughout in more than a hundred places at once; and

indeed, to put it shortly, rather than saying there are many thousand

sensitive points[209] in a single organism we should more justly say

there is but one, namely, the subject of consciousness. And inasmuch

as the animating principle of organic Nature includes in itself this

distinction between the real existence of the organic members, and the

abstract or simple self-coherence within such parts, which we call the

growing soul, mediating between them both by virtue of its inherent

unity, such a principle of Life stands on a higher plane than that of

inorganic Nature. Only with Life is the Idea existent, and only thus is

the Idea truth. No doubt even in the organic world this truth can be

extinguished. We find the body unable to perfect its essential ideality

and animating energy. Such is the case in disease. Here we find the

notion deprived of its controlling sovereignty, and other powers are

potent with it. Such a life is, however, defective and crippled: it

merely continues, because the inadequacy of reality to the notion has

not reached the point of absolute contradiction; it is still only

relatively valid. Once assume that all harmony between the two sides is

broken, that all genuine articulation of the members of the body and

their true identity has dropped away, and life is dissolved in death.

The several members are now mere appendages to each other, with no

principle of Life to hold them in unsevered unity.

(_β_) We must add that when we stated the soul is the totality of the

notion regarded as the subjective and ideal unity, the body on the

other hand, as distinguished by its members, is the same totality

but rather in its material aspect as the juxtaposition and sensuous

accretion of all the several parts, affirming at the same time that

both soul and body are posited as _one_ in the living organism, there

is no doubt something contradictory in the statement. For the ideal

unity, so far from being this material juxtaposition of parts, in which

each particularity possesses its independent consistency and exclusive

character, is rather in direct antithesis to such external reality.

That what is diametrically opposed should nevertheless be identical is

obviously a contradiction in terms. The man, however, who declares the

non-existence of anything from the fact that it carries in our notion

of it a contradiction which implies the identity of opposed antitheses,

simply excludes Life itself from the idea of existence. For the force

of Life and still more the power of Spirit (mind) consists in this

very movement, namely, to assert the law of contradiction inherent

within them, to bear the burden thereof and to overcome it. This

affirmation and resolution of the contradiction which obtains between

the ideal unity and material juxtaposition of the members, constitutes

the appointed _process_ of life itself. And Life is simply _process._

And this process of life includes an activity which has two distinct

functions. On the one hand it has continually to affirm the material

existence of the physical distinctions[210] among the members of the

organism thus determined; on the other, just in proportion as such

distinctions grow obdurate in their independent particularity, and tend

to remain fixed in absolute separation from each other, it has to make

good once more that universal ideality, which is the principle of their

life. This is the idealism of Life's process. Philosophy is not the

only idealism; far from it. Nature herself in her domain of actuality

creates in the life-process just that which the philosophy of idealism

completes in the world of contemplative thought. Only where we have

these two aspects of one activity, that is, the constant realization

of the corporeal definition of the organism no less than the synthetic

affirmation of such material presentment in the ideal unity, which

it is as one with the notion[211], then and only then we have the

completed process of Life, whose more primitive forms[212], however,

this is not the place to discuss. Through this unity of Life's energy

in both its branches all the members of the organism are up held in

their integrity, and continually flushed anew with the ideality of

their life. This ideality is furthermore declared by the organic parts

in the fundamental law of their being, that this unity of Life is not

so much an accidental quality as, on the contrary, the substance of it.

In this alone they are able to preserve their specific character. This

it is which precisely constitutes the difference between the part of a

mere conglomerate and the member of an organism. The particular parts

of a house, for example, the stones, windows, and so forth, remain just

what they are, whether they form part of the structure of a house,

or whether they do not. Their relationship to one another is quite

indifferent, and the conceptual notion remains in their case a purely

external form, which possesses no life in these parts raising them to

the ideality of a subjective unity.

The members of an organism have, it is true, an external reality, but

for all that it is the notion of Life which constitutes the inward,

nay, the characteristic being of such reality, a reality which is not

expressed through one external form uniting them, but in the ideal

coherence of their parts in one living whole. For this reason the limbs

have no such reality as belongs to the stones of a building, or the

planets, moon, and comets in the solar system. Their reality is one

wholly within the content of the organism, and all appearance to the

contrary is, as such, ideally imposed on them. Dissever the hand from

the body and it loses its independent existence as a member of the

organism which made it what it was. Its activity, form, and colour,

all that constitutes it, is at once changed; it enters the process of

corruption, and ultimately ceases to exist[213]. Consistent character

it only possesses as a limb of organic life, reality only in constant

reunion with that ideal unity which sustains it. And that is just the

superior mode of reality which the living organism possesses in itself.

The real or positive is for ever being set up as both the negation

of itself and withal the ideal resumption of itself, such ideality

constituting, in fact, both the maintenance and specific character of

the mode under which each of the separate parts of the bodily presence

are associated together.

(_γ_) The reality, then, which the Idea wins for itself in the life

of Nature is reality as a phenomenal process. Such an _appearance_

stated in its simplest terms is this, that a reality exists, but its

potential being[214] is not immediately in its possession, rather it is

at the same time negatively affirmed[215] in the particular form that

belongs to it. The negation of the immediately external and particular

members of a body is not only a negative relative relation as the

activity of the inherent idealization[216], but is as such a positive

realization[217].

Hitherto we have considered the particular objects of the real as

positive in their self-exclusive particularity. This independence,

however, is negated in the living object, and the ideal unity asserted

within the bodily organism is alone found to assert over itself the

full force of positive determination. Such a positive ideality in

the principle of negation it asserts is the soul. On the appearance

of the soul in the body we have at once such an affirmative presence

as the one indicated. The soul not merely asserts itself as a power

against the subdivision of the bodily members, it is their plastic

creator[218], which preserves as inward and ideal that which is

externally minted in the shape of physical members. And consequently

it is this very positive and ideal inward[219] which appears in the

outer structure; in other words, the external, so far as it is a mere

external, is a mere abstraction, a mere aspect that is untrue for

the whole. In organic life the external we are confronted with is an

externality through which the inward is made visible. The outward, that

is to say, declares itself in its potential nature as that inward,

which is its notion. Further to this notion appertains the reality

in which it as notion is made visible. Inasmuch, however, as in the

objective world the notion, strictly as such, is the principle of

subjective life and self-determined life becoming _explicit_ in its

own objective reality[220], life exists only as a _living thing_, an

individual subject. It is only with life thus concentrated to a point

that we find this negating _centrum_ of unity. And it is negative in

this sense that the ideal explicitly self-unified totality[221] can

only now stand forth in its reality by virtue of this principle of

ideality being asserted through the differentiation of its positive

presence, together with which the ideal unity of such totality is at

the same time incorporated. It is of the greatest importance to make

clear this aspect of the principle of subjectivity. It is only as the

single living thing thus unified by such a principle that life is

actually present.

If we inquire further in what manner the Idea is manifested within the

actual life of such living individuals our survey will be as follows:

_first_, this principle of Life will be realized as the totality of an

organism possessing bodily shape; _secondly_, this physical shape is

not presented as a rigid product[222], but as a continous process of

ideal generation, in which a living soul asserts itself. _Thirdly_,

the changes and determinations through which this totality passes

are not imposed externally to it, but are changes of form which are

evolved from its inherent nature, imposed on itself and for itself, in

a process wherein it stands self-determined as the subjective unity no

less than the ultimate end of its being.

This free self-subsistence of the subjective principle of life is

especially exemplified in the spontaneous motion of a living organism.

The inanimate bodies of inorganic Nature are fettered to the conditions

of Space, which limits them to one place, or they are only moved from

it by external forces. The motion, in short, does not originate in

themselves; and, when it is visible upon them, it appears as an energy

which is foreign to them, to remove which the only force they exert

is that of reaction. And if the motion of the planets with similar

phenomena appear to be otherwise produced, such are at least wholly

fettered by natural laws and their abstract necessity. The living

animal, on the contrary, in its freedom of motion, negatives this

enforced limitation to one spot by virtue of its own activity. It is

through such self-determination the continuous liberation of itself

from the material isolation. And for the same reason it is in this

freedom of motion, if only in a subordinate degree, the release of

itself from the former abstractness referable to the particular modes

of motion, their direction and their speed. Under a yet closer view,

moreover, the animal, regarded by itself in its organism, presents the

same sensuous matter that is moved; and here, too, life is as before a

freedom of motion within this organic reality, evidenced in the flow of

blood and the movement of the limbs.

Motion, however, is not the only expression of animated life. The free

tones of the voice of animals, which are unknown in the inorganic

world, where bodies merely roar and clatter through the blow of objects

external to them, these already present to us the higher expression

of animated subjectivity. The most intimate and vital expression of

such ideal activity is, however, brought before us when we find the

living individual able to concentrate itself as individuality over

against the objective world, while at the same time it appropriates

and transfigures that world _for its own._ And this is accomplished in

part through observation by means of vision, and partly for practical

purposes, in so far as such an individual brings the outer world

into subjection to himself, utilizes the same, assimilates it as a

means of nourishment, and in this manner continually reproduces his

individuality in that objective _alterum._ Such a process, of course,

as it ascends through stronger organisms, assumes more and more

emphatic degrees of unsatisfied desire, assimilation, satisfaction, or

satiety.

Such, then, are the activities, in which the notion of animated life

makes itself apparent. Moreover, the principle of Ideality thus

rendered visible is not merely the result of _our_ reflection; it

is _objectively_ real itself in the living subject, whose existence

consequently we may go so far as to call an objective idealism. And

it is the soul, as before stated, which, as this ideal energy, brings

about its own manifestation[223], always reducing the _purely_ external

reality of the body to an appearance, and thereby affirming itself as

objective totality in that very bodily shape.

2. Now it is as the Idea made objectively visible to the senses that

the animated life of Nature is _beautiful_; in so far, that is to

say, as the truth or the Idea, presented in the form of Nature, where

under it first appears, in other words life, is immediately given in

the particular shape of reality adequate to it. Owing, however, to its

sensuous immediacy the living beauty of Nature is neither beautiful

_for itself_ nor is the beauty strictly that which is _the outcome_ of

itself, a product, that is, of its purely objective appearance. The

beauty of Nature is only beautiful for another, that is _for us_, the

consciousness that apprehends its beauty. The question therefore arises

in what way and by virtue of what characteristics the principle of life

appears to us beautiful in its _immediate_ existence.

(_a_) If we look at the practical way in which a living object

becomes visible and preserves itself, the first thing which rivets

our attention is _spontaneous motion._ This motion, regarded simply

as motion, is nothing more than the entirely abstract freedom of

motion from place to place and from time to time, which we find

exemplified in the spontaneous, but entirely haphazard movements of

animal life. In music and the dance we have, it is true, motion in

its generic significance; but here motion is not merely a matter of

chance and impulse, but it exhibits the laws which regulate it; it

is defined, complete in itself and subject to measure; and it is all

this, though we still abstract from it the significance whereof it is

the beautiful expression. If we again interpret the motion of animals

as the realization of an aim originating within themselves, this

excited impulse is still entirely accidental, an end of most restricted

import. If we further extend our survey and conceive such motion as

the activity and working together of all parts of the animal organism

towards a definite purpose, we shall merely find that such a conception

is rendered possible by our own effort of imagination[224]. The case is

just the same if we reflect upon the way in which an animal gratifies

its physical wants, obtains nourishment through the organs which

grasp it, consume it, digest it, and generally is a subject of the

process which preserves its life. For in this case also we have either

only before us single desires and their spontaneous and haphazard

gratification, in which the inward activity[225] of the organism is not

present at all, or at least all these activities and their means of

expression have become the subject of our imaginative reflection, which

is at pains to understand such a process by relating it to definite

ends, and to establish a harmony between aims assumed to belong to the

animal itself and the organs which fulfill them.

We shall rather find that neither the sensuous perception of single

haphazard appetites, arbitrary movements and efforts towards

self-satisfaction, nor the fanciful consideration of the animal

organism as one directed by purpose will present to us purely animal

life as a part of the beauty of Nature. The beauty consists in the

appearance of individual form, both in repose and motion, quite apart

from the relation of its self-gratification to any purpose thus

subserved, as it is apart from the entirely isolated contingency of

self-imposed movement[226]. Such beauty is related to the _form_ alone,

because it is only as such that it is the external appearance, in which

the objective idealism of the principle of life makes itself known

to us as a thing perceived and contemplated upon through the senses.

Thought apprehends this "objective idealism" in the medium of its

notion, appropriating the same in the element of _universality_ which

belongs to it, albeit the contemplation of its beauty is inseparably

bound with its _phenomenal reality._ And this reality is the external

form of the articulated organism, which is, in our view of it, quite

as much determinate particularity as it is a semblance, namely, that

of the physical manifold of the separate members, which can only form

part of the concrete totality of the _living form_ under the guise of

phenomenal appearance.

(_b_) From the explanation of the notion of life already given we

may deduce more narrowly the form of this appearance as follows. The

form is one of spatial extension, limitation, and configuration,

distinguished through its various shape, colour, and motion, being, in

fact, a manifold of such distinctions. If, however, the organism which

manifests these differences is a living organism, it will inevitably

appear that the organism does not derive its true existence from such

a _manifold_ and its physical configurations. This is brought about by

the fact that the different parts, which are apprehended by us through

the senses, are at the same time conjoined together in one totality;

they appear consequently as the _members_ of one individual existence,

which is a unity of such differences, and which not merely possesses

them in their difference, but as parts of one homogeneous whole.

(_α_) In the first place, however, this unity will assert itself as

the _purposeless_ identity of such differences, that is to say with

no abstract relation to any causal end whatever. The parts in such

a case are not rendered visible to sense merely as a means to or in

the service of some defined purpose, nor are they able to fix the

determinate relation of form and structure which they occupy one over

against the other.

(_β_) Rather the contrary is the case, for, in the _second_ place, the

bodily members have for our sense-perception the appearance of being

quite _accidental_ in their form; in other words the determination of

one appears to be quite indifferent to that of another. In other words,

we can never conclude because one has a certain form another will have

the same, as would be the case if a material uniformity was clear

between them. Where uniformity is the rule an abstract determination

of some kind of form, size, or whatever it may be, is the property

of all parts. The windows of a building, for example, are all of one

size, or at least are placed together in one row. Or we may illustrate

the same similarity with the uniform worn by all soldiers belonging

to one regiment. We have various parts of such clothing differing in

colour, texture and the rest, but their formal opposition is no matter

of chance; each has its causal connection with some other; it is

there because the other is there. Neither is there here any complete

distinction of form, nor any unique independence wholly asserted. With

the individual organism of life the case is entirely otherwise. Here

every part is absolutely distinguished; the nose from the forehead, the

mouth from the cheek, the breast from the neck, the arms from the legs,

and so on. Inasmuch as for our sense-perception every member possesses

its unique form rather than one which belongs to another, or one which

is determined by that of another, the members appear as self-subsistent

parts, and for this reason free and spontaneous[227]. For the material

juxtaposition of the parts alone throws no light upon their particular

form.

(_γ_) _Thirdly_, it is obvious there must be for our imaginative

perception a more inward bond of connection present in the

self-subsistence of the organism, if the unity is not offered us in

its rational, spatial, temporal, or quantitative relations such as

are presented in the examples of uniformity referred to, which, as we

have seen, the unique particularity of the parts can extinguish. This

identity is not sensuous and immediately present to perception in the

way the distinction between the members is presented; it is rather a

secret and _inward_ bond of necessity and harmonious relation between

the members and their form. If it were only inward, quite out of

reach of our vision, such a necessary unity would be apprehended only

in thought, removed from our sense-perception altogether. In such a

case, however, it would fail to enter into the beautiful object of our

vision, and what we found as such in the living, object would cease to

be the Idea in its own objective and phenomenal reality. Such a unity

must consequently enter into what is externally perceived, although it

is, as the ideal principle of life within it, not entirely apparent

to sense or confined in spatial dimensions. It appears in fact in

the individual totality as the universal ideality of its members,

constituting thus the fundamental basis which supports and holds them

together, the subject of the living subject. And this subjective unity

in organic life finds its first direct expression in feeling. In the

emotional life the Soul finds its true expression as _Soul._ For

soul the mere juxtaposition of limbs have no real truth, and in the

presence of its subjective ideality the purely spatial multiplicity

of external configuration ceases to exist. Such a manifold, with its

unique differentiations, its organic articulation of parts[228] is

no doubt presupposed; but when and in so far as the soul expresses

itself through such in feeling the more inward unity ever-present

to life asserts itself equally as the dissolution of all absolute

independence between the physical parts, which reveal now not merely

their _materia_, but also that wave of animation which fuses all in

their soul.

(_c_) To start with, however, we must observe that the emotional

expression of soul-life neither offers us the visual impression of any

necessary inter-dependence between the separate members, nor indeed the

perception of an identity which is necessary between such _physical_

articulation and the _subjective_ unity conferred on it by simple

feeling. We will investigate this more narrowly.

(_α_) If indeed the form and only the form renders in some way visible

this inward harmony and its necessity, it may be because we look

upon this juxtaposition as the _habitual_ relation of such members,

a connection which brings to our view some specific type and the

oft-repeated formal exemplifications of such a type. But the necessity

of custom is after all only a _subjective necessity._[229] According

to such a principle we may find certain animals ugly for no other

reason than that we find in them an organism which differs from our

ordinary experience, or runs contrary to it. For this reason we call

the organisms of certain animals bizarre in so far as the way in which

their organs are related together is foreign to what is more common to

our experience or entirely contradicts it. Fishes whose bodies are in

size out of all proportion to their length of tail, or those in which

we find eyes together on one side of the head only, are an example. In

the world of plants we are already prepared to find many such strange

departures from type, although the cactus with its spines, and the more

rectilinear shaping of its angular junctures[230] may still arouse our

wonder. The more a man is educated, however, in all branches of natural

history, the more able he will be to recognize in their truth the

subordination of all parts of organic life, and carry in the memory the

greatest variety of types in their proper classification, and the less

anything he may observe will surprise him.

(_β_) A profounder penetration into this correlation of the parts will,

however, in the _second_ place, tend to give us that truer insight

competent to determine from one of the parts the entire form to which

it must belong. Cuvier is a famous example of such aptitude: a man

of science, who by the examination of a single bone, whether fossil

or otherwise, was able to specify at once by its characteristics the

kind of animal to which it belonged. An excellent illustration this of

_ex ungue leonem._ So from a claw or a thigh bone we may discover the

conformation of the teeth, or _vice versa_ from the teeth that of the

hip-bone, or that of the vertebral column. Such a profound synthesis

of the type and the knowledge it implies carries us, however, beyond

habitual experience only. We must assume, to render it possible,

previous thought and the systematic arrangement of the isolated facts

of science. Our example Cuvier had no doubt secured from previous

experience a determinate content and some specific quality which

prevailed in each generic conception, and asserted itself as a unity

of principle in all particulars however distinct, and so enabled

him to recognize their affinity. Such a specific quality is that of

flesh-eating, which is then the determinating principle of the form of

the other members of the organism to which it belongs. A flesh-eating

animal requires teeth and jaws of exceptional vigour; when hunting it

will require claws to seize its prey, mere hoofs are insufficient. Here

in short is a quality which necessarily determines for us the form and

principle of affinity among all the organic members. A conception of

such a typical character is the ordinary one we form of the strength

of an eagle or a lion. We may no doubt find something both beautiful

and instructive[231] in this way of regarding the animal world, in so

far as we derive from it some unified idea of its configuration, which

is not a mere repetition of that unity in all the parts, but gives

full value to the distinctions they possess. For all that it must be

remembered the dominant factor of this survey is not the _perception

of our senses_, but the generic _thought_ of our minds with which it

is made to conform. Reviewed in this light we ought not to say that we

find the object as such _beautiful_, but rather attribute that beauty

to the _reflection_ of our own minds upon it. And if we examine these

reflections more closely we shall find they are after all a deduction

of our principle of unity from a limited aspect of the organic whole.

We concentrate our attention, for example, on the mode in which

it is nourished, _i.e._, whether such an animal is carnivorous or

herbivorous. Through such a limited determination we are still removed

from a vision of the coalescent unity of the whole we identified with

the notion, the soul itself.

(_γ_) The truth is we can only, in this sphere, bring before our

consciousness the entire unity of life by means of our thought and

grasp of reason. In the natural world the _soul_, in its full activity,

is not found; that is to say, the subjective unity, in its pure

ideality, does not exist there for a self-consciousness.

If, however, by means of thought, we endeavour to grasp the nature of

soul-life according to its essential notion we shall find two aspects

under which we may regard it; first, as the form subject to such a

principle of animation; secondly, as the notion of soul for thought

in all that the conception implies. Such a complete grasp of its true

nature is not possible in the sensuous perception of the objects of

beauty. Such must neither pass before us as thought, nor must we

allow the interest of Thought as such to form a barrier of difference

or opposition between itself and the vision revealed to us. We are

left, then, with no alternative but to consider, under this point of

view, the object as wholly presented to sense; we must assume that in

the sphere of Nature a _sensuous_ perception of the natural form is

our genuine mode of contemplating the beautiful. "Sense," that is the

master-key[232] to the position; a word which in itself is interpreted

in two opposed senses. In the first place we may indicate thereby the

organs of immediate[233] perception, secondly, by the "sense of a

thing" we may refer to the significance, or the element of thought and

the universal within it. In this way "Sense" is related on one side to

the immediate externality of existence, and on the other to its inward

or essential nature. A sensuous perception of that existence in fact

preserves both sides in unity, or rather in one direction so presents

the aspect that is opposed to it in the immediate sense vision as to

include therein both the essence and notion of the object. But for the

reason that it combines these opposed determinations in unfractured

unity, the notion is not presented as such to consciousness, but is

rather to be dimly foreshadowed there[234]. We accept, for example,

as a determinate fact the existence of three realms of Nature, which

we define as that of the mineral world, that of plants, and finally

that of animals; we can conclude from this, as already foreshadowed

by its truth regarded as a process rising from plane to plane, that

there is an inward necessity inherent in the notional articulation

of its divisions, and do not confine ourselves only to the purely

imaginative conception of it as a world conforming on its exterior

side only to a final end. In the same way when confronted with the

variety of the external presentment in each of these realms, the

sense-perception surmises a controlling unity intelligible to mind, a

progress subject to laws of thought, visible no less in the formation

of mountain ranges than in the orderly succession of plant-life and

of the animal races. The same tendency is presupposed when, after an

examination of the form of any particular animal organism, an insect's,

for example, as subdivided into head, body, abdomen, and extremities,

we conclude the correlation of such parts to be based on a rational

principle, and are confident that though, at first blush, it may appear

quite accidental that we are in possession of five senses, we shall

discover a true bond of relation between that number and the notion

therein asserted. Of just this type is Goethe's method of observing

and accounting for the innate reason of Nature and her phenomena. With

an extraordinary intuitive sense he directed his attention directly

to[235] the objects of experience, entirely convinced of the ideal bond

of unity which explained their interconnection. History may be written

with a like object. The narration of facts and individual lives is

given in such a way as indirectly to throw a light on the essential

significance which such events or persons contributed to the period in

which they are necessarily bound together in one organic whole.

3. Consequently we may affirm that Nature generally, regarded as the

sensuous manifestation of the concrete notion and the Idea, is to

be considered an object of beauty in so far as by such a sensuous

perception of natural forms some kind of foreshadowing of the notional

unity consonant to them is surmised, and we are able through the

channels of sense to discover not merely their form, but somewhat of

the inner necessity which binds together all their parts. Further than

this incomplete surmise of the notion the sensuous contemplation of

Nature as beautiful is not carried. This way of comprehending things,

for which the separate parts, despite their appearance of independent

freedom among themselves, nevertheless reveal to the sight the harmony

that exists there either in the characteristics of _their form_, or

detached portions of it or their motion and so forth, remains for

all that _indefinite_ and _abstract._ The inward unity is not open

to external sense, nor can it appear in its ideal and concrete form

to such perception[236], whether imaginative or no; such at most

acquiesces generally in the universality of a law of connection

inherent in every living thing.

(_a_) It is, then, in the first instance only in this bond of union

which reveals itself as a necessary adjunct of vitality from the

objectivity of Nature, in so far as the same is presented in forms

adequate to the notion, that we have before us the beauty of Nature.

With this coalescence the _materia_ is wholly identical; the form

is immediately at home in the matter, as its true essence and its

conforming energy[237]. This description may in fact stand for us, so

far as beauty at this stage is concerned, as a general definition of

it. We admire, for example, the natural form of a crystal on account of

the law of uniformity it manifests, a law which through no mere action

of forces external to it, but by virtue of its own specific definition

and free activity, free in all its aspects as itself an object, is

manifested there. For although an activity external to it could as

such equally be free, yet in crystals the conformative activity is not

extraneous to the object; rather it is a form operative as belonging

to the mineral's innate character. We may define it as the free force

of its substance, which out of its own resources informs itself and

is not merely passively receptive of its environment. Consequently

we find here the constituent material in its realized form as a free

and independent creation. In still higher and more concrete mode the

immanent form projects itself through the living organism and all its

parts, in the articulate form and, above all, in its motion and its

vital expression as feeling. For in this last case we have the inward

vitality pregnant itself as living.

(_b_) It is moreover through this indeterminacy of the beauty of

Nature, originating in its inward principle of animation that (_α_)

both in virtue of the conception of life and the intuition of its true

notion no less than of the habitual types conformable to its adequate

presentment, we are able to distinguish between animals which are

beautiful and those which are ugly. Animals incapable of vitality,

such as the sloth, which creeps about with difficulty, and whose entire

mode of life is suggestive of incapacity for motion or activity, offend

our aesthetic sense for this very reason[238]. Activity and mobility

are precisely the qualities which assert the higher ideality of life.

For the same reason we condemn forms of amphibious life, certain

species of fishes, crocodiles, toads, and many kinds of insects;

an additional reason will influence our similar attitude to hybrid

species, where confusion of form marks the passage from one determinate

type to another; the ornithorhyncus is an example[239], an animal which

with its mixture of bird and four-footed beast may indeed astonish

us, but at the same time is repulsive to our sense of beauty. Such

feelings of repulsion can no doubt be traced entirely to our habitual

prepossessions which have moulded for the imagination a fixed type of

animal species consonant to experience. But even so there is already

actively present the intuitive surmise that the configuration of a

bird, for example, is related in its parts by a necessary principle

of unity, and cannot as such graft upon itself forms which belong

to other species without being thereby transformed into a hybrid

variety. Such abnormal deviations from type appear to us both strange

and contradictory. Neither the one sided narrowness of organization,

which is so defective and mean in its manifestation, that it exercises

no activity over the straitened conditions of its environment, nor

confusions and passages of type, which, albeit they are not so enclosed

within themselves, are unable to hold fast the distinctive features of

their type, belong strictly to the sphere of natural beauty.

(_β_) There is another sense in which we attribute beauty to Nature,

namely, when we have the collective picture of a landscape before us

rather than observe the living form of a simple object. Here we have

no organic articulation of parts such as is derived from their notion

and is presented to us as such ideal unity in spontaneous life. We have

instead a rich variety of objects both organic and inorganic, which are

united together on one or more planes of vision in their distinctive

features, contour of mountains, winding outlines of rivers, groups

of trees, huts, dwellings, palaces, and cities of mankind, ships,

roadways, heaven and sea, valley and rock-cleft. We find, in addition

to this variety and proceeding therefrom, a delightful or imposing

harmony which appeals to our sense and interests us.

It is lastly a peculiar characteristic of the beauty of Nature that it

should excite or exercise a harmonious influence over our emotional

life. A mood of this kind is aroused by the stillness of moonlight,

the peace of a valley, through which some brook or other meanders, the

sublimity of the immeasurable storm-tossed sea, the tranquil depth of

the star-strewn heavens. But the significant factor in this case is not

so much to be found in the objects as in the peculiar moods they arouse

in our feelings and affections. On analogous grounds we attribute

beauty to animals, when the expression of their life directly suggests

human qualities, such as courage, strength, cunning, good nature, and

the rest. Such, no doubt, in one aspect of it, truly expresses the

nature of the animals themselves; but there is also our own conception

of its affinity to ourselves, and the mood in which we receive it.

(_c_) However much animal life, as the culminating point of natural

beauty, unfolds its freest expression as a living principle, it

is comparatively narrow in its range and subject to very limited

qualities. The circle of such existence is a strait one; and in this

the predominant interests are those of the satisfaction of natural

instincts such as hunger and sex-attraction. Soul-life, regarded as

the inward principle expressed through external figure, is poor,

abstract, and empty of content. Add to this the consideration that

this inward is not manifested at all as _inward._ The soul in its

essential substance is not revealed by the life of Nature; it is, in

fact, the determining characteristic of Nature that its soul remains

shut in itself, does not, in other words, proclaim itself in its

ideality. As already pointed out, the soul of an animal is not this

ideal unity _self-acknowledged._ If it were otherwise we should have

the manifestation of such personality brought home to others. Only in

the self-conscious Ego do we find the ideal in its simplest terms,

which is itself an ideal medium to itself, knows itself as this simple

unity, and thereby endows itself with a reality, which is not limited

to bodily and sensuous form, but is itself of an ideal character. Here,

for the first time, reality is in possession of a form adequate to

the notion; or rather the notion sets itself up as its own opposite,

makes itself objectively real and finds its own realization in that

objectivity. The animal life, on the contrary, is only _potentially_

such a unity as that in which reality as bodily form is other than the

ideal unity of soul. In self-consciousness we have this unity realized,

whose opposing factors are constituent elements of one transparent

ideality. And it is as this concrete totality of self-consciousness

that the Ego is manifested to others. The forms of animal life

merely enable us through imaginative perception to divine the soul's

existence. Such only possess the troubled semblance of a soul,

betrayed to us through the breath or exhalement which permeates the

whole, gives some unity to all the members, and reveals in the entire

instinctive life the first germs of an independent character. Herein

lies the primary defect of the beauty of Nature, even when taken at its

point of culminating form: and it is precisely this defect which will

introduce us to the necessity of _the Ideal_ as the beauty of art. But

before we consider at length the nature of this Ideal, there are two

determinations involved as the most immediate result of this inherent

defect in natural beauty, which invite our attention.

We have stated that in the animal form the soul appears as the bond of

connection within the organism and the unified point of animation only

under a cloud[240] and destitute of any fully realized content. We only

find there a quite indeterminate and restricted mode of soul-life. We

will now consider the abstract limitations of this mode more closely.

B. THE EXTERNAL BEAUTY OF ABSTRACT FORM REGARDED AS UNIFORMITY,

SYMMETRY, CONFORMITY TO RULE AND HARMONY AND REALITY IN THE SENSE OF

ABSTRACT UNITY OF THE PHYSICAL MATERIAL.

There is in Nature an external reality which is, of course, visible

and definitely objective, but the inward unity of which, instead of

presenting itself in the concrete inwardness referable to the unity of

soul-life, only goes to the point of indeterminacy and abstraction. In

other words, it stops short of the inwardness self-actualized in an

ideal form and as the particular existence conformable to its ideal

content. Its appearance is that of the defining principle on the face

of external reality. Now the specific characteristics of inwardness in

all its concreteness should be these. First, the principle of soul-life

is asserted for itself no less than is potentially replete with

content. Secondly, external reality interpenetrates this ideal arcanum,

and by so doing fully reveals its true form as such external reality.

A concrete unity of this nature is not reached by mere natural beauty:

it lies beyond as the Ideal. On this plane of existence we cannot say

that such a concrete unity enters into the manifestation of form. We

have to deduce it through analysis, examining in their separation and

singularity the _distinguishing features_ which the unity supports. The

form that informs here and the sensuous external reality _fall apart_

from one another; or rather we have _two_ distinct aspects which we are

compelled to consider separately. By virtue of this fact, which we may

either regard as a division of the material of sense or as a review

of certain facts taken in abstraction, the inward unity, which is one

aspect of the external reality, itself falls outside it; that is to

say, it is not itself asserted in that rational reality as the wholly

immanent form of the entire notion which constitutes it, but rather as

an Ideality and determinacy imposed externally.

Such are the points of view thus presented us which we will now

consider more closely.

First, then, we have to discuss

1. THE BEAUTY OF ABSTRACT FORM

The form of natural beauty in its abstraction is a form which is

determinate and thus of limited range; in a further aspect of it

it is focussed in a unity of abstract relation to itself[241]. On

closer inspection we shall, however, find that the external manifold

controls this form of abstract beauty by reason of its own determinacy

and unity. We must not, however, imply in these latter any immanent

inwardness or form of vital ideality, but regard them as purely

material definitions and unity of the external medium. Forms of such a

character are uniformity, symmetry, or conformity to rule, and finally

harmony.

_(a) Uniformity_

Uniformity is, speaking generally, equality in external presentment,

or, more specifically, the unbroken repetition of one and the same

definite form, supplied by the determining unity to the form of

objects. Such a unity, in virtue of its initial abstraction, is at the

furthest extreme removed from the rational totality of the concrete

notion. Its beauty is therefore a beauty which is referable to the

faculty of the analytical understanding. The fundamental process of

that faculty is to perceive objects in their abstraction, not in their

self-determined completeness and identity. For example, among all lines

the straight line is that which is most uniform, because it alone

manifests one abstract and undeviating direction. For the same reason

the cube is a figure dominated by regularity of content. All its sides

are of the same size, the same length of line and the same angles,

which, on account of their being rectangular, however much their size

is changed, manifest no change in the form of their angles as is the

case with angles which are obtuse or acute.

With this characteristic of uniformity we must closely connect that

of _symmetry._ Form is unable long to rest in that barest abstraction

of its determination, namely, undifferentiated equality. A diverse

relation is sure to assert itself, breaking into the empty form of

identity. In this way we obtain _symmetry_, which consists in no

mere identical repetition of one form, but in a combination with

some such form analogous to it, identical, that is to say, in its

self-determination, and yet manifesting a distinct contrast with it.

Through such a combination we obtain another kind of equality and

unity, whose determination is more extensive and more varied. If, for

example, on one side of a house we meet with three windows of the same

size separated at equal intervals of distance, then three or four more

of loftier size than the first-mentioned standing at more extended or

closer intervals in relation to them, and again three more precisely

similar in size and distance to our original ones, we have then before

us a symmetrical arrangement. Mere uniformity and repetition of the

same distinctions will never produce this result. We may find such

distinguishing features in size, position, form, colour, tones, and

many others like them, which, however, to produce symmetry must be

harmoniously related to similar forms of construction. When we find a

combination which presents to us an arrangement of such distinguishing

characteristics according to some clearly uniform principle that then

is symmetry.

Both these attributes, uniformity and symmetry, being the

determinations of the form and unity of external appearance, are

mainly applicable to _distinctions in size._ For it stands to reason

that what is expressly posited as external rather than truly immanent

determination is generally a quantitative[242] determination, whereas

the qualitative fixes the inherent character of anything. Consequently

that which is assumed only to affect the external appearance cannot be

concerned with the changes which are found in the qualitative aspect.

Size, on the other hand, and its alteration regarded merely as size,

is for the qualitative determination, when it is unable to assert

itself in terms of measure, an indifferent determination. That is to

say, measure is quantity, precisely in so far as it can give to itself

an aspect which qualifies it, and thereby a qualitative determination

is united to the purely quantitative one. As thus explained[243]

uniformity and symmetry are merely restricted to the determinations

of size and their uniform appearance or arrangement of differences

in symmetrical order. Further inquiry will show us that this due

co-ordination of size is as applicable to the forms of organic life as

it is to those of inorganic Nature. The human organism is, for example,

at least in a certain degree both uniform and symmetrical. We have two

eyes, two arms, two legs, similar hip-joints, shoulder-blades, and so

on. Of other portions of the body the reverse is the case. We find

no conspicuous uniformity in the heart, lungs, bowels, or liver. The

question arises what precisely constitutes the difference here. The

side on which uniformity, whether of size, form, or position mainly

asserts itself, is obviously the aspect of the organism viewed from

the outside. The uniform and symmetrical determination, in complete

conformity with what we should expect, is most apparent where the fact

as objectively determined is itself the external envisagement itself,

and carries with it the least impression of inherent life. The reality,

which is most constant to this pure externality, rests satisfied

with the abstract unity congenial to it. Within the organism, on the

contrary, where we find the heart of the life-process, and still more

openly in the medium of untrammelled reason uniformity gives way before

the subjective unity of life. Nature is, no doubt, in its opposition

to mind, a determinate existence external and independent; but even in

her we find that uniformity only pre-eminently asserts itself where

externality is the predominant principle.

(_α_) Reviewing, then, shortly the _prominent classifications_ of

natural objects, we observe, in the first place, that minerals, taking

the crystal for an example, as structures destitute of the principle

of life, are characterized in their fundamental form by uniformity

and symmetry. As already remarked, their form, it is true, is one

appropriate to themselves, is not merely the determination of external

forces. Through an unseen energy the form that makes them what they

are as products of Nature creates their configuration both within and

without. This activity, however, is not yet the completed energy of the

concrete notion as an ideal principle, which directs the independent

consistency of the positive reality, subsuming them under an ideal

totality such as is present in animal life. The unity and definition of

their form persists in purely abstract one-sidedness, and we have as

the characteristics of a unity which is wholly on the outside the bare

forms of uniformity and symmetry, the determinating factor in each case

being an abstraction.

_(β) Plant life_ is, of course, many degrees above the order of

crystals. From the very commencement its evolution is marked by a

harmonious articulation, and consumes material in a constantly active

process of self-nourishment. But plant-life also is not yet really

the living whole[244]. Although organically divided into parts, its

activity is still one that consists wholly in assimilation[245]. It is

rooted in the earth with no independent power of motion from place to

place; its growth is continuous, and such energy of assimilation and

self-nourishment as it possesses is not the tranquil self-subsistence

of a completely individualized organic existence, but rather a

continuous extension of its growth as an external object. An animal

grows just as a plant grows, but at a determinate point that growth

in its external size ceases, and that which reproduces itself in

self-subsistence is one and the same individual. Plant-life, however,

enlarges without intermission, and only its decease renders the further

increase of its boughs and leaves impossible. And, moreover, all

that it separately produces in this process is for ever the repeated

pattern of the same organism in its entirety. For every bough is a

new plant, and not, as in the case with the animal organism, only

an isolated member. On account of this persistent enlargement of

itself through all the separate plant formations whereof it consists

plant-life is without the subjective animation peculiar to sensation

and the ideal unity which belongs to it. And, generally speaking,

we may say that plant-life, however much the digestive process is

an inward one, in which we find nourishment is assimilated and the

organism determines the form which is impressed on its substance out

of itself by virtue of the increasing freedom of the notional type

working through that substance, nevertheless substantially, through the

entire process of its life, it remains rooted to externality without

either a true independence or unity, and such self-subsistence as it

possesses is continuous without a break. And it is on account of this

characteristic of plant-growth, namely, that it is for ever asserted

on the side of externality, that we find uniformity and symmetry to be

the fundamental unity of its self-expression as it is a predominant

principle of its structure. No doubt uniformity is not so regnant here

as we observed it to be in the formation of minerals, and it is not

expressed in the same extreme degree through the abstract straight line

and right angle: but it prevails here notwithstanding. The stem for the

most part runs on a straight line; the rings of plants of higher type

form themselves in circles; leaves closely approach the configuration

of crystals; and, at least as the basis of their type, we find that the

blossoms themselves in the number of their leaves, their position and

form are determined with uniformity and symmetry.

(_γ_) Finally, in the living organism of _animals_ a difference is

asserted in the reduplicated structure of the members. In the bodies

of animals, more particularly if we examine the higher species, the

organism is a more inward, self-contained and self-determined totality;

like a sphere, it returns, so to speak, on itself, while still

remaining an external organism. It is an external process, and yet, as

a process, asserted against externality. The more important organs are

those within, such as heart, lungs, and liver, and in these the life

is bound up. Such are not determined under the simple characteristics

of uniformity. In those members, however, even of the animal organism,

which are fixed in direct relation to the outside world, symmetrical

arrangement prevails. Among such must be reckoned the members and

organs which assert the subjective principle externally no less than

those which are the instruments of the active life. The sense-organs,

such as sight and hearing, belong to the former; all that we see and

hear is left as we found it. The organs of smell and taste already mark

the point of union with an activity exercised externally. We only smell

that which is already assimilated[246] by the organ of sense, and we

only exercise our taste through an act of destruction. We have, it is

true, but one nose, but it is subdivided into two sections, each of

which is uniform in structure. The same description is applicable to

the lips and teeth and other organs like them. Further than this the

eyes and ears, and the limbs employed in motion from place to place,

or for direct control over external objects, in other words, legs and

arms, are entirely uniform in position, form, and other qualities.

We find, therefore, that in the organic world no less than in the

inorganic uniformity asserts a very real predominance, qualified,

however, by the fact that its presence is limited to those members

which are the instruments of the organism in its direct relation to

the external world. On those through which the life-process returns

on itself by virtue of its own subjective principle there is no such

impression of uniformity.

Such, then, are the leading characteristics of the forms of uniformity

and symmetry, and the manner in which they are asserted in the

configuration of natural phenomena.

_(b) Conformity to Rule_

We now propose to distinguish the more generic conception of conformity

to law[247], so far as it appears on a higher plane of organic

evolution than that already adverted to, and marks the passage of

the same to the freedom of natural no less than spiritual life,

from the more abstract forms discussed above. Taken by itself, no

doubt, conformity to rule is not alone sufficient to give us the

subjective unity and freedom of _totality_; but we do find in the

configuration to which it corresponds a totality of essentially

_distinguished characteristics_, such as do not merely emerge in

_difference_ and opposition, but betray both _unity_ and determinate

connection in such totality. A unity thus controlled, albeit still

only positively asserted in quantitative substance, is no longer

referable to essentially exterior distinctions of mere size numerically

ascertainable, but already introduces to our notice a qualitative

relation of consistency between these contrasted determinations. In

other words we have here neither the abstract repetition of one and

the same determinant[248], nor a uniform interchange of similarity

and dissimilarity[249], but the contemporaneous association of aspects

essentially distinct from one another. We find, in fact, our sense of

sight gratified by the association of these distinguishing features in

their completeness. And it is the principle of reason which affords

us such satisfaction, gratifying our sense only through the totality,

or rather through the very totality of differences the nature of the

fact requires. Such a connection, however, still remains an unexplained

nexus, which sense-perception arrives at partly on account of its

persistent repetition, and in part through an intuition of deeper

source.

A few examples will make clear the process of definition from

uniformity to conformity with law. Parallel lines of equal length are

abstractly uniform. A further step is taken when we compare geometrical

figures of the same form, triangles, for example, but assume their size

to be unequal. Here the angles subtended by the corners of each and

the relation of line to line is the same, but we find such similarity

in different _quanta._ Take again the circle, it does not possess the

uniformity of the straight line, but at the same time the determination

of abstract equality strictly applies to it, for all its radii are of

equal length. The circle is consequently still but a curved line that

awakes no particular interest[250].

On the other hand, there is still less uniformity in the _ellipse_ and

the _parabola_, and they are only understood through the law of their

form. In other words the _radii vectores_ of the ellipse are both

unequal and in conformity with rule, and the same qualification applies

to the greater and lesser axis of their lines of differentiation[251];

moreover, their foci are not central as is the case with the circle. We

find in these examples, therefore, a qualitative relation of difference

assert itself in the law applicable to such lines and constructive of

their interconnection. If, however, we divide the ellipse by means of

its greater and lesser axes we obtain four equal sections; regarded as

a whole, therefore, we still find the principle of uniformity paramount

in this figure. Of a higher degree of freedom in its conformity to law

is the _oval._ We know there is such a law, though mathematicians have

been unable to express its formula. This figure is not an ellipse, but

the higher curve differs from that below it. Still we find that even in

this example of freer eccentricity in Nature, if we divide it through

its greater axis, we have still two equal halves. The final expression

of mere uniformity in conformity to law is shown in lines, which, as in

the example of the oval, when divided through the smaller[252] axis,

give us unequal sections, neither section being a mere repetition of

the other. The so-called undulatory line is an example of this, in the

sense Hogarth describes it as the line of beauty. Thus the inclination

of the arms as they fall on either side of the human body is opposed.

Here we have conformity to rule without uniformity pure and simple.

Such a kind of conformity especially characterises with its variety the

conformation of the nobler living organisms.

Conformity to law is, then, an attribute of substantiality, binding

together both its differences and its unity; but it remains still

abstract on the side of its controlling form, unable to supply

individuality with the freedom of motion, or rather by virtue of that

form is entirely without the higher freedom of subjectivity, and quite

incapable of revealing the vitality and ideality proper to it.

_(c) Harmony_

On a higher plane in the sphere of abstract beauty must be placed

_harmony._ In harmony we find qualitative distinctions are held

together, and further held together in a totality of differentiation,

such as is based on the essential nature of the fact itself. This

consistency of support is derived from conformity to law, in so far

as that form unfolds what is essentially uniformity, and thereby

passes beyond the mere characteristics of equality and repetition.

But in doing this the distinctions of quality assert themselves not

only in their difference of opposition and contradiction, but in

aspects of a unity that rivets them together, a unity in which all

distinguishing features, it is true, are maintained in their proper

place, but still only as belonging to one single whole. This unity of

accordance is what constitutes harmony. We may either regard it as a

totality of aspects essentially distinct, or as the resolution of the

element of mere contradiction asserted by them, revealing their more

vital interconnection and ideal solidarity. In this sense we refer

to the harmony of form, or colour, or musical tone. As an example,

we have blue, yellow, green, and red as the fundamentally necessary

differentiation of colour[253].

In these irresolvable data of the spectrum we have not merely the

inequality we found in symmetry, but contradictory opposites, such as

yellow and blue, their neutralization and withal concrete identity.

The beauty of their harmony is revealed in the avoidance of their

crude opposition, which is softened thereby in such a way as to put

before us the concordance hidden beneath their difference. They do,

in fact, emanate from one source, namely colour, which is not an

abstract conception[254], but an essential totality. So far, indeed,

can the compulsive force of such totality carry us, that we can, as

Goethe has pointed out, when we have but one colour presented to us,

still subjectively recognize another at the same time. In the same

way the tonic, mediant, and dominant are essential distinctions among

musical tones, which the unity of harmony associates through their

difference in one whole. We may submit the harmony of form, which is

differentiated through the varied aspects of position, repose, and

motion to a similar analysis. If we suffer any one of the subordinate

distinctions to assume an exclusive predominance the unity which

relates them will be destroyed.

Harmony, however, is not to be confused with free ideal subjectivity

and soul-life. In the latter the unity manifested is not merely an

interconnection and concordance, but a positive negation of difference,

which, for the first time, reveals their concrete and ideal unity. A

concrete unity such as this is not the result of harmony. Such concrete

unity is, for example, that which we find in the actually melodious

thing[255], which no doubt possesses harmony as its fundamental form,

but at the same time possesses the higher characteristic of free

subjectivity, and by means of song gives expression to that. Harmony

alone has nothing to do with the appearance of subjective life, as

such, nor of that of mind, although it is the highest manifestation of

abstract form, and stands in close affinity to free subjectivity. Such,

then, is our determination of abstract unity as we find it brought

before us in the specific modes of abstract form.

2. BEAUTY AS ABSTRACT UNITY OF THE MATERIAL MEDIUM

The side of abstract unity which we have now to consider is not that

directly related to form, but to the sensuous material simply in which

it is asserted. The unity is manifested on this side as the entirely

undifferentiated concordance of the particular sensuous material. It

is the one form of unity, which the material of sense, in its purely

objective aspect, is capable of receiving. On this plane and under the

above noted relation[256] the abstract _purity_ of the _materia_ in

its form, colour, or tone constitutes what is most essential to it.

Entirely straight drawn lines, which run without a shadow of difference

in their straightness or strength, bare superficies and similar

examples please us by virtue of their persistent regularity and their

uniform homogeneousness. The purity of the heavens, the translucence

of the atmosphere, a mirror-like lake the smoothness of the ocean's

face, all give pleasure by virtue of this unity. We find the same

truth brought home to us by purity of tone. The voice when purely

produced, though taken quite by itself, possesses an attraction for us

inexpressibly delightful; vocal notes which are not thus pure on the

contrary, by permitting us to hear the organ of production along with

them, disturb or weaken the pure resonance and definition of their

music. In much the same way human speech possesses pure tones in its

vowels, a, e, i, o, u, and its compound vowels, ae, ü, and ö. Popular

dialects are particularly characterized by impurity of vocalization

and mediate tones such as oa. Purity of tones consists further in this

that the vowels are associated with consonants, whose sound does not

tend to blurr the sonority of the vowel tones, as is too frequently the

case with our northern languages, when contrasted with the way in which

their purity is preserved by the Italian, a characteristic which makes

that language so adaptable to singing. We experience an enjoyment of

similar nature through the sight of colour in its simplest purity of

tint, an absolutely pure red or blue for example, not by any means a

common occurrence, such pristine colours being often weakened through

the addition to them of yellow or tints of each other[257]. Violet can

no doubt appear to us as a pure colour, but only in an external object,

not, that is to say, as a compounded colour[258], for it is not itself

an elementary colour belonging to colour's essential differentiation.

It is these elementary or cardinal colours, easily recognized by sense

in their purity, which, on account of their crude opposition, are most

difficult to unite together in harmony. Colours, on the contrary,

which are blurred in their transparency by many other tints, although

not so antagonistic to general harmony, fail to give us such direct

enjoyment from the very fact that the energy of opposition in them is

weakened. Green, for instance, is a compound of blue and yellow, but it

is the neutralization of these cardinal colours, and for that reason

less attractive to us in its own purity than blue and yellow in their

secure[259] opposition. Such are the points of most importance we have

to remark upon in dealing with the abstract unity of form no less than

the simplicity and purity of the sensuous material. In whichever aspect

we regard our subject-matter we have to review that which is by virtue

of its abstract character destitute of life, and a unity with no true

actuality. Ideal subjectivity is inseparable from this, and such is

entirely absent from the beauty of Nature even at the highest potency

of its manifestation. This essential defect points us imperatively

forward to the Ideal, which Nature is unable to reveal to us, and in

contrast with which the beauty of Nature appears as a subordinate mode.

C. DEFECTIVE ASPECTS OF THE BEAUTY OF NATURE

The true object of our inquiry is the beauty of art viewed as the only

reality adequate to the Idea of beauty. We have hitherto treated the

beauty of Nature as the first mode of the existence of the beautiful.

We have now to inquire more closely into that which distinguishes

natural beauty from that of art.

As an abstract proposition we may affirm that the Ideal is beauty in

its rounded completeness. Nature, on the contrary, brings before us

beauty in its incompleteness. Such abstract predicates do not, however,

help us much, for our real problem is rather to explain exactly what

it is which makes the difference between the completeness of the one

from the incompleteness of the other. Our inquiry therefore hinges on

the question how it comes about that Nature is necessarily incomplete

as a mode of beauty and how this incompleteness is asserted. When we

have answered that we shall be in a better position to deduce both the

necessity and essential significance of the Ideal.

We have already in following the process of Nature up to its

culminating manifestation in animal life drawn attention to the modes

of beauty revealed in that process. It is now of the first importance

that we fix our attention more definitely on the culminating phase of

that evolution where we find subjectivity and individuality presented

to us in the living organism.

We have already referred to the beautiful as the Idea in a manner

identical to that we employ when we speak of the good and true as the

Idea, in the sense, that is to say, where we characterize the Idea as

the wholly substantial and universal, the absolute substance--with no

sensuous material therewith--of reality, in short, the consistency

of the world. Determined more strictly, however, as already pointed

out, the Idea is not merely substantiality and _universality_, but

the unity of the _notion_ and its _reality_, just that, the notion

revealed to us as notion in its coincident objectivity. It was Plato

who, as we have remarked in our introduction, posited the Idea as

that which was alone true and universal, and, indeed, as the one

_concrete_ Universal. The Platonic _Idea_ is, however, not itself as

yet the concrete _real_, for apprehended under the _notion_ and its

_universality_ it is already coincident with the real. Apprehended,

however, only in its _universality_[260], it is not _realized_,

realized, that is to say, as Truth in its self-determinate realization.

It is still only the _potency_ of such self-realization. But just

as the notion is not the notion of real existence without its full

objectivity, in the same way the Idea without its realization in the

objective world is not the Idea in its Truth as existent reality. The

Idea must proceed to such realization, which is only present itself

for the first time in a really existent subjectivity adequate to the

notion, and its ideal unity and self-determination. In the generic

species we find its reality first manifested as free and concrete

individuality. Life only exists as a _living thing_; goodness is only

realized in _particular_ men; and all truth is simply the consciousness

of _knowledge_--Spirit which has come to its own vital inheritance.

Only the concrete singularity is both true and really existent, mere

abstract universality and particularity is not so. This self-subsistent

actuality, this subjectivity is the point on which everything turns,

and which we must fully grasp in its significance. Subjectivity may be

defined as ideal determination by virtue of a principle of ideal unity

which asserts itself through _negation_ of the differences presented

to it as consistent parts of one objective reality[261]. The unity of

the Idea and its realization is the _negative_ unity of the _Idea_

as such and its _reality_; it is at once and at the same time the

_subsumption_ and _deposition_ in a unified content of the difference

asserted on either side. Only in this active process is the unity of

the Idea affirmatively determined in its full activity, a unity and

subjectivity whose process of self-determination is infinite. We have

consequently to apprehend the Idea of the beautiful in its realized

mode of existence as essentially concrete subjectivity and, moreover,

as individual substantiality, by virtue of which it is the Idea really

existent, possessing the form of its reality in concrete and individual

singularity.

But here we must distinguish between _two_ distinct modes of

singularity or individuality, namely, that which is immediately

presented us by _Nature_ and that which is predicated of _mind_

(spirit). In both forms it is given determinate existence, and

consequently is in both substantive content, the Idea in short, and

in the particular sphere of our inquiry for both forms the Idea

as beauty. Viewed in this way we may affirm if we please that the

beautiful of Nature has a _similar_ content with that of the Ideal. In

contradistinction, however, to such a point of view we must not fail to

observe that the difference of form, in which the Idea herein attains

reality, that is to say the difference between the individuality

which prevails in the spheres of Nature and Spirit, the difference

asserted in its respective appearance, this it is which constitutes an

_essential distinction._ As we shall see, the real point of our inquiry

is this, namely, which of these two forms is really the one most

adequate to the Idea, for it is obvious that it is only in the entirely

adequate form that the totality of the Idea is _in its full content_

explicitly realized. This is the more immediate point we have now to

examine in so far as the difference between natural beauty and the

Ideal falls into line with the formal differentiation of singularity.

_Immediate_ singularity is no doubt primarily found in the domain of

Spirit no less than in Nature as such. For, in the first place, Spirit

is possessed of an external existence in bodily form; secondly, even

in spiritual relations, Spirit, in the first instance, only exists in

its union with immediate reality. Subdividing our inquiry in conformity

with such facts, we will consider the nature of immediate singularity

from _three_ different points of view.

1. (_a_) We have already seen that the animal organism preserves its

determinate existence through a persistent evolutionary process of

its own in opposition to an environing inorganic Nature, which it

assimilates by means of consumption and digestion, compelling thereby

what is external to submit to that process, and asserting its own

independent existence by so doing. We found at the same time that

this living process is a system of activities, which is realized in

a system of organs, whose functional action consists in those very

activities. The one and single aim of this homogeneous system is

the self-preservation of the living totality thereof through such a

process. The animal life consists, therefore, in a life of sensuous

impulses, whose general course and satisfaction is realized in the

above-mentioned organic system. The living organism is for this reason

articulated in its parts under a _teleological principle_, and the

principle or end subserved is self-preservation. Life is immanent in

every member; they are united to life, and life is one with them. And

the net result of this animate process is that the animal is maintained

as a thing conscious of itself as an individual subject of feeling,

life and the self-enjoyment its singularity procures for it. We have

only to compare animal life with plant life to see the difference

implied in the absence of such a sense-consciousness. The plant simply

brings to the birth new specimens of its species, without even being

able to concentrate any single one on that point of negation, which

constitutes self-singularity. We must, however, add that even in the

animal organism and its life we never have actually before our eyes the

true manifestation of this _centre of unity_, but rather simply the

_manifold_ of its members. Life is still too deficient on the side of

freedom and in opposition to the mere caprice of sense-life to manifest

such a subjective individuality as is capable of breaking through the

external envisagement of its organic parts. The vital centre of such

activities in the animal organism still remains veiled from vision, and

all that we see are the mere outlines of the figure, and this for the

most part concealed from our view by feathers, scales, hair, fur, or

spines. There can be no question that coverings of this nature, though

characteristic of the animal world, are coverings which partake of the

form of the vegetable world. And it is precisely at this point that

the beauty of animal life declares its essential insufficiency. That

which the organism makes most visible to us is not the soul-principle.

That which is directed outward and throughout appears is not the life

within, but rather formations accepted from a lower plane of existence

than the essential embodiment of life. The animal is _only_ fully alive

beneath that outer crust, and consequently for this very reason that

its _inwardness_[262] is not wholly made real in a form adequate to

reveal it, we are unable to see the principle of Life everywhere shine

freely through it; it remains _only_ an _inwardness_, and the shell is

_external only_ unpermeated by the vital principle.

(_b_) The _human_ body, in virtue of its more exalted station, presents

us with a striking contrast. In this we are everywhere reminded that

man is in possession of a unity of feeling, a soul. The human skin

is not covered over plant-like with an apparently lifeless sheath;

the pulsation of the blood is visible throughout the entire surface;

the beating heart of life is everywhere at the same time apparent;

and we have in this outward manifestation, as it were, the real

fount Of life made visible, the _turgor vitae_ as it streams from

its centre. In the same way the human skin, sensitive throughout in

its minutest parts, reveals to us the _morbidezza_ of its colouring,

those tints of flesh-colour and vein-colour which are the despair of

an artist. On the other hand, however much the human body presents,

as the apparent mirror of Life, a contrast with that of animals, it

undoubtedly expresses also the natural process of self-preservation in

the subdivision of the skin, and the indentations, wrinkles, pores,

small hairs and veins which we find attach thereto. In fact the skin

itself, though permitting the inner life to shine through it, is

none the less an external protection of that life, a means obviously

intended for such self-preservation. The supreme significance, however,

of the contrast here presented is traceable in this extraordinary

sensitiveness of the human cuticle, which, although not absolutely

the seat of feeling itself, alone renders such feeling possible. But

at the same time even in this direction we are made conscious of the

defect, that this sensitiveness does not penetrate as a vital impulse

of concentrated emphasis equally through all the members. We find in

the human body itself certain organs whose form is entirely appropriate

to mere animal functions, while others give a more adequate expression

to the entire soul-life, its feelings and passions. Regarded in this

way it is obvious that even in the human body the inner life of soul

has not found its complete reflection in all parts of its external

realization.

(_c_) The same defect is apparent on the higher plane of the

_spiritual_ world and its organizations, if we consider such under

the aspect of life as immediately presented. The more extensive and

the richer their configurations are, the more we shall find that the

fundamental object of the inner life of such totalities requires other

means co-operative with such externality for its adequate expression.

Such organizations no doubt appear in immediate reality as organic

wholes in which definite purpose is realized, and the realization of

such purpose is manifested by the mediation of voluntary effort. Every

centre of such a spiritual organism, such as the State or the family,

that is to say each individual organic totality, is in possession of a

_will_ capable of such exercise, and appears in unity with the other

members of the same organism; but the _one_ inner soul of this nexus,

the freedom and reason of the aim of all is not visible in external

reality as such in the absolute freedom of its subjective and universal

principle of life, nor is it thus manifested in every part.

The same thing may be observed in particular actions and events, where

we find a similar organic totality present. The inner motive from which

they proceed is not wholly made visible upon the external surface

of their actual presence. What we do find is a total presentment of

_fact_, whose most fundamental ground of unity and vitality still

remains _hidden from sight._

Finally, when we consider from the same point of view any single

individual we are confronted with the same truth. Every human person

is a self-rounded totality, held together by the central unity of

life. In the immediate envisagement of reality, that is in his life,

action, avoidance of action, desires and impulses, he only appears in

a fragmentary way; none the less it is only from a general survey of

all his actions or sufferings that we are able to form an estimate

of character. The centre of unity which thus concentrates to a point

the entire subject-matter of our extended survey is not as such either

visible or directly apprehended.

2. The second point of importance to which we would draw attention

is this. With the immediate appearance of individuality the Idea, as

we have already indicated, receives determinate existence. Through

this very immediacy however it becomes interwoven with the complexity

of the external world, is conditioned by the limitations of external

circumstance and the relative character of means and ends which are

found there, in one word is carried into the finitude of external

Nature. For though immediate singularity is in the first place a fully

rounded off unity, it is for the same reason only self-exclusive

as a centre of negation opposed to _others_, and is, by virtue of

its immediate singularity, influenced by, no less than related to,

a totality of real existence other than its own, upon which it is

dependent in a thousand different ways. The Idea, in short, is in this

very immediacy realized in every direction as _individual distinction._

It is consequently now merely a reflex of the inherent energy of the

notion which binds all individual existence, that of Nature no less

than mind in reciprocal correlation[263]. Such a relation to the

existences themselves is a purely external one, and appears also to

them as a single _external necessity_ uniting each part of the manifold

in one shifting complexus of interrelated reciprocity. The immediacy

of determinate existence is therefore, as thus regarded, a system of

necessary relations between apparently self-subsistent individual

things and forces, in which each singular entity is committed as a

means to the service of ends foreign to it, or itself is compelled to

utilize that which is external to itself as such a means. And inasmuch

as the Idea is under this aspect wholly realized on the ground of

externality, there appears at the same time the unrestrained play of

every caprice and accident, no less than the uncontrolled discharge of

the burden of indigence. Singularity as immediate appearance lives and

moves in the realm of unfreedom.

(_a_) The individual _animal_ is, for example, fettered wholly within

the bounds of its natural environment of air, water and land. Its

entire way of living, the mode of its self-nourishment, everything that

concerns it, is thereby determined. It is this which differentiates

with such variety the species of animal life. We find, moreover,

intermediate strains, such as swimming birds and suckling animals,

which live in the water, amphibious species and others which still

further mediate between the more obviously generic. These are,

however, mere confusions of race, and indicate no higher mediation

of considerable range. Throughout we find the animal subject in its

self-preservation to the absolute necessities of external nature, cold,

drought, or insufficient supply of the means of nourishment. Under this

despotic dominion it is liable through the parsimony of circumstance to

lose the fulness of external form, the blossom of its beauty, in short

to become as it were the reflex of starving Nature herself. External

conditions fix imperatively the measure of beauty it either preserves

or forfeits.

(_b_) The human organism, in its particular bodily existence is

subject, if not in the same measure, to external forces of Nature, and

is compelled to face the same contingencies, deficient livelihoods, and

every kind of harassing disease and misery.

(_c_) If we carry investigation further to that still higher plane

of immediate reality where _spiritual_ interests are predominant we

shall find this dependence on external condition for the first time

emphasized in its full relativity. Here we are face to face with the

prose of human existence in its entire length and breadth. The contrast

already noticed between ends subservient to purely physical wants, and

those profounder aims of spiritual life, and the conflict which tends

to inflict a loss on one side or the other, already opens our view of

it. Add to this every individual man, in order to preserve himself as

such, is compelled to make himself in many ways subservient to others,

and the limited aims of others, and on the other hand, in order to

satisfy his own narrow interests, to accept the service of others as a

mere means for their fulfilment. The individual, then, as he appears

in the prose-life of everyday existence, is not therefore active

out of his own particular totality, nor is he intelligible so much

in virtue of himself as in virtue of that which he is not[264]. For

individual man stands in a relation of dependence to the influences,

laws, organizations and other social relations of civic life which

he finds already existing around him, and to which he must submit

whether he forfeit his own independent soul-life thereby or not. And

more than this, each separate individual is not presented to others

as such totality, but is only reflected in whatever isolated interest

they may happen at the time to possess in his actions, desires, and

opinions. And what interests mankind mainly is some relation to

their own particular thoughts and aims. Even historically important

actions and events, with which the community is expressly associated,

appear in this field of relative appearances merely as a manifold of

isolated efforts. It is a varied collection to which each contributes

as he may, with aims by no means identical, some of which meet with

success while others miscarry, and indeed, be they ever so fortunate,

are significant in a very subordinate degree if we consider them as

contributions to the wellbeing of all. What the majority may carry

through, in contrast with the entire aggregate of events and the end

applicable to all[265], to which it furnishes its quota, is after all

a mere patch; nay, even men of eminent standing, who feel and are

fully conscious of the universal passage of events[266], as their own

world, are for all that clearly immeshed in the same net of particular

circumstances, conditions, and a thousand other hindrances involved

in their relative position. On all these grounds it is plain that in

this sphere of exterior life the individual world is unable to offer

us the vision of that independent and complete freedom of the living

principle, such as is essential to the true notion of beauty. It is,

of course, true that the immediate appearance of human reality and

its events and organizations is not without system, and as such is a

totality of activities; but this whole is rather in its appearance a

mere mass of isolated fragments. Moreover the practical concerns of

such activities are divided and subdivided into countless parts, and in

such a way that each single part is in touch with the merest fraction

of all; and, in short, however much individuals may remain steadfast to

their own purposes, and only bring forth to the light that which their

own interest has employed as a means, the self-subsistence and freedom

of their will remains more or less of a formal character, determined by

external circumstance or accident, and constantly thwarted by natural

causes[267].

This is the prose of the world, as presented to our own consciousness

no less than to that of others; a world of finitude and change, a world

immeshed in relation and submerged beneath the pressure of necessity,

a world from which no individual can extricate himself. The central

paradox of life confronts every unit of the living whole. On the one

hand there is the impulse of individuality to perfect its isolated

unity in self-exclusion; on the other there is the necessary condition

of dependence on others from which none may claim immunity. However

prolonged the struggle to overcome this contradiction may be the effort

of that interminable battle only terminates with life itself.

3. Thirdly, the immediate singularity of the worlds of Nature and Mind

is not merely conditioned by dependence on others, but is deficient in

any complete self-subsistency owing to its _confined_ nature, or with

more accuracy, because it is particularized in its own specific mode of

manifestation.

(_a_) We will explain our meaning further. Every single specimen of

life in the animal world is from the first fettered by a definite,

that is to say, a restricted and constant species, beyond the limits

of which it cannot pass. There is in the spiritual world, no doubt, a

general picture of life and its organization, which floats vaguely

before our vision; but in the real world, which is one with Nature,

this universal organism breaks up into a multitude of particulars,

each of which possesses the determinate type of form and grade of

cultivation in which it is related to a definite portion of the

social organism. In addition to this and within these insuperable

limits, we find the pressure of that element of contingency, as

regards general condition or external environment, predominantly

asserted both uniquely and in haphazard fashion throughout every one

of those individual units. Such a state of things disturbs our vision

of the self-subsistency and freedom, which the idea of true beauty

imperatively requires.

(_b_) As already observed, it is unquestionably true that Spirit

discovers in its own bodily organism the notion of life completely

realized. This is so much the case that, in contrast with it, the forms

of the animal world appear not only as incomplete, but in inferior

species as even pitiable objects. The human organism is also, however,

broken up, if to a less, degree, in racial subdivisions and the

ascending grades of beauty which distinguish such races. Moreover, in

addition to this obviously very general line of demarcation, we have

presented to us all the accidental variety of qualities, peculiar to

distinct families and their interfusion with one another, such as modes

of life, facial expression, and general demeanour. We must further

associate with such characteristic traits, which all of them emphasize

a condition of essentially unfree particularity, those peculiarities

which are inseparable from activity employed in the endless round of

commercial life or professional career; qualities which find their

ultimate expression in the specific habits or idiosyncracies of any

exceptionally marked character or temperament, or, as the reverse side

of the picture, in the various confusions of arrested development.

Poverty, care, anger, coldness, and indifference, the rage of passion,

the obstinate retention of narrow purposes, indications of change

and division in the spiritual world, entire dependence on that of

Nature--in one word all that is implied in the transitory condition of

human life--leaves its indelible, if quite incalculable, expression

on the varied surface of the faces of mankind. Who has not crossed

weather-beaten types of such, on which the storm of all the passions

has imprinted its disturbing wave; or others, where the coldness and

superficiality of the soul within is all the impression we receive; or,

lastly, as the final verdict of self-absorbed particularity[268], cases

in which the general type seems almost totally to have disappeared.

There is no end to the caprice of the human features. Speaking

generally, we would associate with this ground the fact that the beauty

of children most arrests us. In their faces we find all pronounced

idiosyncracies slumber as it were beneath a quiet veil; no dominating

passion as yet ravages their soul; not one of the thousand interests of

the grown man has engraved for ever the expression of its necessity on

these mobile features. This envisaged innocence of the child, however,

though we may discover in its flexible animation the possibility of

Life's completed fulness, obviously fails to reveal those profounder

indications of a spirit which has been carried forward to explore

the range of its own recesses and to make its life one with rational

purpose.

We may regard, then, immediate existence, both in the purely physical

and spiritual sense of the term, as a _finitude_, or more justly as a

finitude which does not satisfy its notion and for this very reason

declares its finitude. For the notion, and more concretely still, the

Idea, is essentially _independent_ and _free._ Purely animal life,

although as Life it is the Idea, is no manifestation of infinity as

such or freedom. This is alone possible under conditions, where we find

the notion penetrate so completely the reality which is adequate to

it, that it finds itself entirely at home therein, with no extraneous

matter, to disturb its possession. Then alone do we find it a really

free and concrete individuality. The natural life, on the contrary,

is unable to overcome the element of feeling to which it is attached,

and which renders it incapable of penetrating the entire reality

which enrings it. It finds itself, moreover, immediately conditioned

in itself, restricted in its range and dependent, a result which is

due to the fact that its freedom is not truly self-determinate, but

conditioned by the external: object. And the same thing is true of the

immediate and finite reality of the spirit world in its knowledge,

volitional action, and fateful history. For although in this latter

case we find centres of unity expressed which have a real significance,

neither these any more than the particularities they unite have truth

as they stand by themselves; but only that truth which, in their

reciprocal relation to each other, they manifest as constituent

parts of a whole. And this whole, albeit in a sense adequate to its

notion, does not correspond to it in such a way as to manifest itself

in its full totality[269], which consequently still remains aloof

from such envisagement, or rather, is only apprehended in the ideal

world of thought. In other words, the notion finds no fully adequate

presentation in external reality, such as is powerful enough to marshal

homogeneously all the numberless fragments of particularity, and to

concentrate them into _one_ expression and _one_ single form.

(_c_) This, then, is the fundamental reason which prevents Spirit

itself, on the finite planes of determinate existence, and under

the restricting conditions of its externality and necessity, from

rediscovering the immediate vision and enjoyment of its freedom. It

is consequently driven by its absence to seek that vision in a higher

sphere. That sphere is art, and its realization is the Ideal.

We have thus seen that it is the defects of immediate reality which

drive us forward inevitably to the idea of the beauty of art. We are

further under an obligation to prove that its fundamental object[270]

is to manifest here on this very plane of rational reality and in its

freedom the envisagement of life, and, most important of all, the life

of Spirit. Here, then, we have at last the external revealed to us in a

form adequate to the notion. Here, for the first time, truth is lifted

up from its environment of temporal conditions, from its running to

and fro among the whirl of finite particularity, and attains repose;

nay, more than this, discovers an external form, from which the hunger

of Nature and the prose of life no longer stare at us. Here at last we

have a form worthy of substantial truth, which is wholly self-contained

and self-dependent, determining with freedom its own content, and not

driven from such self-assertion by the weight of that of others.

[Footnote 201: _Als Beseelung sich kund gäbe._ The reference is to

the second class which follows rather than truly animates life. The

sun is such an animating principle. How far modern physics with its

investigations of the laws of motion that obtain among the chemical

atoms of any specific form of matter and its denial of all dead matter

would have modified Hegel's view is an interesting question.]

[Footnote 202: _Wir wollen betrachten._ Hegel seems to be conscious

himself that there is something fanciful in this interpretation of the

significance of what is simply an arbitrary, if systematic, arrangement

of bodies according to natural laws.]

[Footnote 203: _Ein besonderes Moment._ See note [191] on p. 152. I

think what Hegel means here is that every body as a vehicle of light

reflects the mode in which the identity of the notion as system in the

different parts asserts itself.]

[Footnote 204: In other words what should be phasal elements

(_Momente_) of a whole integrated within that unity remain independent

units. They are not Momente in the full sense.]

[Footnote 205: _Als bloss real unterschiedener._ The meaning is that

the distinction is only in the totality, not as in the former case in a

body which though part of a system, could be viewed as an independent

body like the sun.]

[Footnote 206: _Gewöhnliches Bewustseyn_, _i.e._, the ordinary view of

understanding (_Verstand_) and sense-perception.]

[Footnote 207: _Blosser Zusammenhang._ Fortuitous is rather too strong.

He means a bond of union cemented by one principle without which either

side fails to possess its specific character, _e.g._, the human body

apart from the human soul its animate individuality, ceases to be

human.]

[Footnote 208: _Als Begriff seyende Begriff._ The reference I take to

be to the logical or dialectical movement of the Idea.]

[Footnote 209: _Viele tausend empfindende_, or centres of feeling.]

[Footnote 210: _Die realen Unterschiede_, _i. e._, the distinctions of

the body viewed as part of the physical process of Nature.]

[Footnote 211: _Zu ihrer subjektiven Einheit_, that is to say, their

unity with the notion of Life as objectively realized in Nature,

subjective only in the sense that it is ideal, not apprehended by

sense-perception as such.]

[Footnote 212: _Nähere._ I think Hegel uses _nähe_ in the idiomatic

sense in which he uses it in the phrase (p. 150) when he speaks of

Nature as _das nächst Daseyn der Idee_, _i.e._, most elementary, more

near to it when the notion first presses out of abstraction into

totality.]

[Footnote 213: Lötze apparently disputes this distinction, but it

appears to me very clear.]

[Footnote 214: _Seyn._ The logical terms are here employed in their

technical Hegelian sense. _Seyn_ is "being" as part of a process, it

is rather a tendency to become than a particular or determinate being

(_daseyn._)]

[Footnote 215: _Das Negiren_, the negation of them as entirely

independent structures.]

[Footnote 216: _Des Idealisirens_, _e.g._, the principle of ideality

which is in one aspect of it negation.]

[Footnote 217: _Affirmatives Fürsichseyn_, _e.g._, the explicit ideal

totality of Life apart from the process.]

[Footnote 218: _Bilderin._]

[Footnote 219: _Das Innere_, otherwise called subjective (see note

above) and meaning what is not externally visible as _materia_, though

it may be visible indirectly as explained further on.]

[Footnote 220: The rather difficult German here is: _Da nun aber in

der Objektivität der Begriff als Begriff die sich auf sich beziehende

in ihrer Realität für sich seyende Subjektivität ist._ The comma after

_Begriff_ is clearly a misprint.]

[Footnote 221: The words here are _das subjektive Fürsichseyn_, _i.e._,

the self-conclusion of an explicit whole in virtue of a principle of

ideal unity (_i.e._, life) asserted, throughout.]

[Footnote 222: _Ein Beharrendes_,> one that persists in an inert form.]

[Footnote 223: Hegel uses the word _scheinen_ both for the ideal

manifestation of the Idea in the object and the appearance of material

reality reduced by it to mere "show" (_herabgesetzt zum scheinen_),

_i.e._, deprived of its independent reality. This introduces a slight

confusion I have endeavoured to avoid by using different terms.]

[Footnote 224: _Unseres Verstandes._ We supply the notion of

intelligent purpose.]

[Footnote 225: That is, the assumed subordination of all organs to one

definite end.]

[Footnote 226: _Sichbewegens._ The emphasis is of course on the self.

But even then the statement is rather an excess. For it seems difficult

to attribute all the beauty visible in the spontaneous movements of so

many living creatures, notably that of birds, to their purely formal

character. At least there is something given by such motion analogous

to the impression we receive from music and the dance; they are

_gesetzmässig_ in short.]

[Footnote 227: _Zufällig_--capricious as opposed to a uniform

principle. There is, however, one apparent bond of external similarity,

between the majority of such members, namely, their covering of skin;

this not merely relates the cheek to the neck, for example, but to some

extent destroys the distinction.]

[Footnote 228: Physical parts, that is to say.]

[Footnote 229: That is to say, it is based on a purely limited

experience which does not necessarily concern the true nature of the

objects perceived.]

[Footnote 230: _Stangen._ The word may express the branches on which

the flowers are carried or the stamens they carry at their apex.]

[Footnote 231: _Geistreich_, "intelligent," _i.e._, an ingenious way of

regarding such facts.]

[Footnote 232: _Dies wunderbare Wort._]

[Footnote 233: The use of the word _Sinn_ to which Hegel here alludes

is not quite identical with our word _Sense._ In the English use

of the term there is more stress on the _materia_ presented to

sense-perception and perhaps less reference to intellect when the word

is employed in such an expression as "That man has sense." However,

Milton has "What surmounts the reach of human sense," and no doubt both

are employed very similarly in many writers.]

[Footnote 234: _Bleibt bei der Ahnung._]

[Footnote 235: _Naiver Weise_, a common epithet of Hegel to denote

freedom from all philosophical prepossessions, a frank and simple

attitude of reception.]

[Footnote 236: _Betrachtung_ appears to imply in its contrast with

_Anschauung_ the presence of that intuitive sense or imaginative

co-ordination above discussed.]

[Footnote 237: _Gestaltende Macht_, _i.e._, plastic force.]

[Footnote 238: This account of the criterium to be adopted in

determining beauty in the animal creation is open to some criticism.

Mobility is no doubt one element of beauty, but it is only one.

Professor Bosanquet points out in his criticism of the passage ("Hist,

of Aesthetik," p. 338) that it amounts to the assertion that ugliness

is purely relative. The defect is not only due, it seems to me, to

Hegel's insufficient regard for Nature as a modern painter would so

regard it, but it may be traced also to his manifest preference for

motion in all the manifestations of Nature.]

[Footnote 239: _Schnabelthier_, otherwise called the _duck-billed

platyptis_, a mammal found in Australia, much the size of an otter,

with the horny beak of a duck and paws formed for swimming.]

[Footnote 240: _Getrübt_, we have the word _trüben_ above, translated

there "troubled," life merely seen through the thick veil of

instinctive sense.]

[Footnote 241: That is, the unity manifested is as abstract from all

concrete totality as the form itself.]

[Footnote 242: This shows clearly that symmetry is only in an analogous

way applicable to musical tones.]

[Footnote 243: In other words, uniformity is outside the purely

qualitative relation, whereas symmetry is not so.]

[Footnote 244: _Beseelte Lebendigkeit_, lit., the insouled

life-principle.]

[Footnote 245: Lit., "Is continually thrust out into the external." Its

activity as life is directed outward.]

[Footnote 246: _Was schon im Sichverzehren begriffen ist._ I think the

distinction implied is that in smell we are in actual contact with a

part of the object. The same thing would, however, be true of sight

according to former theory exploded by Newton's hypothesis.]

[Footnote 247: _Gesetzmässigkeit._ I cannot think of an English word

that quite reproduces it. I am not sure that either conformity to rule

or law singly quite expresses it. It implies both.]

[Footnote 248: As in uniformity.]

[Footnote 249: As in symmetry.]

[Footnote 250: That is to say, apart from symbolical meaning, it

possesses no hidden law to be discovered in the relation of part to

part.]

[Footnote 251: The words are _die grosse und kleine Axe von

wesentlichem Unterschiede._ These refer primarily, it appears, to the

axes of an ellipse, but the expression may possibly include the axes of

a parabola parallel to the sides of a cone. However I admit frankly I

find the words _von wesentlichem Unterschiede_ difficult to interpret

closely.]

[Footnote 252: In the text _grossen_, obviously a misprint.]

[Footnote 253: The incorrectness of this statement according to more

recent analysis does not, of course, affect the argument.]

[Footnote 254: _Nicht einseitig._ I think the meaning here is that

colour is not an abstract idea for independent qualities, but is the

generic notion of a really existing totality.]

[Footnote 255: _Alles melodische_, primarily, organic, of course.]

[Footnote 256: Namely, that of abstract unity.]

[Footnote 257: Hegel expresses this rather differently by saying that

they tend to pass over into pink (_röthliche_) or orange (_gelbliche_)

and green. I have put the same statement rather more directly.]

[Footnote 258: I think this is the meaning of the words _aber nur

äusserlich, d.h._, _nicht beschmützt._ Violet, however, is now regarded

as a cardinal colour. It may also be doubted whether the difficulty of

harmonizing pure colour is as Hegel states it.]

[Footnote 259: This of course is a very questionable position from the

point of view of aesthetic taste no less than the conformity of our

sight to natural objects. The obvious retort is, it all depends what

the nature of the green is. Why is there such a preponderance of green

in Nature as we find it?]

[Footnote 260: That is to say, under the Platonic view of universal.]

[Footnote 261: So I have interpreted the words, _Die Subjectivität nun

aber liegt in der Negativen Einheit als Ideellsetzen der Unterschiede

und ihres realen Bestehens._]

[Footnote 262: _Das Insichseyn_, _i.e._, the incipient singularity of a

feeling subject.]

[Footnote 263: I have translated the words _bleibt nur die innre Macht_

"merely a _reflex_ of the inherent energy," etc. I do not pretend

thereby to clear up all the difficulties of this paragraph. I would

rather remind the general reader that in this entire discussion of

the principle of individuality and its modes of real existence we are

face to face with one the fundamental difficulties of the Hegelian

philosophy, the passage of the Idea to Nature. Readers who wish to see

difficulties more fully developed on this aspect of Hegel's thought

should read Professor Seth's interesting and on the whole moderately

worded criticism contained in his little book "Hegelianism and

Personality" (Blackwood and Sons; see particularly Lecture IV, Thought

and Reality).]

[Footnote 264: _Aus Anderem_, _e.g._, the not-self of experience.]

[Footnote 265: _Des totalen Zwecks_.]

[Footnote 266: I think the expression _das Ganze der Sache_ means this

rather than the entire "organic whole of living reality."]

[Footnote 267: It is well for the general reader to remember that we

have here no full account of what constitutes the _content_ of a free

will. The emphasis throughout is on human activity as exercised in a

world conditioned in its external aspect by necessary laws of Nature.]

[Footnote 268: The reference here must I think he mainly, perhaps

wholly, to the distorted face of the criminal, outcast, or insane

classes. But it is just possible that a certain type of aggressive

genius may also be denoted.]

[Footnote 269: The totality of the notion.]

[Footnote 270: _Beruf_, _i.e._, that which it professes to do.]