(_c_) Our interest, however, in and need to have presented us such

a completely realized individuality and living self-dependence will

always persist, however strongly we may recognize the worth and

reasonable nature of the more developed condition of an organized and

trained civic society. It is this necessity which makes us regard

with astonishment the youthful spirit of Schiller and Goethe when

they sought to discover that lost self-sufficiency in the prevailing

conditions of modern times. How do we find in particular this attempt

is made by Schiller in his earliest works? Simply by a rebellion

directed against the whole organic framework of civil society. Karl

Moor, suffering injury from the existing order at the hands of those

who abuse the power entrusted them, has the courage to break the

bonds which bind him to law and order altogether, cuts himself adrift

and creates for himself a heroic situation, in which he appears as

the champion of right, and the self-constituted avenger of wrong,

injustice, and oppression. None the less, how insignificant and

isolated must a private revenge of this kind appear, if we estimate

it from the practical point of view, according to the probability of

its success; and, in fact, in one aspect of it, it already contains

the germ of wrong which can only lead to the criminal act on which

it will fall to pieces. No doubt, as personal to Karl Moor himself,

this is a misfortune, a fatality, however, which, despite the tragical

element in it, can only engraft on mere boys the blight of such a

"robber-ideal." In much the same way the characters depicted in "Kabale

und Liebe" suffer wrong under prevailing conditions of life, absorbed

in the trivial facts and passions wholly personal to themselves. It is

not until we come to the dramas of "Fiesco" and "Don Carlos" that we

find characters of nobler significance and more substantive content,

heroes, for example, resolved to liberate their country, or assert the

liberty of religious conviction. With a nobility still more striking

Wallenstein places himself at the head of his army that the crisis in

the political situation may come to a focus. He is fully cognisant

of the nature of the political forces upon which his only means of

control, his army, is dependent; consequently he hesitates for long

whether to follow his private inclination or his duty. He has barely

arrived at a decision when he finds the instrument on which he most

depended slip from his grasp; his means of action is gone. For that

which in the last instance unites the leading officers and generals

is no gratitude for anything that may be due to him on the ground of

past services rendered; his fame as a general has nothing to do with

it, but rather the duty they owe to the universally recognized seat

of government, the oath they have sworn to the head of the State,

the emperor of the Austrian monarchy. He finds himself consequently

in the end isolated, and is not so much fought with and overcome

by an external foe as he is stripped of all means of executing his

purpose. He is deserted by his army and from that moment is a lost

man. The "Götz"[310] of Goethe starts from a dramatic situation of an

analogous though somewhat inverse type. The times of Götz and Franz

von Sickingen belong to the interesting epoch in which knight-errantry

and the self-reliant individuality of the class of nobility is being

superseded by the new creation of an external and legally constituted

social order. To have selected precisely this critical time where we

find the heroic characteristics of the Middle Ages and the legalized

fabric of modern society meet and collide for the subject of his first

artistic production shows much penetration on the part of Goethe.

For Götz and Sickingen are still heroes in the genuine sense, who

are resolved to exercise their influence over circumstances, whether

immediately affecting them or of wider range, out of the resources of

their own personalities, their courage, and their private sense of

right. The new order of things involves Götz in acts of illegality and

brings about the catastrophe of his life. It is only in the Middle

Ages that knight-errantry and the relations of feudalism will supply

a field entirely open to this type of self-reliant manhood. When we

find, moreover, the legalized order co-ordinated more completely in

its prosaic form, the predominant authority in fact, the adventurous

self-dependence of knighthood is left outside it as an unrelated

excrescence; and if an attempt is made to assert it as though it were

still a valid means of attacking wrong, and assisting the oppressed, it

becomes simply an object of ridicule, such as Cervantes illustrates for

us in his "Don Quixote."

In this allusion to the opposition which exists between two

differently constituted _régimes_ of society and the collision which

results from action in defiance of their particular character we have

already indicated what we have above defined generally as the closer

determination and differentiation of the universal state of the world,

that is to say, the _situation_ as generally expressed.

2. THE SITUATION

The ideal world-condition which it is the function of art to present

in contrast to prosaic reality we may conclude from our previous

discussion to be merely a general background of society of a specific

kind; it is merely the _possible_ condition necessary for the

particular presentation, not the presentation itself. What we have

hitherto directed attention to is, in fact, the general background

upon which the living figures of art may appear. It is undoubtedly

fructified with individuality and is supported by its self-subsistency;

but as a _general_ condition it is not yet the active movement of

particular individuals in the very form of life, just as we may say

that the temple which Art erects is not as yet the representation of

the personal godhead, but only encloses the germ of the same. For this

reason we must in the first instance regard this world-condition as

a kind of medium in repose, a harmony, so to speak, of forces which

are operative in it, and to this extent it possesses a substantial

consistency of uniform worth, which, however, must not be accepted

as identical with what has been called "the age of innocence." For

it is a condition in the fulness and sovereignty of whose ethical

atmosphere the terrors of division only are slumbering because, in

our contemplation of it, we have before us, for the first time, the

aspect of its substantial unity, and consequently are only presented

with individuality in its most universal terms, a mode of viewing it

which makes it fade away as though without definition or any essential

disturbance of its unity, instead of giving to it the full value of

definite characteristics. But such characterization is essential to

individuality. And if the Ideal is to appear as _definite form_ it is

necessary for it to escape from such pure universality, or in other

words for it to give the universal a particular expression, and by so

doing impart to it both existence and appearance. Art consequently has

in this connection not only to translate into its medium a _universal_

world-condition, but must proceed beyond this quite indefinite

conception to the composition of pictures of _definite_ character and

action.

Regarded from the aspect under which it affects _individual_ character

this general condition is the environment of circumstance which,

according to its specifically detached form, tends to excite both

collisions and development, forcing thereby the individuals thus

affected to express their _nature_ and exhibit such expression in a

definite form. From the point of view of the world-condition this

self-revelation of particular individuals appears as the passing of its

universality into the distinct embodiments of living individuality,

an aggregate over which _universal forces_ still assert the

_mastery._[311] For the eternal powers operative in the world-process

constitute the substantive content of the Ideal as specifically

defined in what it essentially is. The mode of existence, however,

which is realized through the bare form of external condition is

unworthy of this content. For in the first place such a condition is

associated with habit, and the habitual is no adequate determination

of those profounder interests which are active in _self-conscious

mind._ Furthermore, as we have observed, it was the _contingency_ and

_caprice_ of individuality, by virtue of whose spontaneous activity

these very interests are permitted to appear in life; but this

unessential contingency and caprice is again quite as little adequate

to the substantive universality, which constitutes the notion of

essential actuality. On these grounds respectively we are therefore

compelled to seek an art-envisagement more worthy and better defined

for the concrete content[312] of the Ideal.

This new configuration the universal powers can only retain in

its _determinate existence_ in virtue of the fact that they are

manifested in their essential modes of difference and movement, or,

to put the matter more specifically, through their assertion of the

contradictions which they relatively unfold. Two aspects of the

process of individualization into which the universal thus passes must

be here emphasized. In the first place, there is the _substance_ as

an embracing sphere of universal forces through the differentiation

indicated, which is broken from its substantive unity into its

component parts; secondly, there are the _individuals_, which spring

forth as the active completion of these forces and give to them a

specific objectification.

Now what we have characterized as the difference and opposition in

which the world-condition, hitherto harmonious with the individuals

conditioned by it, is involved, if we consider it from the point of

view of universal condition, is the manifestation of the _essential

content_ which it carries in itself. On the other hand we observe that

the substantive universal in that condition is articulated through

particular units in such a way that this very universal procures

for itself determinate existence, albeit it is thus immersed in the

appearance of chance, disunion, and division, an appearance, which,

however, is rendered nugatory by the fact that it is the universal

which thus appears.

The separation of these forces and their objectification[313] in

individuals can, however, further take place under definite conditions

and circumstances, under which and as a constituent aspect of which

the entire objective appearance receives a determinate form, or as

the stimulative impulse of this very realization. By themselves such

circumstances are without interest[314], and it is only through their

relation to mankind that they receive such a significance, through

whose self-consciousness the content of these spiritual forces is

carried actively into objective appearance. The external circumstances

are consequently only to be regarded of significance in so far as they

supply an essential relation to Spirit, in so far, that is to say,

as they are comprehended by those individual units and afford them

a stimulus to actualize their inward _spiritual_ needs, the aims,

ideas, the determinate substance, in short, of all that requires an

individual embodiment. Regarded as a stimulating influence of this

kind particular circumstances and conditions create what we have called

the _situation_, which is specifically presupposed in the actual

self-expansion and activity of all that still lies undeveloped in the

universal world-condition; it is for this reason we have considered the

previous determination of the notion of the situation as necessary to

any inquiry into the true constituents of _action._

The situation expressed in general terms is in one aspect of it the

circumstance _particularized_ to the point of _definite character_,

and under this characterization it is, to put it another way, the

stimulating impulse to a particular expression of content, which it

is the function of artistic presentation to transmute into a specific

form of existence. Looked at from this latter point of view especially

the situation offers a wide field for contemplation, inasmuch as it

has ever been one of the most essential objects of art to discover

situations of real interest, that is to say, of such a kind as will

present to us the profound and weighty interest, the truest content of

spiritual life. The requirements of the several arts in this respect no

doubt differ. Sculpture, for example, is pre-eminently limited in its

reference to the inwardly detailed variety of situations. Painting and

music are already operative in a freer and more comprehensive medium.

Finally, we are least able among them all to exhaust the possibilities

of poetry in this respect.

Since we have not yet arrived at that portion of our subject where we

deal directly with the specific arts, it will be sufficient here to

draw attention to a few of the most general aspects of that inquiry,

which we may subdivide in the following manner.

_First_, we would observe that the situation still retains the

form of _universality_ and thereby of _indeterminacy_, so long as

it is undeveloped and without definite characterization; we have,

consequently, at first present before us a situation which is without

situation. For the form of indeterminacy is itself only _one_ form

as opposed to its contradiction of determinacy, and is shown to be,

by virtue of this very contrast, a one-sided aspect which as such

possesses a determinate relation.

_Secondly_, however, the situation passes in separation away from this

universality, and becomes certainly determinate to that extent, but at

first with a determinacy which produces no destructive consequences,

that is to say, it is one which offers no stimulus to _active

opposition_ and its necessary resolution.

_Thirdly_, we find the element of _disunion_ in all its vigour creating

by the definition of its opposed characteristics the essence of the

situation, which thereby is carried into a _collision_, which again

proceeds to reactions, and, as such, forms the point of departure to

the conception of artistic action properly so called.

We may, in fact, characterize the situation generally as the

_intermediate plane_ between the universal world-condition still in

a state of equilibrium, and the concrete action unfolded in all its

tendency to movement and reaction, a position which gives to it the

characteristics of both extremes, and enables us to pass over from the

one to the other.

_(a) The Absence of Situation_[315]

We passed from the notion of the universal world-condition in

presenting to ourselves the form of it as essentially individual

self-subsistency. Self-subsistency, however, regarded simply in its

essential form, presents to us in the first instance merely the

secure repose upon its own resources in its bare tranquillity. The

form as thus defined is carried into no relation with another, but

remains at one with itself in inclusion with its unity both, within

and without. This presents us with the situation which is without

situation, an illustration of which we may take those ancient types of

temple-building dating from the earliest days of art, whose character

of profound immutable seriousness, of tranquil, nay even of austere

and grandiose, dignity has been the object of imitation even in more

recent times proceeding on lines of a similar type. The Egyptian and

most ancient Greek sculptures will further illustrate for us the same

kind of indeterminate situation. In the plastic art of Christianity,

especially if we consider particular examples of early bust-sculpture,

we shall find both God the Father and Christ are presented in a similar

spirit. Indeed, such a mode of delineation is peculiarly adapted to

present us with the secure substantiality of the Divine, whether such

be apprehended as a definite and particular Godhead, or is grasped as

essentially absolute personality; and this is so in virtue of the very

defect of such a representation, that it gives us portraits of persons

of middle-age which are without any trace of definite situations,

in which the character of the individual as such can reveal itself,

and only the attempt is made to express the entirety of determinate

character in its quality of stability[316].

_(b) The Situation defined in its Harmlessness_[317]

The second point to emphasize is, inasmuch as the situation generally

is reached in the _definition_ of form, the passage from this

tranquillity and blessed repose, or from the unbroken severity

and force of self-consistency, forms which subsist in unfeatured

equilibrium, that is to say, immutable both within and without, have to

be set in motion and surrender their undressed simplicity. This bare

progression to a more specific manifestation in some particular mode of

expression is what we may describe certainly as definite situation, but

a situation which has not yet asserted conflicting elements in itself,

and is fully ripe for collision.

This first step in the process of individualized expression is

consequently of a kind that carries with it no further result; it is

set in no antagonistic opposition to something else, in a relation

which evokes both collision and reaction; it is already in its

character of unconstrainedness finished and complete in itself. With

such a type of situation we may associate those which are mainly to

be regarded as a kind of play, in so far as all that proceeds or is

carried out in them indicates no real seriousness of purpose. For

all earnestness in any kind of activity is generally the result of

oppositions and contradictions, which drive on their way to the final

removal or victory of one side or the other. For this reason situations

of this kind cannot themselves be identified with actions, nor are they

the stimulative impulse of actions; they are indeed, in a certain

aspect, of determinate character, but they are either circumstances of

the most trivial significance, or a form of action which is without an

essentially serious object, which either is the result of conflicts, or

is able to carry the action yet further into conflicts.

(_α_) The first thing to arrest us in this process is the passage

generally from the repose of the unfeatured situation to a condition of

emotion and expression: this is asserted partly as purely mechanical

motion, in part also as the first impulse and satisfaction of any

internal want. The Egyptians, for example, represented the gods in

their sculpture with closely locked limbs. The Greeks, on the contrary,

released both arms and legs, and endowed the bodily form with all

that is appropriate to the advance and general variety of movement.

Permanent repose, a seated attitude, a tranquil gaze, are all of them

simple conditions under which the Greeks apprehended their gods; they

are modes which unquestionably gave to the self-subsistent figure of

Godhead a certain characterization, but one nevertheless which is

not carried forward into other relations and oppositions, but rather

remains enclosed within itself, and permanently significant as such.

Situations of this simple kind attach in a particular way to sculpture,

and the ancients, above all others, were inexhaustible in discovering

fit subjects for such a condition of unconstrained freedom. In this

respect they showed an extraordinary insight; for it is precisely

through contrast with the insignificance of the particular situation

that the majesty and self-subsistency of the ideal types of the Greek

Pantheon were made to appear so striking. It was, in fact, through the

harmlessness and insignificance of what appeared to be done or left

undone that the blessed peaceful tranquillity and immutability of the

immortal gods was brought most clearly to consciousness. The situation

merely indicates the particular character of either god or hero in

quite a general way, such as brings them into no relation with other

gods, or at least into no relation suggestive of hostility or division.

(_β_) It is a further step in the direction of more defined situation,

when we find in such any particular purpose already represented in it,

an activity which stands in definite relation to something external,

and the self-subsistent figure itself expressed as within the sphere

of such purpose or activity. Even objectification such as these,

however, which have no real disturbing influence upon the tranquillity

and cheerful blessedness of the figures represented, are rather to be

regarded as particular modes of presentation incidental to this very

quality of cheerful contentment. The invention of the Greeks was here,

too, exceptionally thoughtful and fruitful. It is essential to the

unconstrainedness of such situations that the activity here presented

should merely indicate an action in its initial stage in such a way

that no further developments or oppositions are likely to proceed from

it, but that all that appears necessary to complete it should be found

enclosed in the action depicted.

As an illustration of this the situation of the Belvedere Apollo is

seized at the moment when he moves forward in wrathful majesty after

slaying the Python with his arrow. A situation of this kind has

not the grandiose simplicity of the earlier Greek sculpture, which

asserts for our intelligence the repose and open clarity of the gods

by means of expressed actions of less significance. Take the case of

Aphrodite peacefully gazing at herself while emerging from her bath

in full possession of her charms; or of fauns and satyrs at play,

play that is wholly absorbed in itself; or of that famous satyr who

dandled the young Bacchus in his arms, while he looks down upon him

with infinite tenderness and grace; to say nothing of the endless

variety of unconstrained activities in which Eros is depicted. Such

are a few examples of this type of situation. If the action is of more

concrete character we are confronted with a more involved situation,

which, at least for the artistic presentment of the Greek gods as

self-substantive powers, is less appropriate. In a case of this kind

the pure universality of the individual god is less able to transpierce

the accumulated detail of the particular action which he expresses. The

Mercury of Pigalli, which is a present of Louis XV to the exposition

of statuary in Sanssouci, is fastening on his winged sandals. This

is a perfectly harmonious action. The Mercury of Thorwaldsen, on the

contrary, is depicted under a situation which is almost too complicated

for sculpture. He listens attentively to the flute of Marsyas. At

the same time he is craftily spying him to see how he may slay him

while his hand grasps maliciously for the dagger he has concealed. In

opposition to this, if we may add one more illustration from a more

modern work of art, is that representation by Rudolf Schadow, of a

maiden binding her sandals in much the same simple manner as we find in

the case of Mercury. In this example the naïveté of the situation does

not contain the interest we experience when it is a god who exhibits

such unconstrained action. When it is only a maiden who fastens her

sandals or spins, there is little else to engage our attention but the

simple action, which is by itself of little significance or importance.

(_γ_) We shall find further, if we follow up the above train of

thought, that the more closely defined situation can be treated more

generally, as merely a more or less definite stimulus presenting the

_opportunity_ for further development of expressed action of wider

range related to the primary subject with varying degrees of affinity.

Many lyrical poems have what we may call an occasional situation

of this kind. A particular mood or a certain atmosphere of emotion

is a situation which can be arrested poetically for consciousness,

and, furthermore, in particular relation to external circumstances,

festivals, or public victories, is able to carry us forward to this or

that artistic expression, either of more comprehensive or restricted

range, and in every kind of embodiment of feeling and idea. Pindar's

odes of victory are supreme examples of this type of occasional

poetry. Goethe, too, has selected as the subject-matter of his muse

many lyrical situations of a similar character; and, in fact, if we

look closely into the matter, we shall hardly be wrong in calling his

"Werther" a poem of occasion. It is through the medium of "Werther"

that Goethe has elaborated the convulsions and anguish of his own

heart, incorporated, in short, the facts of his own experience in a

work of art. This, after all, is true of every lyrical poet; he gives

poetical expression to that which nearly affects him, and thereby

throws the windows of his heart open to the fresh air. That which has

hitherto been sealed up within is released in the external object,

from which our humanity has freed itself, just as we are the lighter

for the rain of tears, in which the sorrow is wept away. So Goethe,

as in fact he has told us himself, by his composition of Werther,

liberated himself from the mastery and pressure of his heart troubles.

At the same time we must point out that this last-mentioned situation

is not really appropriate to the type with which we are now dealing;

it obviously presents the profoundest contradiction in itself which

calls for resolution. No doubt in the kind of lyrical situation we have

identified with "the occasional" we may have declared a circumstance

objectively determined, in other words, an activity in close relation

to the external world; but, on the other hand, we find the poetic

temperament equally able to withdraw itself within the atmosphere it

creates wholly free from its external environment, and to make that

inward world which is the combined product of circumstance and emotion

its true point of departure.

_(c) The Collision_

All the situations to which we have hitherto directed attention are,

as already observed, neither true actions in themselves nor indeed the

stimulative source of such action. Their determination was to a greater

or less degree the purely occasional circumstance or condition, or an

action in itself of no significance, in which a substantive content was

expressed in such a way that its specific character appeared as a mere

harmless play, in which nothing of a truly serious nature was implied.

The full seriousness and weighty import of a situation can only begin

when we find in it the element of disruption, where the determination

itself exposes an essential aspect of difference, and by its opposition

to something else becomes the source of a collision.

The _collision_ arises, as we are now considering it, in an act of

_violation_, which is unable to retain its character as such, but is

compelled to find a new principle of unity; it is a change in the

previously existent condition of harmony, a change which is still in

process. The collision is, however, not an _action_, and is to be taken

simply as stimulus to action to all that characterizes the situation.

And this is true, although the contradiction in which the collision

is enclosed may be the result of previous action. As an example of

this we may cite the trilogies of the ancients, which carry forward

the main theme by presenting at the close of one drama the collision

which forms the stimulative impulse of the next, which, in its return,

renders necessary the resolution which is carried out by the third.

And, moreover, for this very reason that the collision always requires

some resolution attendant on this conflict of opposing elements, the

more a situation is full of it the more it is peculiarly adapted to the

subject-matter of dramatic art, it being the especial claim of that

art to present beauty in its completest and profoundest development.

Sculpture, on the contrary, is not wholly suited to give embodiment to

any action, through which the great spiritual forces are manifested

either in their division or reconciliation, and indeed the art of

painting, despite its more extended spatial significance, is only able

to objectify a single moment of action.

These situations of tragic significance introduce a peculiar difficulty

in dealing with them which is inherent in their very conception. For

inasmuch as they obviously arise from violations of the world-condition

they offer to our consideration circumstances which are unable to

continue as they are, which render necessary something of a remedial

nature to reclothe them. But the beauty of the Ideal consists precisely

in its undisturbed unity, repose, and consummation with itself. The

collision, on the other hand, disturbs this harmony of what is truly

real and ethical, and drives this unity of the Ideal into discord

and opposition. Through the representation of such disruption the

Ideal itself suffers violation. The function of art will undoubtedly

consist partly in preventing the entire destruction of free beauty

in this difference, and partly in only carrying this breach of unity

and the conflict it occasions to a point in which harmony may again

be recovered as the result of such a conflict and its resolution,

and in this way become manifest for the first time in its essential

perfection. It is, however, impossible to determine on a general

principle the precise limit to which such discordance may be carried

inasmuch as the several arts in this respect preserve their independent

character. The medium of the subjective idea can support a far intenser

disruption than that of the plastic arts[318]. In other words,

poetry is quite within its right when it breaks up the unity of the

world of the imagination even to the point of the extremest form of

desperation, and in its delineation of external objects to that of

absolute ugliness. In the case of the plastic arts, on the contrary, in

painting, that is to say, and even more so in sculpture, the external

form remains in unalterable fixity; it can neither be removed nor

lightly passed over in such a way that it again disappears. Under such

conditions it would be a serious defect to represent once and for all

an ugliness, which could not possibly be transmuted. Consequently all

that would be quite compatible in dramatic poetry, which is able to

represent a momentary appearance that again vanishes, is not within the

province of the plastic arts.

In discussing the more obvious types of collision we can only in this

portion of our inquiry indicate the most general points of view. We

would particularly draw attention to three fundamental aspects under

which they may be co-ordinated.

_First_, there are those collisions which proceed from purely

_natural_, that is to say, physical conditions, in so far as these

are characterized with qualities which are negative or evil and

consequently discordant.

_Secondly_, we have collisions which are of a _spiritual_ nature,

but which depend on _natural_ conditions, conditions which may in

themselves have a positive[319] character yet for the spirit contain

within themselves the seeds of difference and contradiction.

_Thirdly_, there are divisions which are caused entirely by disruption

in the Spirit alone; to these alone we are justified in attaching the

peculiar interest of contradiction which is bound up with genuine

_human activity_.

(_α_) Now with reference to the first type of conflicting forces--for

the reason that here it is only external Nature, through the

maladies and other evils and infirmities which are incidental to

her creating, conditions which destroy the pre-existent harmony of

life, replacing such with a state of antagonism--such can at most

merely serve as a stimulus for something outside them. Regarded

wholly by themselves such collisions are of no interest; they are the

subject-matter of art simply for the sake of the disruption which may

follow as a _consequence_ of some natural misfortune. The "Alcestis"

of Euripides, we may add, too, that of Gluck, the subject of whose

opera is practically the same, are examples of this; in both the

sickness of Admetus is necessarily presupposed. That sickness merely

by itself could not fitly supply a subject for artistic treatment.

It only becomes, even in the handling of Euripides, associated with

it by virtue of the individual characters, who, on account of such

misfortune, are compelled to face a further collision. It is the word

of the oracle that Admetus must die unless another will pass to the

underworld for his sake. Alcestis, out of love for her husband, devotes

herself to such a sacrifice, resolves to die, in order to restrain

Death from touching her beloved, the father of her children, the king.

In the Philoctetes of Sophocles a physical malady is also the cause of

the collision. Here the Greeks during their voyage to Troy place the

man who is suffering from a wounded foot, caused by the serpent's bite

in Chrysas, on the island of Lemnos. In this case, too, the physical

mishap is merely the extreme meeting point and incentive of a further

collision. For, according to the prophecy, Troy can only fall when the

arrows of Hercules are in the hands of the storming army. Philoctetes

refuses to give them up because he has been compelled for nine years

to suffer the martyrdom of his banishment. This refusal, no less than

the fact of his unrighteous desertion from which it springs, could have

been followed by every variety of result other than that which took

place; the real interest accordingly does not centre in the malady and

its physical necessity, but in the opposition which arises from the

refusal of Philoctetes to surrender the arrows. The case of the plague

in the Greek camp before Troy is very similar; although this is already

represented entirely as the consequence of former transgression, as a

punishment, in short, a mode of statement more adapted to epic than

dramatic poetry, nevertheless it is closely associated with evils

incidental to natural misfortune such as storm, shipwreck, and drought.

As a rule, however, art will not represent such mischance as mere

accident, but rather as an obstruction and misfortune whose necessity

simply consists in assuming precisely this particular form rather than

another.

(_β_) But, to turn now to our second type of the collision, inasmuch

as the external powers of Nature are not that which is most essential

to the interests and contradictions of human life, in cases where they

are found closely associated with such spiritual relations, they will

present themselves merely as the ground from which the collision breaks

forth in its true character. This is the point of view from which we

must regard all situations, where we trace the original source of

conflict in the facts of natural _birth._ We will shortly distinguish

between three particular cases of this.

(_αα_) In the first place we have the right that is bound up with

natural condition, that which constitutes relationship and inheritance

for example, which for the very reason that it stands in close

connection with Nature carries with it a number of relations that are

bound up with her, and this though the right, the fact is one and only

one. The most important example of this is the right of succession to

the throne. It is important to observe that this right must not as

yet, in relation to the collisions which spring from it, be absolutely

fixed by rule, otherwise the resultant conflict will be of quite

another character. If, that is to say, the right of succession is

not as yet entirely controlled by legislation and the social order

which it implies, no wrong will necessarily attach to any one of the

alternatives, namely, whether it be an older or younger brother, or any

other relative of the royal household who obtains the sovereignty. But

inasmuch as sovereignty is a qualitative rather than a quantitative

possession, which cannot like gold and other material goods be divided

up according to a just principle, dispute and contention is inevitably

the result of such a form of succession. When Œdipus, for example,

leaves the throne of Thebes without a ruler, he leaves his two sons

confronting each other with a right and claim of equal strength. The

brothers arrange to occupy the throne alternately from year to year.

Eteocles, however, breaks the compact and Polynices brings an army

against Thebes to enforce his right. The antagonism of brothers has

always been in the history of art a fruitful source of collision; it

commences indeed with the story of Cain who slew his brother Abel. In

the tale of Shah-Rameh, the earliest example we have of a Persian book

of heroic legend, it is a contention of throne succession which is the

source of the most varied conflicts. In this Feridu divided the Earth

among his three brothers. Selm receives as his portion Rum and Chawer;

Turan and Osin are given to Thur, and Fredysh becomes lord of the Earth

from Iran. All three, however, claim the land which belongs to his

brothers, and endless quarrels and wars are the result. In the Middle

Ages we find just the same countless examples of family and dynastic

broils. Such dissensions, however, appear in themselves to be due to

accidental circumstance. It is not necessary that brothers should be

at enmity; particular circumstances and more important causes must be

attached, such as the in itself tragic birth of the sons of Œdipus, or,

as we find in "the Bride of Messina," the author is at pains to shift

the quarrel of the brothers on to still more fateful circumstances.

In Shakespeare's "Macbeth" a similar collision is the foundation of

the tragic dénouement. Duncan is king and Macbeth, as his nearest

and oldest relation, is consequently heir to the throne with a right

precedent even to Duncan's sons. The primary incentive of Macbeth's

crime is the wrong which the king has done him in naming his own son as

heir to the throne. This justification of Macbeth, which is supported

by the chronicles of the time, Shakespeare has entirely passed over,

because, it was solely his object to bring into startling relief the

repulsive aspect of Macbeth's ambitious passion, in order thereby

to make his work agreeable to King James, who would be naturally

interested in finding the crime of Macbeth depicted without extenuating

circumstances. As a consequence we can find no sufficient reason why,

under Shakespeare's handling of the subject, Macbeth fails to murder

the sons of Duncan no less than their father, lets them escape in

fact; nor can we understand why they are wholly overlooked by the

nobles. However, the entire collision upon which, the drama of Macbeth

turns carries us beyond the particular type which we are now mainly

considering.

(_ββ_) In the _second_ of our examples in the type of collision[320]

we are now discussing we find the reverse situation to that just

discussed, and it consists in this that difference of birth, which

carries within itself a _wrongs_ is moreover, through ethical _custom_

or _law_, held within the chains of an insuperable _barrier_, so that

it receives at the same time the appearance of an innate wrong, and

consequently is the cause of collisions. Slavery, serfdom, differences

of caste, the position of Jews in many states and, with certain

qualifications, even the contrast between an aristocratical and citizen

class are all of them cases for consideration under this head. The

conflict here consists in this, that on the one hand humanity has

rights, relations, desires, aims and requirements which belong to it

essentially in virtue of its fundamental idea, which nevertheless

in each one of the above mentioned examples meet with dangerous

restriction and obstruction owing to the compulsive necessity of

natural birth. On this type of collision we have the following remarks

to offer.

The differences which obtain between classes, such as the ruled and

the rulers, are, no doubt, essential to the notion of state-life,

and are founded on reason, for they are caused by the inevitable

articulation of the organic community, and assert themselves as such

through the specific forms of occupation, disposition, modes of life,

and general levels of education in all their branches. It is another

matter, however, when these differences as they affect individuals are

determined absolutely by the accident of birth, so that the individual

man from the very start is not on account of any quality in himself,

but solely through the accident of Nature, irrevocably relegated

to a particular class or caste. In such a case it is obvious these

differences appear as innate and are, moreover, though purely external,

girt with force in its highest and most aggressive mode. We are not

bound to ask ourselves how this fixity and compulsive restraint came

originally into existence. For the nation may originally have been

united, and the natural distinction between freeman and serf been only

evolved at a later time, or the difference between castes, classes,

and privileged persons may have grown out of earlier distinctions of

nations and races, as many are inclined to think is the explanation of

the caste distinctions of India. All this is a matter of no moment to

us here. The main point simply consists in this, that vital relations

of this kind, which regulate the entire course of human existence,

have their source in natural conditions. On general principles, no

doubt, distinctions of class can be justified, but at the same time no

individual should be wholly robbed of his right to determine as his

choice may direct to which particular class he shall belong. Natural

capacity, talents, adaptability, and education are the only right

means to direct the way and decide in this respect. When, however,

the right of choice is debarred from birth onwards and a man is made

thereby dependent on Nature and its contingency, there is always the

possibility of conflict within the sphere of this necessity between

the states thus enforced on the individual by natural conditions and

the measure of spiritual education which he may acquire and the higher

demand which it may justly make. This is a pathetic and unfortunate

type of collision which has its source in an essential _wrong_ which

the freedom of art is quite unable to respect. In the social condition

of our own days distinctions of class, with a few exceptions, are

not determined by birth. The ruling dynasty and the peerage are the

only exceptions, and these depend on a higher conception of the State

altogether. For the rest, the mere fact of birth creates no essential

distinction that can ultimately determine the class to which a man

may belong if he is otherwise competent to join it. For this reason,

however, we must condition the demand for entire liberty of choice

with the requirement that in education, knowledge, ability, and

general tastes the individual is equal to the particular society with

which he may desire to associate. If, on the contrary, the fact of a

man's birth presents an insuperable obstacle to such claims, which he

would otherwise be quite competent to satisfy by virtue of his own

vigorous activity, then such a situation must appear to us not merely

a misfortune, but essentially a wrong under which he is compelled to

suffer injury. He is thus separated by a purely natural partition

wall which is essentially unjust, that is to say, one beyond which

his talents, sentiments, and general education have already raised

him, from that which he was competent to reach, and a purely natural

condition whose legalized fixity has been determined wholly by caprice

presumes to oppose insuperable barriers to the freedom rightly demanded

by all spiritual life.

To examine more closely the nature of this type of collision we shall

do well to look at it from three different points of view, each of

which are of essential importance.

In the _first_ place, it is necessary that the individual should, in

the strength of his own spiritual resources, already really have passed

beyond the natural barriers whose opposition is to give way before

his aims and desires, otherwise the demand is simply an act of folly.

If, for example, a domestic servant, whose education and ability is

merely that of a menial, falls in love with a princess or a lady of

high society, or, inversely, either of these with him, such a love

affair is both absurd and devoid of all taste, and this is so even if

the artistic representation of this passion display all the depth and

interest of which an ardent heart is capable. In such a case it is

not so much the difference of birth which creates the obstacle; this

is rather to be found in the entire content of interests, education,

aims of life, requirements, and mode of sentiment which distinguish in

status, material resources, and social qualifications a lady in high

position from a domestic servant. If love is, as in the case assumed,

the one and only bond of a union, and is associated with nothing else

throughout the entire sphere of all that men and women have to live

through in just accordance with that which a particular status requires

from their intelligence and experience, it must necessarily remain

devoid of content and is simply a union of the senses. Love, to be

wholly complete, is nothing less than a real harmony of the entire

conscious life, in which the full nobility of sentiment can be shared

and appreciated.

The _second_ case we wish to examine is that in which the dependence of

birth surrounds an essentially free human life and the objects it may

rightly set before itself with legalized fetters of obstruction. This

collision also presents an element unadapted for artistic treatment,

opposed, that is to say, to the notion of the Ideal, despite its love

to make use of it and the facility with which it may attempt to do

so. If distinctions of birth through positive laws and the powers

which support them create a persistent wrong, as doubtless may be the

case where a man is born an outcast or a Jew, he obviously, from one

point of view, is entirely right in holding with all the strength of

his inward life, which rebels before such a barrier, that the same is

dissolvable, that he, in fact, recognizes his individuality as apart

from it. To oppose such restraint appears to be wholly justifiable.

But in so far as it becomes impossible through the force of existing

circumstances to overcome such a barrier, which is consequently

converted into an irrevocable necessity, a situation of this kind can

only be regarded as a misfortune which itself is not without an element

of falsity. For the rational man is inevitably forced, in so far as

he is unable to subjugate the opposing necessity, to submit to the

same: it is not in reason to continue to fight against the inevitable,

but rather quietly to let it pass over him. He must, in fact, abandon

the sense of interest in and need of that which is, by virtue of this

barrier, swept from his reach, and suffer what he fails to overcome

with the quiet courage of passive endurance. Where a struggle is of

no avail it is the part of wisdom to be quit of it in order at the

least to retire into the _formal_ independence of personal liberty.

By doing so the forces of wrong have no longer power over him; if, on

the contrary, he battles against them he must necessarily experience

his dependence in its fullest extent. At the same time it remains

unquestionable that neither this abstraction of formal independence any

more than that content which can lead to no result are truly beautiful

when artistically considered.

There is a _third_ type of collision which, while being immediately

connected with that we have just considered, is equally removed from

the genuine Ideal. It is to be found affecting that class of persons

who attempt to assert some privilege which the mere fact of birth

concedes them and supports with the full weight of a religious title,

positive enactments, and the prevailing conditions of society. In such

a case, it is true, we have an independent position in harmonious

relation with what is externally realized in positive institutions,

but when considered as the mere consistency of that which is in itself

unjust and irrational it is quite as much as in our former example a

purely formal independence, and the notion of the Ideal disappears.

We may, no doubt, very possibly persuade ourselves that the Ideal is

retained because we have here an appearance as though the personal life

is in full union with the universal and its legalized constitution,

remaining consistently in such unity; but it will be observed that here

the universal does not assert its dominating power in the _particular

person_, as we found the heroic Ideal demanded, but only in and through

the public authority of positive laws and their administration;

moreover, what the individual here asserts is assumed to be essentially

wrong, and he loses in consequence the substantive significance which

we have seen to be also essential to the Ideal. An affair in which the

ideal subject of art is concerned must itself be at bottom true and

justifiable. To this type belong the legalized lordship exercised over

slaves or serfs, the right to rob a foreigner of his liberty, or to

sacrifice the same to the gods. No doubt it is quite possible that such

a right may be sustained by individuals with unquestioning belief that

they are justified in so doing, as in India, for example, the higher

castes make use of their privileges, or as Thoas ordered the sacrifice

of Orestes, or in Russia the lords are wont to flout their serfs.

In fact, those who are in authority are very likely to execute such

rights as legalized rights on account of the interest they may have in

preserving them. But in a case of this kind their right will be merely

the unrighteous right of the barbarian, and they must themselves appear

to us in the category of barbarians, at least, who resolve to carry

out and perfect what is essentially injustice. The legalized form,

under which the individual shelters himself, is, for the time to which

it belongs, and its spirit and the educational standard adapted to

it, no doubt to be respected and justified. But if we reflect upon it

rationally and apart from that, it is wholly positive[321], containing

no intrinsic claims or authority. Moreover, if the individual makes use

of his privileges for purely personal objects, under the mastery of

particular passions and the aims of mere selfishness, in addition to

our barbarian we get a bad character to boot.

Poets have frequently sought to arouse our pity, and it may be our fear

as well, through the presentation of conflicts of this kind, following

the rule of Aristotle, who lays it down that fear and compassion are

objects of tragedy. Strictly speaking we experience neither fear nor

reverence when confronted with rights which only exist among barbarians

and are the misfortune of uncivilized times. Any compassion which such

situations are likely to arouse is almost immediately converted into a

spirit of indignant hostility. The only true artistic _dénouement_ of

such a conflict is one where we find such illegitimate rights are not

carried into execution, as, for example, neither Iphigenia nor Orestes

are respectively sacrificed in Aulis and Tauris.

(_γγ_) The _third_ and last class of that type of collision which is

based on purely natural condition is that which is duetto personal

passion caused by natural peculiarities of temperament and character.

The jealousy of Othello is a supreme example of this. Ambition,

avarice, nay, even love itself in certain aspects, will furnish other

illustrations. Collision of this kind is only properly referred to such

passions in so far as individuals, seized and dominated exclusively by

the power of such emotions, are thereby forced into antagonism with

the truly ethical constitution and inherently justifiable course of

human existence, and consequently are plunged into a still more serious

conflict.

This carries our inquiry into the consideration of that third

subdivision of our original classification of general types of

collision, the type of which is based exclusively upon the conflict of

spiritual forces, in so far as such opposition is the result of human

activity.

(_γ_) We have already observed when dealing with purely natural

collisions that they only form the starting-point as it were for

further states of contradiction. And the same is more or less true

of the second type of conflict already adverted to. All these, in

artistic compositions of really profound significance, are unable to

remain in such forms of opposition as we have hitherto discussed. Such

disturbances and conflicting elements merely substantiate the opportune

moment, out of which the true and essential forces of spiritual life

will clash together in opposition and contend for the mastery. That

which is spiritual can only be set in activity by virtue of spirit.

Consequently the oppositions of Spirit can only win reality in actual

human deed, can only thus manifest themselves in their true character.

The position we have arrived at, then, is this. We have on one hand a

difficulty, an obstacle, a violation effected through something human

life has carried out in action. We have on the other a violation of

interests and forces intrinsically just and right. By treating these

two forms of determination in close juxtaposition we, for the first

time, are able to gauge the full depth of this last type of collision.

We may distinguish between the prominent examples which fall within the

consideration of this class of cases as follows:

(_αα_) In passing from the sphere of that type of conflict which we

have pointed out rests for its primary basis on what is entirely due

to Nature we observe that the first class of cases which confronts us

on crossing the boundary to the consideration of a new type is closely

related to that we have just left behind us. If, then, human action

is assumed to be responsible for the collision, it will follow that

what is carried out as natural through human action, that is to say,

in so far as humanity is not entirely _spiritual_, will consist in

this that a particular action is performed _unconsciously_ and without

purpose, which will be found afterwards to be a positive infraction of

the forces of self-respecting and civilized society. The consciousness

which any man latterly acquires of the injurious nature of an action,

of which he was previously unaware, will drive him who still accepts

the responsibility of such an action into division and conflict. The

ground of such a conflict, in fact, consists in the opposition with

which the mind is confronted between that which was actually before

it _when the action took place_, and the subsequent discovery of all

that was really _implied_ in the act itself. The cases of Œdipus and

Ajax will at once suggest themselves as examples. The action of Œdipus,

if viewed simply with reference to his will and knowledge, amounted

merely to the fact that he killed a perfect stranger in a quarrel.

The unconscious act was the reality in its full significance, that

is to say, the murder of his own father. Ajax, in a fit of frenzy,

slaughtered the cattle of the Greeks believing them to be the Greek

chieftains. On regaining his senses and discovering what he really did

he is seized with a sense of shame which drives him into collision with

himself. We must, however, observe that what has been unconsciously

violated by a man in the type of collision we are now examining ought

to be something which he himself, when fully in a position to judge,

would both honour and revere. If such a reverential attitude has its

roots merely in personal idiosyncrasy or superstition, such a collision

can arouse, to say the least, no really profound interest.

(_ββ_) Further, inasmuch as in the cases we are now discussing the

conflict arises from a _spiritual_ violation of spiritual forces

through human action, the collision more generally appropriate to

the type will consist in a violation which is perpetrated with full

consciousness _proceeding out of such_ and the intention it implies.

The point of departure here may centre again in passion, violence,

folly, and other similar qualities. The Trojan war, for example,

originates in the rape of Helen. Agamemnon afterwards sacrifices

Iphigenia, and so violates the feelings of her mother, slaying thus the

darling of her womb. Clytemnestra, in consequence, murders her spouse.

Orestes avenges the murder of his father and king by assassinating his

mother. In a similar way in "Hamlet" the father is sent to his grave by

a stratagem, and the mother of Hamlet insults the _manes_ of the dead

man by a precipitate marriage with his murderer.

In the case of these collisions as in those already considered, the

main point is this, that humanity is engaged in a self-imposed conflict

with what is intrinsically moral, true, and worthy of reverence. If

this is not so, then, for all who are really conscious of what is moral

and right, such a conflict can only appear without worth or material

significance, as is the case, for example, in the famous episode of the

Mahâ-Bhârata, with reference to Nalas and Damayanti. King Nalas marries

the princess Damayanti, who is allowed the privilege of making a free

choice among her sisters. All the other suitors are genii floating in

the air; Nalas stands on the Earth alone as a man, and she has the good

sense to select him. The genii are consequently much enraged, and watch

for the moment when they may find King Nalas tripping. For many years

they can bring to his charge no offence, as he is capable of none.

At last, however, they obtain power over him, for he commits a great

crime; the crime is this, namely, that after making water, he treads

with his foot upon the earth thus watered. According to Indian ideas

this is a severe offence which cannot escape punishment. From that

moment the genii have him in their power; one renders all his amatory

desires abortive, another excites his brother against him, and finally

poor Nalas, after forfeiting his throne and being reduced to beggary,

is driven forth a wanderer in wretchedness with Damayanti. At length

he is even compelled to part with her, until, as the tale will have

it, after many adventures, he is once more set on the throne of his

original happiness. The real conflict upon which for the Indians of old

days the whole of this story was supported was an essential desecration

of a sacred thing: according to our notions the tale is absurd from

beginning to end.

(_γγ_) Thirdly, it is not necessary that the disruption should be

direct, or, in other words, that the action taken solely by itself

should be an act of collision; the fact of collision may well appear

out of relations and circumstances of opposition and antagonism which

are forced upon the mind during the process of that action's execution.

Juliet and Romeo are in love with one another. In the mere fact of

their love there is nothing to suggest disunion. But they are aware

that their families are living in mutual hate and hostility, that their

parents will never consent to the marriage, and they are carried into

collision by virtue of this preassumed situation of antagonistic forces.

We must content ourselves here with these very general remarks upon the

relation which the determinate situation occupies in its opposition

to the universal world-condition. Were we to extend our inquiry into

all the divergent aspects, modifications, and nuances of the subject,

attempting thereby to express an opinion upon every possible form of

situation, this chapter would alone present us with sufficient matter

for discussions of endless prolixity and diffuseness. The discovery of

different situations implies a content of exhaustless possibilities;

and in every particular example the essential question involved is

how such may be adapted to the treatment of any specific art, in true

subordination to the principles and character of such an art. To the

fairy story much is permitted which is forbidden to a more stringent

mode of artistic representation. And we may say that generally the

discovery[322] of the situation is a critical point in the process of

art-production which often presents great difficulty to artists. In our

own days the difficulty of obtaining a suitable subject-matter as a

source for the circumstances and situations which the artist requires

is a common complaint. At first sight it may appear to us more in

keeping with our notion of poet if he borrow from his own resources,

and invent situations himself; but such independence does little to

increase his claims as a creative artist. For the situation does not

directly constitute the spirituality of his work nor indeed give us

its true artistic form: all that it does is to supply the external

material in which as its appropriate medium a character or temperament

is unfolded before us. It is only after working into this external

material in which actions and characters find their starting-point

that the true genius of the artist is actively displayed. The poet

consequently has little or no claim to our thanks for merely having

himself invented this least of all poetical aspects of his production.

He is, in fact, fully entitled to draw as much and as frequently as he

pleases from anything that comes to his hand, whether it be history,

saga, mythos, or chronicle, nay, even from material and situations

which have already been artistically treated. Just as we find in the

art of painting the external matter of the situation is borrowed from

legends of saints, and the process has been repeated on similar lines

over and over again. To discover the real artistic significance of

such artistic work we must penetrate far beyond the mere invention of

particular situations. The same remarks will apply in full force to

the entire wealth of the circumstances and developments artistically

handled. In reference to this it is frequently claimed as a virtue of

modern art in contrast with that of the ancients that we find in it

an infinitely more exuberant imagination. As a matter of fact, we do

find in the artistic creations of the Middle Ages and our modern world

the most extraordinary variety and interfusion of situations, events,

and occurrences, whether tragic or otherwise. This fulness of detail,

however, does not take us far. In spite of it all we have very few

dramas or epics of the first excellence. For the main point is not the

external course and interchange of a variety of events, when we find

such events and histories merely complete the entire content of our

work of art; rather it is the ethical and spiritual form which embodies

them, and the masterful movements of temperament and character which

are exposed and unveiled during the entire process of this artistic

embodiment.

Glancing now at the main position we have arrived at, and from which

our inquiry will proceed, we have found that circumstances, conditions,

and relations, whether determined with a reference to the external

world or the subjective consciousness, only create the situation by

virtue of the _temperament_ or passion which experiences them and

derives its nutriment through them. We have further seen that the

situation breaks up this determinate form in opposition, obstruction,

development, and disruption, so that the _emotional_ life feels itself

compelled by the force of the affecting circumstances to _react with

energy against_ this disturbing and restraining influence, which stands

in the way of its objects and passions. It is here, in truth, that

the action, strictly speaking, commences, when, that is to say, the

contradiction has fully asserted itself, which was already implied in

the fully defined situation. Inasmuch as, however, the action which is

based on this collision disturbs the unity of that which is opposed

to it, it calls into being by its antagonism the opposing force of

that which it confronts, and consequently the _action_ is immediately

associated with the _reaction._ With this analysis of the forces

rendered necessary by dramatic action, we have at length arrived at

the notion of the Ideal as a fully defined process. For we are here

presented with two distinct spheres of interest, both of which have

been rent, as it were, from the harmony they originally possessed, and

confront each other in conflict. Such, by the contradiction which is

involved in them, make a _resolution_ of the discord necessary. This

movement, regarded as a homogeneous whole, belongs no more to the

province of the mere situation and its conflicts; we are carried now

into that portion of our inquiry to which we have already given the

name of the genuine action.

3. THE ACTION

In the development of the subject under consideration, the _action_

immediately follows after the universal _world-condition_ and the

particular _situation._ In considering the action in its external

relation to that portion of our inquiry we have just concluded it will

be well to bear in mind the result we arrived at, that it presupposes

circumstances which necessitate collisions, action, and reaction. It

is impossible to determine at what point in the circumstances thus

presupposed the action will _begin._ For that which in one aspect will

appear as commencement will very possibly present itself in another as

the result of earlier developments, and to that extent will postpone

the real starting-point. And in like manner this, too, we may regard

as a fact resulting from former collisions. To take an example; in

the house of Agamemnon Iphigenia in Tauris expiates the guilt and

misfortune of her family. The commencement here of this deliverance on

the part of Iphigenia is the fact that Diana carries her to Tauris.

This circumstance is, however, merely the result of earlier stages of

the story, such as the sacrifice in Aulis, which is again conditioned

by the injury done to Menelaus in the rape of Helen by Paris, and so

on, ever backward, until we come to the famous egg of Leda. In the same

way the events which are the subject-matter of the Iphigenia in Tauris

presuppose the murder of Agamemnon, and all the crimes associated

with the house of Tantalus. An analysis of much the same character

might be applied to the Theban circle of mythos. If an action is to

be represented with all the facts that condition it, poetry is the

only real art that can attempt this. Such a complete exposition of

historical fact has already become, as a certain proverb reminds us,

rather a wearisome business; it is, in fact, more within the province

of simple prose, and, in contrast with such completeness, poetry will

rather consider its true function to be that of taking its audience at

once into the heart of the matter. There is a further important reason

why it should not be to the interest of art to make its commencement

from that point where we find the action under consideration is in the

first instance externally conditioned, and it is this: such a point

of departure is, after all, only related to the process regarded

as natural or historical fact[323]. The association of the action

with this commencement merely concerns the empirical unity of its

appearance; it may, however, in itself be of no significance at all

to the real content of the action. This external unity of historical

sequence remains just as it was, however it may chance that one

particular person is affected by the involved threads of a varying

series of fact. No doubt the entirety of the facts of life, its actions

and fatalities, tends to make the individual what he is; but for all

that his true nature, the real core of his thoughts and capacities, is

manifested in _one_ great situation and action independently of them.

It is the progress of these which reveals to us really what a character

is made of, a character which previously to their occurrence had been

known merely in a nominal way, that is the name of one more fact among

the external facts of experience.

We must therefore not look for the commencement of the action in that

_empirical_ source of it; we must rather centre the attention upon

those circumstances which have taken a hold upon the particular nature

with which we are dealing, and created or satisfied its needs; we

must, in fact, reveal the particular collision in whose conflict and

resolution the action in question consists. Homer, for example, in the

"Iliad," makes a start at once with the particular fact on which his

entire epic is founded, that is to say, with the wrath of Achilles.

He tells us nothing of earlier history of the life of Achilles, but

emphasizes at once the critical collision, and, moreover, does it in a

way which unfolds a background of the greatest interest to his picture.

The representation, then, of the action as a process complete in

itself, in which action, reaction, and resolution are constituent

elements, is, above all, the function of the poetic art; all the other

arts can at most only seize upon and secure in their presentation

one moment of this process. It is quite true that if we direct our

attention to that aspect of the medium they employ which is richest,

they may appear to have an advantage over poetry; in painting

especially[324] we find a control asserted not merely over the entire

external form, but also over the expression of external demeanour and

the play of such relatively to other objects grouped around it. Such a

means of expression, however, cannot compare as an interpreter of truth

with human speech. The action itself is the clearest means of unfolding

to us individual character, whether we view it relatively to the entire

emotional life[325] or the objects of mind. All that a man is at the

very root of his nature is first revealed to us through his acts; and

action, for the reason that it is an expression of spirit, finds its

ultimate expression as such most clearly and concisely in speech alone.

When we speak in general terms of human action we are apt to figure to

ourselves an incalculable variety of mode. For Art, however, the sphere

of action suitable to artistic representation is, generally speaking,

limited. Her province is wholly restricted to the type of action which

is conformable to the necessary configuration of the Idea.

There are three points of essential importance necessary to grasp in

connection with such action as is capable of artistic representation,

and which we may emphasize as follows. The situation and the resulting

conflict is that which generally stimulates it; the active movement,

however, taken by itself, the element of difference, that is to say,

of the Ideal in its activity, is made apparent first by virtue of the

reaction. This movement may be resolved into the following component

features:

_First_, we have the _universal_[326] _forces_, which constitute the

essential content and object, for the sake of which the action takes

place.

_Secondly_, we have the _realization_[327] of these forces in the

_individuals_ who act.

_Thirdly_, the two aspects above mentioned have to unite themselves in

that which, in default of any better generic term, we will here call

_character._

_(a) The Universal Forces of Action_

(_a_) However much we have finally arrived in our consideration of

the action at a point where the definition and differentiation of the

Ideal is of the first importance, nevertheless the very notion of art

renders it necessary that in the sphere of true beauty, be the aspect

of it whatsoever it may, it must still have upon it the stamp of the

Ideal; it cannot, that is to say, maintain itself without rationality

and the justification it implies. Interests of an ideal character must

inevitably be in conflict with another, so that might is opposed to

might. These interests are, in fact, the eternal and universal forces

of spiritual existence, the essential cravings of the human heart,

the spontaneous and inevitable objects of human action, justifiable

and rational in virtue of their own character, and consequently the

very universal powers to which we have referred. They are indeed not

the absolute Divine itself, but rather the sons of the one absolute

Idea[328], and consequently dominant and valid. They are the children

of the one universal truth, albeit only determinate, particular

moments of the same. Through their very distinction, it is true, they

can fall into contradiction or disunion, yet despite all the element

of difference contained, they must possess the original essentiality

within them in order to appear as the determinate Ideal. Such are the

supreme motive forces of art. They are the eternal[329] religious and

ethical modes of relationship, status, personal character[330], and in

the world of romance, before everything else, honour and love. In the

particular grade of their significance these powers differ, but all are

essentially the product of reason. At the same time it is these powers

in the human heart and mind, which man, by virtue of his humanity,

is bound to recognize, to give free play to, and to actualize. At

the same time they ought not directly to appear as rights in positive

legislation. For, to take one reason, the form of positive legislation,

as we have seen, is already in partial conflict with the notion and

content of the Ideal; furthermore, it is quite possible that the

content of positive rights may contribute to that which is essentially

unjust, albeit entirely clothed in the attributes of law. The relations

we have above referred to, however, are not merely the supreme stable

embodiment of the external world[331], but the essentially substantive

powers, which for the very reason that they contain in themselves the

actual content of human existence, continue to be the stimulating

source of its activity, and ultimately all that ever carried it forward

to perfection.

Of this kind are the interests and objects which contend against each

other in the "Antigone" of Sophocles. Creon, the king, as ruler of the

state, by a decree couched in the severest terms, forbade the right

of burial to the son of Œdipus, who had proved himself an enemy of

his country by bringing an army against Thebes. This proclamation was

so far justifiable that it expressed care for the weal of the entire

city. Antigone, however, is animated by an ethical principle of equal

authority, in other words by her love for her brother, whom she finds

it impossible to leave unburied, the prey of carrion birds. To leave

such a duty unfulfilled would be in direct opposition to the sacred

instincts of her personal relationship. She consequently violates the

decree of Creon.

(_β_) Collisions of the type with which we are now dealing may be

introduced in every possible way; the necessity of the reaction,

however, must not be occasioned by means of anything out of place or

at cross purposes[332] with the main action, but through that which is

in itself reasonable and justifiable. For example, in the well-known

German poem of Hartmann von der Aue, "The Poor Henry," the collision

is repulsive. The hero in this poem is visited by a fatality, that is

to say, an incurable disease. He turns for assistance to the monks of

Salermo. They state as the condition of his cure that a human being

must willingly surrender his or her life, on the ground that the

necessary salve can alone be forthcoming from a human heart. A poor

maiden who is in love with the knight offers freely her own life and

accompanies him into Italy. This is pure barbarism, and the silent

love and pathetic devotion of the maiden are unable, consequently,

to produce their full effect. It is true that we find the injustice

of human sacrifice presented us by the ancients as the ground of the

collision. The famous example is that of the story of Iphigenia, who is

first offered as such a sacrifice, and afterwards is on the point of

offering up her brother. But, in the first place, it is to be observed

that in these examples the conflict is in close connection with other

relations which are in themselves justifiable; secondly, the artistic

principle is really satisfied, as we have already observed, by the fact

that both Iphigenia and Orestes are finally delivered, and the power of

a collision which is opposed to our notion of right is thus destroyed.

And, indeed, this is also the case in the above mentioned poem of

Hartmann, in so far as we may acknowledge the _dénouement_ offered us

in which, on Henry refusing to accept the sacrifice, God releases him

from his malady, and the maiden is rewarded for her true love[333].

In apparent association with the positive powers we have enumerated

must be added others set over against them, that is to say, the forces

of that which is negative and bad, evil in short. That which is purely

negative, however, ought not to be taken in the ideal representation of

an action as the essential ground-motive for the necessary reaction.

The reality of the purely negative case, it is true, corresponds to the

negative and its appropriate character, but, if the implied[334] notion

and object is already in itself rendered nugatory, it is even less

possible that the ugliness which is exposed in the inward life should

manifest any genuine beauty upon its external reality. The sophistry of

passion can, indeed, by means of the capacity, strength, and energy of

a character, make the attempt to graft positive characteristics upon

the negative, but we only obtain thereby the vision of a whitewashed

grave. For that which is purely negative is generally flat and stale

and leaves us consequently either void or drives us back, whether

it be used as the motive force of an action or merely as a means to

promote a reaction in another. The horrible, unfortunate, the harshness

of dominion, and the obduracy of superior power may form part of the

content and burden of the imagination when such characteristics are

exalted and carried by the abundant greatness of a particular character

or object. Evil, however, taken simply for what it is, envy, cowardice,

and meanness, is merely repulsive. The devil, if we take him for what

he really ought to be, is consequently a bad subject, or rather a

figure for which Art has no uses at all. He is just a falsehood and

nothing more, and consequently an extremely prosaic personality. In

the same way it is perfectly true that the Furies of hate and many

other allegorical figures of later times are potencies of a kind,

but they are without affirmative subsistency and holdfastness[335],

unfavourable to ideal representation, although in this respect a wide

margin of difference is permissible in the several arts respectively,

and in the particular mode in which they may immediately visualize such

objects. Evil is, to express it in most general terms, essentially

cold and devoid of content, because as such it is merely the source of

negation, discord, and misfortune. All art, however, which is true to

its essential notion, should reflect on us the vision of a harmony.

Meanness, above all, is despicable, for it is a quality which arises

from the envy and hatred of all that is noble, and does not shrink

from distorting even a power that is essentially based upon the good

into a means conformable to its own perverse and shameless passion.

The great poets and artists of the classical world have in consequence

never presented us with the vision of absolute evil and depravity.

Shakespeare, on the contrary, in his tragedy of "King Lear," unfolds

before us the spectacle of wickedness in all its horrors. The old

Lear divides his kingdom among his daughters, and, while doing so, is

foolish enough to believe in their false and flattering speeches, and

to misinterpret the silent and faithful Cordelia. There is already

folly and madness in this, and it is followed by the most outrageous

ingratitude and worthlessness of the elder daughters and their husbands

to the point of absolute craze. As an antithesis of this the heroes

of the French school of tragedy are stretched and puffed out with

every sort of grandiose and sublime motive, and make a great parade of

their honour and nobility, and yet despite of it all destroy the very

meaning of such motives by the mere fact of what they really are and

accomplish. But it is in modern times more especially that we find this

unstable dissolution of everything spiritual[336], which forces its way

through every dissonance, however repulsive, become quite _à la mode_;

moreover, it has even given us what we may describe as the humour of

the abominable thing, a kind of burlesque simulation of irony, an

atmosphere in which a Theodor Hoffmann, for example, has found himself

so much at home.

(_γ_) We may conclude, then, that it is the essentially positive

and substantive powers in the spiritual world which supply the real

content of the ideal action. These sources of energy, however, in their

artistic embodiment, must not appear in their inherent universality,

albeit within the reality of the action they are essential phases of

the Idea. Rather they must receive the form of independent individuals.

If this were not so they would remain as merely the universals of

thought or abstract conceptions which do not properly fall within the

province of art. Though in their origin they should be held as intact

as it is possible to hold them from mere caprices of the fancy, it

is equally necessary that in their development they should acquire

determinacy no less than self-consistency[337], and in this way

appear as essentially particularized. Such definition as they possess

ought not to be carried to the point of the particularity of external

objects, nor should their concentration be carried to that of the

subjective self-consciousness[338]. Otherwise the individuality of

those universal powers is necessarily involved in all the developments

of finite existence. In this respect we may say, then, that the

determinacy of their individuality is not to be taken too seriously.

The gods of the Greek Pantheon are the most conspicuous example of this

manifestation and sway of the universal forces we have just discussed

in their self-subsistent form. However they may be brought before

us, their blessedness and cheerfulness remains unaffected. Regarded

separately as particular gods no doubt they engage in conflict, but

in all their battles we shall ultimately find they are not really

serious in the sense that they concentrate themselves on any definite

object with the entire consequential energy of their character and

passion, fully prepared to stake their existence upon the result. They

engage in this affair or that wherever it may take place, identify

particular interests in concrete examples with their own; they are,

however, equally ready to leave the matter at any point and wing their

way back happily to Olympus. Such is the view we get of the gods when

they engage in warfare on the pages of Homer. The determinacy of their

characterization is capable of conflict, but they remain for all

that the purely universal determinations which at bottom they are.

A battle begins to rage; heroes advance singly one against another;

then we lose sight of individuals altogether in the universal storm

and crush; it is no longer the specific qualities of individuals

which are now set in relief against each other--it is the universal

rush of the fight, the daemon of war loosed and roaring, and now it

is that the universal powers, the gods themselves, step forth on the

scene of battle. From such a temporary display of the contrasts of

their characterization they ever withdraw themselves into the solitude

of their self-subsistency and repose. For though the individuality

of their form carries them perforce into the region of time and

contingency, nevertheless inasmuch as the universal they claim as gods

is that which ultimately must prevail, the individual characteristic

shrinks away into the determination of external form only; they are

unable in their personality to penetrate the true arcana of conscious

spirit[339].

Their physical definition is, in fact, either more or less only the

accommodating form of their divinity. But this self-subsistency and

careless repose is precisely that which gives to them their plastic

individuality, and relieves them of any anxiety and constraint[340] in

relation to earthly objects and events[341]. For this reason we find

in the gods of Homer no final result when actively occupied with the

concrete facts of human life, although such activity is displayed for

us in many and diverse directions. The material and interest of human

events which happen in time is that which gives them something to do

and nothing more. And in like manner we may remark other peculiar

characteristics attached to the Greek gods, which we can only regard as

essentially unrelated to the general notion of divinity which each god

respectively connotes. Mercury is, for example, the slayer of Argus;

Apollo that of the hydra; of the love affairs of Zeus we have countless

tales, and, among other things, he hangs his wife on an anvil. These

and many other stories like them are merely supplementary additions,

which attach to the gods in their aspect of natural forces by virtue

of symbol and allegory, the origin of which we propose to discuss

more fully later on. In modern art we shall, it is true, find certain

indications which point to a conception of definite and at the same

time universal powers. These are, however, for the most part simply

cold and frost-like allegories of hate, envy, hope, love, faithfulness,

that is to say, generally of virtues and vices in the actual truth of

which we can retain no belief. For with us moderns it is the concrete

subjectivity alone, for which we, in the representations of art, feel

that profounder interest, wherein abstractions such as these do not

appear in their isolation, but are made to appear merely as phases or

aspects of human character, whether we regard it in its particularity

or as a concrete whole. In much the same way the angels possess no

essential universality and self-subsistency such as characterize Mars,

Venus, and Apollo, or even Oceanus and Helios. They are, it is true,

objects of imaginative conception, but their specific character is that

of vassals of the one Divine and essential substance, which is not in

this case broken up into self-subsistent individualities, as we find

it in the Greek Pantheon. For this reason we have here no imaginative

vision of many objective powers dwelling in a state of tranquillity,

which may be represented as essentially Divine personalities. We find,

on the contrary, the essential content of such either as subsisting

in the Godhead, or realized in a mode which is both particular and

subjective in wholly human characters and actions. Nevertheless

it was precisely in the conception[342] of self-subsistency and

individualization that the ideal representation of the gods originated.

_(b) The Individuals in the Action_

In the cases we have just discussed of the ideal gods it is not a

difficult matter for art to secure the ideality she requires. But in

approaching the concrete action, ideal representation is confronted

with a real difficulty. For though it is here that the gods and, in

general terms, the universal powers may be identified with a principle

which stimulates and compels activity, we are not therefore on the

plane of reality entitled to find in them the source of genuine

individual action. Action is rather essentially the manifestation of

human life. Consequently there are in this connection two distinct

aspects of the problem to be considered. On the one hand we have these

universal forces in their self-subsistent repose and for that reason

more abstract substantiality; on the other there is the individuality

of men, in which we must seek the final spring and determinating

impulse to action no less than its actual accomplishment. It is, of

course, only the simple truth that these eternally dominant powers

are immanent in the identical nature of mankind, constituting, in

fact, the substantive core of its character; but in so far as they are

comprehended in their Divine nature themselves as individuals[343],

and thereby in an exclusive way, their relation to the subject of human

consciousness must remain an external one. And this fact enables us to

see the essential difficulty we noticed above. There is, in truth, a

contradiction immediately involved in this relation between the gods

and men. It is quite true that the content of the gods is that which

belongs to humanity, and announces itself as his passion, resolve,

and will. It is, however, equally true that the gods must not only be

assumed to be and comprehended as independent from man individually

considered in their actual existence, but, furthermore, as the forces

at the root of all his activity and determination. And this, too, in

such a way that we are forced to consider the same determinations at

one time as personified in the self-subsistent and Divine personality,

and at another that which appears most essentially to belong to the

human heart. And it is for this reason that the free self-subsistency

of the gods no less than the freedom of human individuals in their

activity is seriously compromised if, to the detriment of human

independence, which we have already stated to be of most essential

importance to the Ideal of Art, we ascribe an exclusive power of

command to the gods. And we may observe this is precisely the same

kind of difficulty which confronts us in the form of the religious

conceptions of Christianity. It is stated in terms that the spirit of

God leads up to God. Taken strictly such a phrase can only imply that

the inward life of man is regarded as a purely passive ground, upon

which the spirit of God labours. In such a conception the human will

disappears as a free will, and at the same time the Divine purpose

which motives the "in working" above mentioned can only appear to

man as a kind of Fate, under which he fails to come by his own true

personality[344].

(_α_) If, however, this question of mutual relation[345] is so

understood that man in his action is conceived as standing in a purely

external opposition to God, here posited as eternal substance, the

relation of both is one of pure matter of fact[346]. God gives a

command, and man is obliged to hearken. Even great poets have found

themselves unable to dispense with this conception of external

opposition between gods and men. In the "Philoctetes" of Sophocles,

for example, we find that Philoctetes, after he has confounded the

deceit of Odysseus, persists in his determination not to return to the

Grecian camp until Heracles appears at length as _Deus ex machina_,

and orders him to yield to the entreaty of Neoptolimus. The content of

this apparition is, no doubt, sufficiently motived, and answers to our

own expectation; the catastrophe itself, however, is for all that not

rightly homogeneous, but rather outside the action; and in his noblest

tragedies Sophocles makes no such use of this kind of representation,

according to which, if we but carry it one step further, the gods

are reduced to lifeless machines, and individual men simply to the

instruments of a foreign caprice. In a similar way we constantly in

epic poetry meet with the active intervention of the gods represented

in a mode which is external to human freedom. Hermes, for example,

conducts Priam to Achilles; Apollo gives Patroclus the blow between the

shoulders which ends his life. We also frequently find mythological

traits treated in such a way that they appear as wholly external to the

actual lives of the individuals thus affected. Achilles, for example,

is dipped by his mother in the Styx and thereby rendered invulnerable

and invincible to the one point of his heels. If we reflect on this

rationally it is obvious that all real bravery disappears, and all

that is heroic in the character of Achilles is converted from a real

trait of his essential manhood to a purely physical advantage. Such a

mode of representation is, however, far more permissible to the epic

than it is to the dramatic type of poetry, for the good reason that

in the epic that aspect of spiritual life which is directly concerned

with the intention implied in the execution of objects falls into the

background and a larger field is, in general, offered for the play of

external characteristics. Such a criticism of the prosaic understanding

as the one above, which charges a poet with the absurdity that his

heroes are no heroes at all, should only be advanced with the greatest

caution, for it is partly in such traits as will appear shortly, that

the poetical relation between gods and men is preserved. It is another

matter, and we have nothing left us but prose, when in addition the

powers, which are posited as substantive individuals, are mere empty

shadows, the creations of the caprice of fancy and the arbitrariness of

a false originality. They are then for the most part only the adjuncts

of superstition or imbecility.

(_β_) The truly poetic relation of ideality consists, then, in the

identity of gods and men; and this must assert itself even though

the universal powers are presented as independent and free from

the particularity of human beings and passions. In other words,

all that we attribute to the gods must at the same time establish

itself as that which is essentially cognate with the spiritual life

of particular men in this sense, that while the dominating powers

appear as essentially personified, yet at the same time all that is

thus posited in an external relation to man is none the less clearly

that which is immanent in his own spirit and character. The true

function of the artist is, therefore, to introduce a mediating link

between the difference involved in these two aspects, to bind them, in

short, by a finely conceived thread of relation which, while clearly

emphasizing their springs in the spiritual life of man, shall make

no less visible the universal and essential element which is therein

implied and present such to the imagination in individual form. The

emotional life of man must reveal itself in the gods, who, in fact,

are the self-subsistent and universal embodiments of that which is

active and dominant in his own spiritual experience. Then alone are the

gods at the same time gods in cognate relation with his own heart and

emotions. When, for example, we are told by the ancients that Venus or

Amor has put a constraint upon the heart, no doubt in the first place

these divinities are apprehended as external powers; but human love is

equally a stimulus and a passion, which is implanted in the heart and

is part of that it independently contains.

In much the same sense is the frequent reference to the Eumenides. We

have to picture in the first instance no doubt these avenging maidens

as Furies, who pursue the transgressor in an external form. But this

pursuit is but another aspect of the Fury which drives through the soul

of the perpetrator of crime; and Sophocles in the Œdipus Colonus (I.

1434) actually refers to them in this sense of inward spiritual forces,

as the Eumenides of Œdipus himself, that is to say, who signify the

father's curse as the result of the stress of emotion caused by the

conduct of his sons. We have, then, and equally have not reason on our

side whether we identify the gods with powers external to man, or find

in them that which belongs exclusively to his spiritual life. They are

in fact both. In Homer, for example, the activity of gods and men is a

constantly involved skein[347]. The gods appear to accomplish what is

foreign to human activity, and yet for all that execute only that which

is in vital co-ordination with his own emotional life. In the "Iliad,"

for example, when Achilles, in the stress of controversy, is about to

raise his sword against Agamemnon, Athene steps forth behind him and

takes hold of his head of flaxen hair, visible only to himself. Hero,

who is equally anxious over Achilles and Agamemnon, sends for them from

Olympus, and their admission there appears to be wholly independent

of the desire of Achilles. On the other hand we have no difficulty in

seeing that the sudden appearance of Athene, the wisdom which puts

constraint upon the hero's wrath, is simply a reflection of internal

conflict, that the entire description but states in imaginative form

what was experienced in the heart of our hero. In fact Homer himself

points this out a few verses previously ("Iliad," I, v, 190), when he

relates about the debate that took place in his heart in the following

terms:

ἢ ὅγε φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ

τοὺς μὲν ἀναστήσειεν, ὃ δ᾽ Ἀτρέιδην ἐναρίξοι,

ἡὲ χόλον πάυσειεν ἐρητύσείε τε θυμὀν.[348]

This inward breaking up of anger into a divided self, this constraint,

for it is in opposition to the anger, and Achilles appears at first

to be wholly filled with wrath, the epic poet has a perfect right

to represent at the same time as an external event. In a similar

case in the "Odyssey" we find Minerva acting the part of escort for

Telemachus. This attendance is rather more difficult to grasp as a

personal experience of the emotional life of Telemachus, although we

can readily fix on certain points of contact between the external

image and the emotion experienced. And this it is we may generally

say which constitutes the cheerful buoyancy of the Homeric gods, and

the irony implied in the honour paid to them. Their self-consistency

and seriousness are characteristics which tend to dissolve like a

cloud, precisely to the extent that they unfold themselves as the very

powers which are native to man's emotional life, and thereby, in their

manifestation, leave humanity alone with its own possessions.

However, it is not necessary to look so far abroad for a complete

example of the conversion of a purely mechanical conception of Divine

activity into the atmosphere of the subjective consciousness, the

sphere, that is, of freedom and ethical beauty. In his Iphigenia in

Tauris Goethe has in this connection carried the process through with

a beauty that we cannot sufficiently admire. In the drama of Euripides

Orestes in complicity with Iphigenia carries off the statue of Diana.

This is simply an act of stealing. Then Thoas comes on the scene, and

orders their pursuit, and the recovery of the bust of the goddess.

Finally, in very prosaic fashion, Athene appears and orders Thoas

to stay his hand on the ground that she has independently commended

Orestes to the charge of Poseidon, and he, in deference to her wishes,

has already carried Orestes far over seas. Thoas submits to her advice

and replies to it in the following terms (v, 1442, 43): "Lady Athene,

whoever, on hearing the words of the gods, does not obey them is but

a fool. For how could it be right and fit to contend with the mighty

gods."

In this relation we can only see the bare external command of Athene

on the one side, and an equally futile submission of Thoas on the

other. In Goethe's treatment of the subject, on the contrary, Iphigenia

becomes herself exalted to the rank of a goddess, in reliance upon the

truth she feels within herself, the truth of a human heart. In this

sense she turns to Thoas and exclaims:

Is it then man alone who has the right

To accomplish things none ever heard before!

Shall he alone impress upon the strength

Of hearts heroic the impossible?

That which in the drama of Euripides the command of Athene effects, the

change in the attitude of Thoas, Goethe's Iphigenia endeavours to bring

about, and in fact does bring about, through the depth of the feelings

and ideas with which she confronts him.

With motions strange

An enterprise audacious soars within me;

A vast reproach and ills yet graver still

Will break on me if the event miscarry;

But, see, I place it on your knees! Be true,

Be only true and worthy of your fame,

So your assistance shall declare it truth,

Truth glorified through me.

And to this reply of Thoas:

What! you believe

The Scythian wild and the barbarian

Hear the wise voice of Truth and hearts humane

When Atreus of Greece still failed to hear.

she answers with the gentlest, purest trust:

Nay, all thus hear

Beneath whatever sky their birth was laid;

All needs must hear for whom the springs of life

Flow without let and purely through the soul.

Then it is she makes the final call upon her greatness of soul, and the

tenderness of her faith at its highest point of effort; her entreaty

touches, then masters and wrings from him, in a way that must appeal

to every heart, the permission to return to her own. This alone is

necessary. She has no need of the statue of the goddess; she can depart

on her journey without deceit or betrayal of trust. And it is with the

finest sense of beauty that Goethe refers here to the oracular word of

the god:

Bring but to Greece again the sister who

All loth at heart in holy temple bides

On shores of Tauris, and the curse is gone.

The very human reconciliation disclosed in these words is clearly

that the pure and holy Iphigenia, the sister, is in fact the divine

personification and the protectress of the house.

Noble and beautiful I wot in sooth

All that the goddess counselled seemed to me,

exclaims Orestes to Thoas and Iphigenia:

Like to a holy picture

The fate unalterable which walled our town

By one mysterious word, one word Divine,

Is banished, now that city takes thee back,

Who art the true protectress of our home;

Reserve thyself in holy quietness,

A blessing to thy brother and thine own;

It seemed that all deliverance on Earth

Had passed away, and all comes back with thee.

In the spirit of these healing words of reconciliation Iphigenia has

already revealed herself to Orestes by virtue of the purity and ethical

beauty of her inner life. It is true that her discernment drives him

half mad, who in the convulsion of his spirit has lost all faith in

peace; but the pure love of the sister does not fail to heal him from

every pang with which he is tortured by the Furies of his soul:

Within thine arms

The evil clawed me with its direst clutch

For the last time, and to the very marrow

I shuddered horribly: and then it vanished,

E'en as a serpent to its lair. Anew,

And all through thee, the day's breadth I enjoy.

Here, as elsewhere throughout it, we can hardly emphasize sufficiently

our admiration for the profound beauty of this poem.

The material which has the impress of Christianity upon it is more

open to criticism than that which was the subject-matter of antique

art. In the sacred legends, and generally speaking where the religious

conceptions of Christendom prevail, no doubt we may find the appearance

of Christ, the Virgin Mary and other saints the subject of universal

belief; but along with them the imagination has clothed itself with

fanciful aberrations in every direction, so that witches, ghosts, and

every sort of spectral apparition are yet more conspicuous objects. In

the face of such conceptions, so far at least as they appear foreign

powers to our human nature, and man submits himself unreservedly to

the charm, seduction, and influence of their illusions, artistic

representation is wholly given up to every kind of folly and caprice of

mere contingency. It is of unique importance that in the treatment of

such material the artist take care that the freedom and independence

of judgment are in no way impaired. Shakespeare has shown us how to

do this in most noble fashion. The witches in Macbeth, for example,

appear as external powers, who foretell for Macbeth his future destiny.

What they _do_ foretell, however, is precisely that which is his own

most secret wish, which is reflected back on him and declared in this,

merely in appearance, external form[349]. With a still closer regard to

beauty, yet profounder insight, is the ghost in Hamlet treated as the

purely objective embodiment of Hamlet's own intuitions. We find Hamlet

in the first instance overpowered with a vague feeling that something

horrible has taken place. His father's ghost then appears and gives

definite form to these awful premonitions. We naturally expect that

Hamlet, after receiving the facts set forth in his father's warning,

will at once proceed with energy and bring the murderer to book, a

revenge which appears to have ample excuse. But he delays and delays.

Critics have made this inactivity a matter of reproach to Shakespeare,

blamed him, in fact, as though for this reason the play to some

extent never gets properly off. But we must remember Hamlet is not a

strongly practical nature, rather a finely strung one, with emotions

held in persistent reserve; a nature which finds it difficult to tear

itself from its internal harmony; melancholy too, prone to subtleties,

hypochondriacal, with emotions deeply rooted. For this reason it is

obvious that he is _prima facie_ indisposed to prompt action. And this

is fundamentally Goethe's conception of him when he tells us that what

Shakespeare sought to represent "was the imposition of some supreme

action on a soul whose growth was unadapted to its execution." He

in fact interprets the entire drama relatively to this conception

of Hamlet. "We have here," he maintains, "an oak tree planted in an

exquisite vase, which ought really only to contain and shelter the

fair flowers; the roots spread, the vase is shattered." But it should

be noticed that Shakespeare, when referring to the apparition of the

ghost, contributes a far profounder trait of character in explanation

of this debated point. Hamlet delays, because he does not right off

wholly believe in the ghost.

The spirit that I have seen

May be a devil: and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape; yea and perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds

More relative than this: the play's the thing,

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

In this passage it is obvious that the apparition as such does

not leave Hamlet merely devoid of all stability[350], but that he

entertains a reasonable doubt, and is determined to make his conviction

a certainty by his own experiments before he proceeds to act upon it.

(_γ_) As a summary description of these universal powers, which appear

not merely in their external independence, but are the vital and

moving forces in the human heart and all that is implied in its most

intimate life, we may borrow an expression in use among the ancients,

that is to say Pathos (_πάθος._) To translate this word adequately is

not easy. Passion almost always implies as its concomitant an element

of meanness or baseness. We contend in ordinary parlance that a man

should not surrender himself to his passions. It must therefore be

understood that we use the expression pathos in a nobler and more

universal sense than this without the slightest implication of anything

blameworthy or egotistic. The devoted love of the sister Antigone is

an excellent example of a pathos in the full significance of the Greek

use of the term. Pathos in this sense is a power of the emotional life

which completely justifies itself, an essential part of the content

of rationality and the free will. Orestes, for example, kills his

mother not so much on account of any force of his emotional life which

we strictly can call passion; rather it is a pathos in itself fully

considered upon and essentially sane which carries him on to the awful

deed. Thus understood we may add that it is impossible to say that the

gods possess pathos. They are merely the universal content of that

which is the stimulating energy in the resolves and actions of human

individuality. The gods as such continue in their repose and freedom

from passion, and however much they may quarrel or contend among

themselves, there is nothing really serious in it all, or their strife

possessed merely a symbolical significance in the view we may take of

it as a universal war of the gods. We must therefore strictly limit

pathos to the actions of mankind, and conceive thereunder the essential

or rational content, which is present in the human consciousness

identical with itself and throughout suffuses the emotional life.

(_αα_) We may say, then, that pathos constitutes the true mediating

link[351], the veritable domain of art. The representation of it is the

most truly effective part of a work of art, as it is its influence upon

those who look at it. Pathos sets a string in motion, which vibrates

through every human heart. Every one must know the type of worth and

reason, which underlies the content of a genuine example of pathos,

must recognize it at once when he sees it. And the cause of this is

that pathos moves us because it is that which is essentially the vital

force of our human existence. And it equally follows that that which

is wholly external, the natural environment and particular scene, in

its active support of the effect of pathos, need only be treated quite

subordinately. Nature must in consequence be drawn upon as a fact

essentially symbolical and suffer the pathos to re-echo from her walls,

which is the most real subject-matter of artistic representation.

Landscape is, for example, a type or genre of painting of less

importance than historical painting; but even there we find that the

school of landscape most independent should not be without a general

harmonic relation to human feeling, and, in fact, possesses a certain

type of pathos. In this sense we are told art generally ought to touch

the emotions. Before accepting this principle, however, we ought first

to inquire through what means this peculiar effect of art must be

brought about. "To touch the emotions" is in general the activity of

something in union with feeling, and mankind, more particularly the

mankind of to-day, are, or a more considerable portion of them are,

only too readily open to such experiments. The man who showers tears

on us, starts the seeds of tears, which grow up fast enough. In art,

however, only that ought to move us which contains in itself the real

import of pathos.

(_ββ_) For such reasons we may affirm that neither in comedy nor

in tragedy ought pathos to be that which is only folly or personal

idiosyncracy. Shakespeare's Timon, for example, is on purely material

grounds a misanthrope; his friends have eaten him up, consumed his

substance, and when he himself requires their gold desert him. He

consequently becomes a passionate enemy of mankind. The situation is

both conceivable and consistent with nature, but it contains no pathos

that can be justified on principle. Even to a more striking extent

is the hate we find in "The Misanthrope," that play of Schiller's

apprenticeship, purely a vagary of modern ideas. For in this latter

case the misanthrope is in addition a thoughtful, perspicacious, and

entirely noble man, great-hearted towards his peasants, whom he has

freed from their villeinage, and devoted to his daughter, who is, apart

from her beauty, in all respects worthy of his love. In much the same

way, in that novel of August Lafontaine, Quintius Heimeran von Flaming

is worried with the follies of mankind. It is, however, our most

latter-day poetry which, above all, loves to wind itself into every

conceivable knot of fantastical falsehood[352], attempting thereby to

secure an effect through mere oddity, but failing to find the slightest

response in any sane person for the reason that every vestige of what

is really present in human life has vanished from such refinements of

mental athletics.

In another direction we may remark that everything which depends

solely, that is to say, in so far as scientific apprehension is

the main requirement, upon instruction, testimony to the truth, and

insight of what is offered as such, is no fit subject-matter for

the representation of a genuine pathos. The facts of _scientific

knowledge_ are a part of this material. And the reason of this is that

science demands a particular form of education, an effort towards

and a knowledge of the specific forms of science and their relative

importance of exceptional variety and extension; an interest in this

type of study is by no means a universally moving influence in the

hearts of men, but is limited and must ever remain limited to a narrow

circle of votaries. The treatment of purely _religious_ instruction

presents similar difficulty, if we mean by that the development of

the same in its profoundest import. No doubt the universal content

of religion, such as the belief in God and similar theses, is of the

deepest interest to anyone worthy of it. Art is, however, not directly

concerned either in the exposition of religious dogmas, nor, indeed,

in any exceptional insight into their truth; it is consequently of

importance that she should be held aloof front such disquisitions. It

is all the more necessary that we should through art entrust every type

of pathos to the human heart, every motive of ethical significance,

which are of practical and vital interest. The influence of religious

ideas is rather upon the subjective world of emotion, the heaven

of the heart, the ever-repeated consolation and uplifting of the

individual life, than upon direct action in the strict sense. For that

which is Divine in religion on its practical side is morality and the

powers which are potent in the ethical life. These powers, however,

in contrast with the heaven of religion in its purest form, are in

definite relation to the world and that which is entirely human. Among

the ancients this worldly content was fundamentally included in their

conception of Deity, and consequently their gods could be related

directly to human action and its artistic presentation.

From all this it will readily appear that the significant moments

of volitional activity which present to us the pathos we have just

endeavoured to define are numerically small and the range of them

restricted. In the opera especially it is inevitable that the sphere

from which such may be selected is a narrow one; we consequently have

for ever dinned in our ears the plaints and delights, the misfortunes

and happiness of love, fame, honour, friendship, maternal and marital

devotion.

(_γγ_) Now a pathos of this kind requires for its display not merely

the power of exposition, but also that of perfected _elaboration_[353].

And what is more, the soul which entrusts to its pathos the spiritual

wealth it possesses must be one with real wealth to dispose of,

and not one that can rest in a condition of purely intensive

self-concentration. It must, in short, be ready to give an outward

semblance to its self-expression and rise to the finished perfection of

that. The distinction between this power of self-concentration and that

of self-revelation is of great importance; and we shall find that in

this respect the types of individuality such as generically represent

different races offer essential points of contrast. Nations whose

reflective consciousness has been highly trained are more eloquent

in the expression of their passions than others who are not so. The

ancients, for example, were accustomed to unfold the pathos, which

is the animating principle of human personality, in its profoundest

significance, without running off into cold generalities or empty

tattle. The French also in this respect are naturally gifted, and

their eloquence in the expression of passion is not by any means

always merely a piling up of words, as we Germans, following the bent

of our national reserve, to which the repeated expression of emotion

appears to be a kind of wrong inflicted upon it, are only too ready

to think it is. In fact, we have gone so far in this direction that

we could mention a distinct phase in our poetical history, when the

younger spirits, at any rate, sick to death of that which they dubbed

"the flush of French rhetorical water-drops," yearned to such an

extent after the simplicity of Nature that their artistic energy could

only express itself for the most part in interjections. It is hardly

necessary to observe, however, that we shall arrive at no "open sesame"

with Ahs and Ohs, a damn here and there thrown in, or any other random

note of storm and bluster. The inspiration of mere interjections is a

feeble one, or rather is simply the way in which the still unrefined

nature expresses itself. The spirit which is to reveal to us pathos

must be a spirit which is full to running over, which is able to spread

itself abroad and give expression to its virtue.

We may add, too, that in this respect Goethe and Schiller present a

most marked contrast. Goethe is less pathetic than Schiller, makes

use of a mode of artistic expression which is more intensive; more

especially in his lyrics we are struck by this characteristic of

self-reserve. His songs, and this is the true quality of the pure

lyric, go naturally on their way, without entirely giving us all

that they contain. Schiller, on the contrary, is clearly anxious to

unfold the pathos of his subject to its furthest limit, and with all

the clearness and force of expression he can muster. Claudius in

"Wands-becker Boten"[354] has contrasted Voltaire and Shakespeare in

much the same fashion, maintaining that the one _is_ what the other

only _appears_ to be. "Master Arouet tells us: 'I weep'; Shakespeare

really weeps!" To this we can only reply that it is precisely with such

telling and appearance that art is concerned and not with the mere

positive fact. If Shakespeare merely wept while Voltaire made others

think he wept, so much the worse for the poet Shakespeare.

To conclude, then, it is necessary that pathos, in order to be in

itself concrete, as it should be in ideal art, be presented in its

artistic manifestation as the pathos issuing from a spiritual nature,

rich and comprehensive. And this result carries us forward to that

third aspect of our consideration of "the action" already adverted to,

that is to say, an inquiry into what is implied by _character_ in this

connection.

_(c) Character_

We will summarize the proceeding argument. Our point of departure was

the _universal_ and substantive powers which are the original stimulus

to action. Such require as the medium of their active realization human

_individuality_, in which they then appear as _affecting_ pathos[355].

But, furthermore, the universal inherent in these powers must in

particular individuals acquire the concentrated unity and concreteness

of a _whole_, and a _single whole._ This totality is man apprehended in

his fulfilled spiritual content and the subjectivity therein comprised,

in one word the entire self-contained human individuality which we

designate as character. The gods are born into the pathos of men, and

pathos in its more concrete form of activity is human character.

In character, then, we find the real focus[356] of the ideal exposition

of art, that is to say in so far as the embodiment unites in itself the

separate aspects of it already developed as consistent phases, in the

construction of its own totality. For the Idea as _Ideal_, by which

we mean as clothed in a form within the grasp of sensuous imagination

and perception, and in its activity as action and accomplishment, is,

if we define it strictly, just this self-relation of the _subjective

individuality._ The individuality, however, which is truly _free_,

and nothing short of this will satisfy the Ideal, has not merely to

declare itself as universality, but at the same time, to assert its

nature as concrete singularity, as the mediating bond which unites and

transpierces both sides thus related, which in their _self-related_

actuality subsist as unity. And this is precisely what we understand

by character, the ideal form of which consists in the wealth of energy

with which all the constituent aspects of the subjective life are

welded in one whole.

We will now inquire rather more closely into the nature of this

conception of character viewed under three distinct aspects.

_First_, as co-extensive[357] individuality, that is to say, with, our

attention directed to the wealth of substance contained in it.

_Secondly_, with direct reference to its particularity, the form in

which it is bound to appear, albeit still a totality, as one that is

more _defined_ or specific.

_Thirdly_, in our final apprehension of it as a unity which is fully

identified with its own determinate form, that is, which is throughout

fused with the same by virtue of its own principle of subjective

self-identity, and thereby attaches to the whole the significance of an

essentially _assured_ character.

We will now develop and elucidate more fully what we conceive to be

implied in the above general propositions.