(_α_) And first we would draw attention to the fact that this

pathos, though an essential feature in the development of completed

individuality, is not, in the specific form of its appearance, the

_sole_ or exclusive interest of the individuality portrayed. It is,

in fact, merely one aspect of the efficient[358] character, if one

of paramount importance. To put it in rather a strong way, the human

soul does not merely carry within it _one_ god as the original of

its pathos; on the contrary, the spiritual scope of humanity has

wider borders, and we may affirm that many gods make their dwelling

in one true man, or, rather, all the powers which are scattered

throughout the heaven of the gods are enclosed within that one breast.

It is co-extensive with the entire field of Olympus. In this sense

one of old has said: "Out of thine own passions, O man, hast thou

created the gods." And, as a matter of fact, in proportion as the

intelligence of the Hellenic folk quickened, the number of their gods

increased; and, furthermore, the gods of their earliest days were less

intelligent, that is to say, they were god-like figures deficient both

in individuality and determinate character.

In this wealth of content, accordingly, it is necessary that the

character adequate to ideal art should display itself. And this is just

that which creates the interest we feel in a character, namely, that

a totality such as that we have above described emerges from it, and

the character, while reposing on its abundance, nevertheless persists

in perfect equality with itself, as one secure and self-excluding

subject. If the character, however, be not conceived and depicted as

this rounded and subjective unity, is abstract in the sense that

it is entirely the sport of one passion, such must then appear as

self-destructive[359], or at least cracked, weak, and without real

fibre. For the weakness and inertness of individuals is just this very

thing, that the eternal forces of which we have spoken never assert

themselves in them as a real part of their most essential substance,

as, to put it logically, predicates which adhere to them as the

subjects of such.

In Homer[360], for example, every hero is the living focus of a whole

congeries of qualities and traits. Achilles is the most youthful hero

in the host, but his youthful exuberance is represented as quite

compatible with all other entirely human qualities, and Homer unfolds

before us this variety through situations which offer the finest

contrast. He loves his mother, Thetis, he weeps for Briseis, when she

is snatched from him, and his violated sense of honour drives him

into the conflict with Agamemnon, which is the original fount of all

the events that follow after it in the "Iliad." Add to this he is the

truest friend of Patroclus and Antilochus; moreover, he is the most

blooming, fiery youth, swift of foot, brave, yet full of reverence

for gray hairs; the faithful Phoenix and trusty servant are at his

feet, and at the funeral of Patroclus the hoary Nestor is treated

with the highest deference and honour. And, in contrast to all this,

Achilles is represented as inflammable to a degree, effervescent,

revengeful, and full of the most brutal austerity when face to face

with the foe. He binds the slain Hector to his chariot, trails the

corpse in fell hunter's fashion three times round the walls of Troy;

yet stays his anger when the old Priam comes to his tent, and, as he

thinks within his heart of his own old father, reaches to the weeping

king the hand which has done to death his son. Of Achilles we may

well exclaim: "here is a man indeed, and human nature, ay, noble

human too, in all the length and breadth of its riches, is unveiled

before us in this one man!" It is just the same with all the other

Homeric characters—-Odysseus, Diomedes, Ajax, Agamemnon, Hector,

Andromache--every one of them is a whole, a world in itself, a complete

and living member of humanity, something very different at least from

your allegorical abstract of some one particular trait. What frosty,

faded personalities, despite all their vigour and rigour, are the

horned Siegfried, Hagen of Troy, nay, even Volker, the musician, in

comparison.

It is this variety of characterization, and this alone, which can give

to a character the interest of life. At the same time this fulness of

detail must really appear as included in the personality itself, that

is, it must not strike us as the mere diversion, passing freak, or

suggestion of an excited fancy, such as we see in the case of children

who will take up everything in turn, and even make something out of it,

yet, for all that, are without essential character. Character in this

latter sense will penetrate and make itself a home in the most diverse

phases of the emotional life of man, will steep itself to overflowing

with that abundance, and, at the same time, not remain thus immersed,

but throughout all the congeries of interest, objects, qualities, all

the traits that distinguish or arrest it, maintain the form of its

self-exclusive and alert subjectivity intact.

For the representation of such exhaustive types of character epic

poetry is, above all others, adapted, dramatic and lyrical poetry are

less so.

(_β_) Art, however, will not be content to remain at the point which

the course of our inquiry has reached, namely, the notion of character

as a mere congeries of traits. For the object we have before us now is

the Ideal in its specific determination, and singularity, or, rather,

concrete _individuality_, are both of them prominent and necessary

features. Action, more than anything else, in its conflict and reaction

is impossible without some restriction and clear definition of form.

For this reason the heroes of dramatic poetry are for the most part of

simpler definition than those of epic poetry. And the way we get at a

clear definition is through some pathos out of the ordinary which is

so portrayed as to make some essential trait of character stand out

in bold relief, and itself to be the stimulus to particular objects,

resolves, and actions. If, however, this simplification is carried so

far that any character appears as though it were pared down to a mere

shadow-like semblance of any form of pathos, such as love or honour,

all real vitality and spiritual depth must necessarily vanish, and the

representation, as is not unfrequently the case in the French school

of drama for this very reason, can only offer us a cold and jejune

result. We may therefore conclude that in this aspect of particularity

the prominent feature which asserts itself pre-eminently will be this,

that within the borders of this very limitation the fulness of life

is completely preserved, so that the personality in question has free

scope allowed it for further expansion in many directions, a power to

adapt itself to every variety of situation, and, in short, is able to

unfold and express in every possible way the wealth of a truly complete

spiritual life[361]. Despite the supreme simplicity of their pathos the

characters in the Sophoclean drama possess this intrinsic vitality. We

may indeed compare them in their plastic self-seclusion to the figures

of sculpture. For it is also quite possible that sculpture express

very various delineations of character despite all the tenacity of its

definition. In contrast to the bluster of overpowering passion, which

concentrates all its forces upon one single point, it exhibits out of

its tranquillity and speechlessness that predominant neutrality, which

peacefully envelops all powers within itself; but this unperturbed

unity does not, however, persist in any indissoluble union with mere

formal definition, but, rather, in virtue of its beauty, suffers at

the same time the birth-throes of all that pertains to it to disrobe

itself as through a cloud of immediate possibility into fresh relations

of every variety. In the finest figures of sculpture we behold a

tranquil depth, which unfolds, as it were, the pregnant womb, from

which all other potencies may be born. In contrast with sculpture it

is yet of more vital importance to the arts of painting, music, and

poetry, that they should display the inmost complexity of character,

and real artists of every age have recognized this. In Shakespeare's

"Romeo and Juliet," for example, the most pathetic characteristic of

Romeo is his love: but he is also placed before us under relations of

the greatest contrast, whether it be in reference to his parents, his

friends, his love troubles, or his affair of honour in which he fights

with Tybalt, his attitude of deference and trust to the monk, nay, even

on the verge of the grave his conversation with the apothecary, from

whom he purchases the poison. Throughout he is the same worthy and

noble man of deep emotions. In the same way the character of Juliet

is unfolded throughout the range of her relations to father, mother,

nurse, the Count Paris, and father Lawrence. And, despite of this, she

is as deeply immersed[362] in her one preoccupation as she is in every

one of these situations, and her entire character is transpierced with

and carried away by the one single emotion, her passionate love for her

lover, which is as deep and broad as the unbounded sea, so that it is

but the simple truth when she exclaims, "The more I give, the more I

possess, both are infinite."

From all this it appears that even when there is but one pathos

visible, it must unfold itself as the wealth of all it possesses. And

this is what really happens even in lyrical poetry, where we find the

pathos is not attached to actions determined by positive circumstances

and conditions. For in this latter case the pathos can only assert

itself as the spiritual state of an emotional nature otherwise complete

in itself, which is, that is to say, free to express itself in any

other conceivable circumstance and situation which may confront it.

The use of words of vital significance, an imagination which can

associate itself with all the world, can restore the Past to the

Present, can transform the entire external environment of man's life

to a symbolical expression of his spirit, can bravely adventure into

the depths of comprehensive thought, and, while doing so, reveal an

exuberant, capacious, clear, exalted, and noble nature--a wealth of

character such as this, freely expressing such a world, is a prize

indeed for the Lyric Muse. No doubt a purely logical reflection may

find it impossible that such, variety of character should co-exist

with a masterful clearness of type. We may be asked, for instance,

in reference to the heroic character of Achilles, whose strength of

youth is the pre-eminent, trait of his beauty, how it is possible to

reconcile the tender heart so manifest in his relations to his father

and his friend with the cruel act of revenge wherewith he drags Hector

round the walls. Precisely the same kind of inconsequence is to be met

with in Shakespeare's clowns. They are, with scarcely an exception,

bubbling over with wit and the humour of genius. And, no doubt, there

will always be fools enough to ask us how men thus spiritually gifted

could ever betake themselves to such tomfooleries. The truth is that

the reflection of the formal logic is sure to emphasize one aspect

of a character, and conclude that the entire man is minted under its

impression to the exclusion of all others. To such everything that

asserts itself as alien to the hallmark of its beggarly mintage can

only appear as an inconsequence. In the truely rational contemplation

of the whole as distinct from the parts, and thereby of the living

thing, that which appears as inconsequent will be precisely that which

brings all into fit co-ordination. For our humanity is just this

very paradox. We have not merely to carry[363] the contradictions of

our complex nature, but to suffer the load[363] with patience, and

throughout prove staunch to our burden.

(_γ_) We may conclude, then, that character must fuse together

its particularity in the element of its spiritual substance; it

should possess a definite type, and at the same time retain in this

distinction the force and stability of a _single_ fully self-consistent

pathos. Where we find our humanity represented without such a centre

of unity, the different aspects of such variety it may possess

will lose all relative meaning or significance and fall away from

each other. In art we shall find that what we distinguish in our

conception of personality as infinite or the Divine is just this

self-consistency in unity. If this view be a just one it is obvious

that such characterizations as stability and determination are of

great importance in the ideal representation of character. And we

shall only obtain such a result, as already observed, in so far as the

universality of the powers inherent in our humanity are permitted to

transpierce the mere particularity of the individual character and, by

virtue of the unity thus set up, create a subjective and at the same

time individual life which supplies its own principle of unity and

self-identity.

Such a condition is all important, and we must now advert to a number

of artistic compositions, more particularly of later times, in express

relation to it.

In the "Cid" of Corneille, for example, the collision between the

opposing principles of love and honour is a match, no doubt, of

brilliant effects. A pathos of this kind, involved as it is in the

opposition of distinct forces may, no doubt, be the operative ground of

conflicts; but when we find such portrayed as the spiritual struggle

of one and the same character, though such antagonism may very readily

supply us with the material for brilliant rhetoric and effective

monologue, the cataclysm which is here presented in the emotional life

of one person driven thus by turns from its abstract subjection to

honour into the equally abstract one of love, and forthwith hounded

back again, is not favourable to the portrayal of a character of

genuine stability and homogeneousness.

It is equally inconsistent with the delineation of resolute personality

when a leading character, already under the predominant influence

of some specific pathos, is portrayed as one overmastered by the

direction or persuasion of a subordinate character, such is thus

enabled to shift the responsibility upon other shoulders. This is

what actually takes place in the "Phedra" of Racine when the mind

of Phedra is depicted as entirely motived by the words of Oenone. A

character of real distinction acts out of its own initiative, and will

not suffer the views of a mere stranger to be that which determines

its own resolution. Only when action is the direct result of its own

reflections do we get that clear relation between personal initiative

and the consequent result which carries with it the full weight of

guilt or responsibility.

We find yet another type of this instability of character as quite a

peculiar possession of the more recent literary output of Germany. It

is a type of character in which a kind of flatulence in emotion is

the rule no less than the source. The classic example is the Werther

of Goethe's romance, a thoroughly morbid type of character, without

any vestige of real manliness such as might carry him beyond the

egotism of his love-passion. What makes him interesting is the passion

and beauty of his emotional life, the intimate fellowship between

himself and Nature which the course of his spiritual experience and

the pliability of his temperament accentuate. This effeminacy has yet

more recently embodied itself in many other forms of expression which

descend with increasing rapidity to the lowest circle of jejune and

tasteless egotism. We must not even omit, for instance, to include

in our list that illustration of the lovely soul which we find in

Jacobi's "Woldemar." In this romance we are made a present of the

glory of emotional volubility in all its pretensions. It would be

difficult, indeed, to cite a better example of the self-deceptive

illusion of personal virtue and excellence. Here we have all that

sublimity and divinity of soul, which relates itself crookedly to every

possible aspect of the actual world; that type of feebleness which is

wholly unable to share in or tolerate any portion of the labours or

interests of practical life as it really is. So rooted is it in its

own consciousness of superiority it passes everything as unworthy of

it on the other side. It is, in fact, a peculiar feature of this type

of "lovely soul" that, even when face to face with the truly ethical

interests and wholly sane objects of life, instead of meeting them

frankly, it retires into the seclusion of itself, where it weaves its

own threads of finery and passes its time in hatching out its exquisite

brood of religious and moral reflections. And connected closely with

this personal enthusiasm for our superabundant excellence, which we set

forth in front of ourselves with such a brave show, there will always

be an intense sensitiveness for all other beings who may appear at any

moment to sympathize with, comprehend, and appreciate this beauty of

the solitary life. If such fellow-feeling is not forthcoming we find

the very heart of us troubled to its depths and infinitely bruised.

We have lost at one stroke all humanity, friendship, and love. We are

unable to put away with whatever act of pedantry or rudeness may be in

question, some trivial circumstance or stupidity over which the vision

of any character of breadth or strength would pass without a tremor. It

whirls away the thought of everything else, and that which is by itself

of least significance proves to be that which finally most reduces us

to despair. Such is the source of all that endless train of melancholy,

trouble, heartache, peevishness, sickness, dejection, and poverty

of spirit which follows, such the spring of all those self-torturing

reflections one on the top of another, that cramp and obstinacy, nay,

finally, that cruelty of soul, through which the wretchedness and

weakness of the spiritual content of such a type, of "loveliness"

consummates and declares itself. No heart that is truly sound can

wish to unite itself with such an emotional hermitage. For it is a

fundamental characteristic of all genuine character that it carries

within itself both the courage and the strength to do and to will some

actual thing. The interest, therefore, that such natures which are for

ever revolving round themselves may arouse in us is after all an empty

interest, and necessarily so despite all the conviction with which such

natures may assure us that they belong to a higher and purer sphere

than our own, a sphere which has revealed to our vision that peculiar

type of the Divine they have uncovered from their secret parts and

finally present to us, to borrow an apt figure, _en negligée._

This want of genuine solidity of character appears in yet another form

where we find the particular manifestations of this world of "fine

feelings" turned as it were upside down and hypostatized as independent

forces. Much that passes for magic, magnetism, spiritualism, the

apparitions of _clairvoyance_, the morbid condition of sleep-walking,

is attributable to this source. The living person in question is

placed in a relation to these abstruse powers, which from one point

of view identifies him with them, and in another makes them appear as

something foreign to his spiritual life, which determines and controls

it. It is assumed that underlying these undefined forces there is some

inexplicable truth which borders on the marvellous, or at any rate

passes comprehension. From the world of art, however, all such powers

of darkness should be banished. In art there is no darkness at all, but

all is lucid and transparent, and in adventuring after such types of

myopy speech merely flounders into spiritual disease, or plays loose as

poetry with the nebulous, empty, and trivial, a good example of which

is the verse of Hoffmann, and that piece by Henry von Klust entitled

the "Prince of Homburg." The truly ideal character has nothing in his

composition, or the pathos which expresses it, of another world and its

ghosts, but only actual interests, in which he finds himself at home.

More particularly is this feature of _clairvoyance_ become a trivial

and vulgar recipe of our more modern poets. In Schiller's "Tell," on

the contrary, when the old Attinghausen on the brink of the grave

foretells the destiny of his country, the prophetic instinct is quite

in its right place. It is always, however, a misfortune for an artist

to find himself forced to exchange the sanity of a character with some

malady of the soul whether it be to motive the collision or excite

interest. For this reason he should only avail himself of the condition

of insanity in quite exceptional cases.

In conclusion we may connect with these distortions of a sane

vision, which are so much opposed to all real unity and consistency

of character, the principle of our latter-day irony. This false

theory has betrayed the poet into grafting upon his characters

qualities so essentially diverse that they are incapable of all

homogeneous relation; the essential unity of every character is thus

confounded. According to this theory a character is first presented

as characterized in a certain way, and immediately after we have that

very determination converted into its opposite, and the character

itself is propounded to us as nothing more than the negation of what

it was and is. Moreover this very futility is accepted by this irony

as the supreme discovery of art. An audience should not, in short,

be carried away by an essentially positive interest, but should be

pulled up at the critical moment, much as the irony itself is no

sooner launched upon anything than it is off again. They would even

explain the characters of Shakespeare according to such a principle.

We are informed that Lady Macbeth was an irreproachable wife of the

tenderest feeling, despite the fact that she not only falls in with

the suggestion of the murder, but actually eggs her husband on to

its execution. But if the signet mark of Shakespeare is conspicuous

on any one quality it is on the firm and decisive delineation of his

characters, even when it is only the formal greatness and consistency

of evil that is in question. Hamlet, it is true, is a case of mental

indecision, but even he is only in doubt as to the way he shall carry

out his purpose, not at all as to what has to be done. Yet nowadays

they would assimilate even Shakespeare's characters to a world of

ghosts, and appear to think that this futility and indecision of ups

and downs, this general squeamishness[364] in short can by itself

contribute to our interest. The Ideal, however, is centred in this,

that Idea is made _actual_, and our humanity is associated with such

actuality as subject and consequently as a unity which is essentially

firm-rooted.

We may here, so far at least as this portion of our inquiry is

concerned, bring our observations upon the individuality which is

consistent with real character to a close. That which we have mainly

sought to emphasize is a pathos which is at once self-determined and

essential, the possession of a rich and complete nature, the spiritual

world of which such a pathos transfuses under such a form that this

process of transfusion no less than the pathos itself receives its

artistic presentment. At the same time this pathos must not be allowed

to come into conflict with itself in the hearts of men so as to

stultify its very nature and consistency as pathos.

III. THE EXTERNAL DETERMINATION OF THE IDEAL

Our consideration of the determination of the Ideal was in the _first_

instance occupied with the general inquiry why it was and how it came

about that the Ideal ever received at all the definite embodiment of

a particular form. Following after this we arrived at the conclusion

that inherent process was essential to our notion of it, that in fact

the element of difference was only by this means asserted within it,

and that this process viewed as a whole is presented us in the action.

We discovered, however, that in virtue of the action the Ideal passes

over into actual relations with the external world; we have therefore,

and this is the _third_ important step, to solve the further question

what kind of form this its final aspect, as associated with external

reality, the Ideal will receive under adequate artistic representation.

We would recall the fact that the Ideal is the Idea under a form which

is in union with its own _actuality._ Up to the present point of our

inquiry our attention has been exclusively occupied with that aspect

or phase of this actuality which we may call in general terms human

individuality and its character. Man is, however, also in possession of

a concrete and _external existence._ In separation from this it is true

he concentrates his spiritual life to a point in self-consciousness,

but he remains for all that, even in this subjective unity, immediately

related to the external world. To the actual existence of mankind the

surrounding sphere of a world is as indispensable as the protection of

a temple is to the statues of the god it contains. And for this very

reason we must now advert to all or some of those many diverse threads,

whereby the Ideal is woven in with this external environment and is

shown in relief against it[365].

This opens to our view a practically immeasurable expanse of relations

and modes under which the process of the external and relative world

is determined. For in the first place we are confronted at once

with the bare facts of external Nature such as particular locality,

situation, whether habitable or not, temporal condition, the nature of

the prevailing climate, whether in our earth's northern or southern

hemispheres, and in fact in whatever direction we advance we have a

fresh picture before us. Moreover, external Nature is made use of by

man to satisfy his own needs and purposes; and all the ways under

which he converts her to that use, that is to say the adroitness with

which he discovers and then equips himself with tools and a home to

live in, with weapons, with seats to recline upon, carriages to ride

in, nay, all that the art of cooking may bring with it for his food,

the entire apparatus of his luxury no less than his comfort, all this

and much more fall within the limits of our inquiry. Add to this the

further and yet more important consideration that every man lives

within a comprehensive and equally real world of spiritual relations,

which itself, too, presents to his view all the different modes under

which command and submission is maintained, that is to say the family,

blood-relationship, property, country and town life, the _cultus_ of

religion, the organization of defence and offence, civic and political

associations, private society, in short every conceivable form under

which ethical customs and usages are organized in the institutions and

permanent activities which contribute to the actual environment of

human existence.

In all the directions enumerated above the Ideal is in immediate

contact with the reality of the practical world in its everyday dress,

or in other words, with the commonplace prose of life. And impressed by

this fact we may easily be led to the conclusion, if we have already

accepted the nebulous conception of idealism elaborated recently,

that art can have no alternative but to dissever herself absolutely

from all connection with this world of relative appearances. Such at

least can only be logically inferred from a theory which assumes that

this relation of externality is one of pure indifference, or rather,

in contrast to the subjective world of spirit, is of no substantive

significance or worth. Agreeably to this view art is a spiritual

dominion, whose sole object is to exalt us above the sphere of material

wants, necessities, and dependence, and to liberate us from the

logic, and we may add the comedy, of facts, which in this field claim

the exclusive attention of our humanity. For, apart from any other

consideration, all that meets us upon this _terra firma_ of life's

prose is for the most part of a purely conventional character, and,

conditioned as it is by time, space, and custom, simply a congeries

of contingent facts, which it is derogatory to the nature of art to

accept. This view of ideality, which is really an illusive one, is

in part due to one of those highly flavoured abstractions of our

latter-day thinking, in which we merely find that the thinker's courage

has failed him to come to terms with the external world in question;

in part also it is due to that type of prepossession which drives a

man to assert summarily his independence of practical necessities

when the advantages of birth, status, and social position have not

already effected this for him. For such a man the only relief available

is a complete withdrawal into the secret world of the emotions, a

prison-house of unreality he steps out of never. Here he remains

in what he conceives to be the temple of wisdom gazing ecstatic at

what he takes to be the stars, and naturally values at the price of

a nutshell all that is found on the Earth. The real Ideal, however,

is not confined to the shadow-like world of the emotions, but in its

perfected whole must freely borrow from the definite structure of

external objects of sight in every direction. And the reason of this

is that man himself, whose nature is the central source that gives

to that Ideal all its significance, is alive, and his life is only

actual in a particular place and time, as one with the Present, as the

individualized type of infinity[366]; and in short the opposition of

an external garland of Nature is a fundamental characteristic of his

life and its association with him and his activity is imperative. It

follows that if this activity is to be apprehended by art, not merely

as belonging to man alone, but in the specific form it may take in

that world of appearance, the mode of its existence there will assert

itself, as the mobility, reaction, and animating force of life itself

in contact and transfusion with the material complex which surrounds it.

Man is, however, in virtue of his self-consciousness a world in

himself[367], and as such is differentiated from the external world of

Nature which confronts him; and this external world is equally with

himself a rounded whole whose unity asserts itself in the principle of

causality. This self-exclusion of these two worlds is, however, only

apparent; they are in their separation essentially related, and it is

precisely this association which constitutes concrete reality, whose

artistic embodiment is the content of the Ideal. And this brings us

once more to the question already mooted, namely, in what semblance or

form the external material which we find in this mutually related world

we have referred to as concrete reality[368] can be presented to us by

art in a manner consistent with the Ideal of art.

We will once more accept the triple division of our subject-matter,

and examine a work of art from three distinct points of view. _First_,

there is the material of externality accepted in the bare abstractness

of its forms, such as space, figure, time, colour, which we must

consider relatively to the artistic form most adapted to it.

_Secondly_, we must consider externality in its full and actualized

concreteness, as above explained, a mode of reality which imperatively

requires in a work of art that it should be in close affiliation with

the subjective content of the spiritual life of man immediately related

to it.

_Thirdly_, our consideration will be directed to the important fact

that a work of art is created for the delight of human perceptions, for

a public in short, which justly claims that the objects of art should

bring home to it the interests of its spiritual life, its real beliefs,

emotions, and ideas, so that it may enter with a genuine response into

their artistic presentation.

1. THE CONDITION OF EXTERNALITY IN ITS SIMPLE ABSTRACTNESS

The Ideal in passing out of the bare image of its essential form into

external or determinate existence secures for itself a reality which

presents two distinct aspects. From one point of view we see that a

work of art discloses necessarily in the content of the Ideal the

concrete semblance of reality, that is to say it presents that content

as a definite situation or particular circumstance, action, event or

character, and presents it moreover in the mode of external existence.

From another it is equally obvious that art makes some specific and

sensuous material the vehicle of the particular content in its entirety

of all that we have above summarized; it creates in short a new world

sensible to eye and ear, the world of art. Under both these aspects

we may further observe that art penetrates to the remotest limits of

externality which are compatible with its form as the self-including

unity of the Ideal and conformable to its appearance as a concrete

whole permeated with the energy of spirit[369]. A work of art moreover

itself may, as an object qualified by externality, be viewed in two

distinct ways. We may regard it simply as an external thing, and as

such only conformable to a unity that is external in the sense external

objects are such. In considering it from this latter point of view

we have once more to consider that relation of externality which

we found it necessary to discuss in our examination of the beauty

of Nature. And for this reason we shall again have to make use of

those specific determinants which we previously discussed, and even

then primarily in their connection with art. The modes under which

external form was in the previous section exhaustively considered were

then treated in a twofold way. First we analysed such conceptions as

uniformity, symmetry, and conformity to rule; we then examined unity

itself regarded as the simplicity and purity of the sensuous material,

which art makes use of as the external medium for the existence of her

expositions.

(_a_) We will start our inquiry by examining the position in which we

now find ourselves relatively to such conceptions as uniformity and

symmetry. It is obvious that these, expressing as they do the entirely

lifeless unity of the geometrical logic, can by no means exhaust the

nature of a work of art even when entirely regarded as an external

object. Such determinations are only exhaustive in their relation

to what is in itself lifeless, such as time and the configuration

of space. Confined in this way though they be to the barest forms

of externality, they are then true witnesses both to the power and

substance of reason. And consequently we find they assert themselves in

a twofold manner even in art. In the first of these, it is this very

quality of their abstractness which operates by way of contrast to

the living pulse of art, which is forced even in the confines of its

sensuous material to raise itself over and beyond mere symmetry into

the freedom of the Ideal. In this process of liberation which may be

exemplified in the melodies of the art of music we do not, however,

find that the conformity to rule disappears altogether, it is merely

made subservient as a foundation. In the second, this principle of

measure and rule in its application to the indefinite and unlimited is

the one and only qualifying principle which certain arts can accept

owing to the nature of the media which those arts make use of. In such

cases uniformity is itself and alone raised to the ideal significance

of the art. The principal example of an art of this type is that of

architecture; and the reason of this is that a work of art which is

wholly architectonic is directed to the one object of reconstituting,

by means of an artistic form, that which is essentially the external

and inorganic environment of spirit. In this art, consequently, all

that is rectilinear, right-angled, circular, or presents uniformity of

pillars, windows, arches, piers, vaults, and so forth is the dominant

principle of unity.

The artistic structure of architecture is not erected entirely as an

object in itself, but rather as an external frame, embellishment and

local habitation for something else which it subserves. A building

is not complete until it has received the statue of the god or the

society of human beings who make their dwelling therein. An artistic

work of this kind should not therefore receive all or indeed the main

attention. Holding this in our minds, it will appear obviously to the

purpose that uniformity and symmetry should be here the prevailing

characteristic of the structure; the mind passes over very readily one

that is throughout uniform, and will not trouble itself about it for

any length of time. Of course, we cannot here discuss the symbolical

significance, which, in addition to that above examined, may attach to

architectural form in its immediate relation to the spiritual content

it envelops and emphasizes with a positive localization. The same

principle applies to the art of making gardens, which we may define

as a specific mode of architecture, in so far at least as an artistic

conformation is imposed on external Nature[370]. In the garden no less

than in the building man himself is the main object. There are two

distinct types in this art of garden-construction. The one adopts as

its main principle uniformity and symmetry; the other those of variety

and irregularity. As an artistic product the former is to be preferred.

Labyrinths, however numerous and intricate, garden-beds in endless

alternation of spiral lines, bridges over water usually stagnant,

with every conceivable surprise that gothic church, temples, Chinese

pagodas, hermitages, urns, summer-houses, mounds, statues may claim to

afford us--one glance and only one glance at such things is sufficient,

the vulgar and artificial pretensions of it all is too patent, and we

do not seek for another. It is quite another matter when we cross any

actual situation of real natural beauty, which has not at least been

exploited expressly for our enjoyment[371], and by its own exceptional

merit makes an irresistible appeal to our love of Nature and our

sense of her beauty. A garden laid out with strict reference to the

other extreme of regularity, makes no such attempts at surprises, but

permits human beings to appear as the principal object in the external

framework of natural beauty[372]. And this is really what a garden

should be. Again in the art of painting the principle of uniformity

and symmetry is clearly visible in the co-ordination of the whole, the

grouping of the figures, their place and pose in the composition. But

inasmuch as in painting the animation of life can assert itself through

objects in a far profounder degree than is possible in architecture

we find that it presents much less scope for the purely formal unity

of the symmetrical, and the rule of uniformity in all its severity is

for the most part to be traced only as the fundamental principle of

composition in the earliest phases of art, making way in its more

advanced forms to the freer line, which is associated in our minds

with organic form rather than such we meet with in the pyramid and

similar geometrical shapes. Conformity to rule and symmetry are further

important factors in the composition of music and poetry. Owing to

the incident of duration in the length of tones we find in these arts

an aspect of what is intrinsically a purely external relation, which

is incompatible with any other more concrete mode of presentation.

If we take the spatial condition it is obvious that here everything

which lies in juxtaposition can be seen at a glance. It is otherwise

with that which occurs in Time. Here we have merely a succession

of moments, every one of which takes the place of another, and in

this vanishing procession they flow on for ever. And it is precisely

this indeterminacy which it is the function of musical time or beat

to inform by adding thereto a real definition capable of uniform

repetition. In this way the indefinite progression is subordinated to

a rational principle. In musical time we have a power which exerts

such a fascination upon us, that, so far from being able to treat it

with indifference, we not unfrequently find ourselves beating time

quite unconsciously with it while listening. This constant recurrence

of equal lengths of time according to a definite measure has nothing

to do with tones and their duration as we find them in Nature. Tone

simply as musical sound and time abstractly regarded, are both of them

equally indifferent to such uniform divisions and repetitions. Musical

time is consequently something wholly created by the human mind; and

indeed there is more than a suggestion of this in the fact that in

listening to musical time we are at once impressed with the conviction,

that we have, in this control of time according to fixed rule, nothing

less than a real reflection of our spiritual nature, or rather that

of the fundamental truth of self-identity, an illustration absolutely

precise of the way in which the subject of consciousness applies this

very principle of uniformity, unity with itself, that is to say, in

constant recurrence, throughout all the variety and most intricate

multiplicity of experience. And it is for this reason that the beat of

musical time meets with such a startling response in the very depths of

our being, gripping hold, as it does, of that self-identity, which is

the fundamental abstract principle of our inmost life. Considered in

this relation it is not; the spiritual content, not the concrete soul

of our emotions, any more than it is the musical tone as tone, which

appeals to us so intimately; it is simply the formal unity which the

unity of consciousness transfers to the temporal process, and which is

thus re-echoed back to our conscious life. And the same remarks apply

to the measure and rhyme of poetry. The sensuous medium is here, too,

in the same way carried out of the sphere of that which is external to

ourselves, and at once asserts there the presence of something over and

above that which is expressed by our ordinary consciousness, which in

its general use treats the time-divisions of tones with indifference or

caprice.

A uniformity of similar character, if not so consistently defined,

may be traced still further, and is involved in the living content of

poetry itself, although the relation here is quite an external one.

By this we mean that in an epic poem or a drama, both of which have

their particular subdivisions, cantos, or acts, whatever may be the

specific term applicable, there is an approximate principle of equality

apparent in the division of subject-matter. And the same characteristic

is generally true in the grouping of the subject in pictures, although

such should not appear to be a necessary result of the nature of the

subject-matter itself, nor create the impression that this uniform

distribution is due to any controlling principle of first importance.

Conformity to rule and symmetry, which are the abstract unity and

definition of all that is essentially spatial and its configuration no

less than of all which is external under temporal condition, are mainly

the co-ordinating principles of quantity and size, as we have already

noticed in our consideration of the beauty of Nature. All that which

does not, in virtue of its own specific medium[373], strictly form part

of external extension, is consequently freed from the range of those

principles which assert themselves exclusively in the relations of

quantity, and are determined through relations of deeper significance,

and the unity which co-ordinates them. It follows from this that

the further art embraces subject-matter which is independent of the

external condition, so much the less significant the principle of

uniformity becomes, in the co-ordination of that art's subject-matter

and the more completely is it restricted to a subordinate position.

It will be, perhaps, advisable here to close the above discussion

of symmetry with a few general observations upon _harmony_. The

relation of harmony is no longer one to mere quantity, but rather one

to essential distinctions of _quality_, differences of tone, that

is to say, which do not persist against each other in their native

opposition, but as harmony or music have to be brought into concord.

In music we find that the relation of the tonic to the mediant and

dominant notes of the scale is no relation of bare quantity[374],

but implies the presence of tones whose difference is _essentially_

a qualitative difference; which, that is to say, combine naturally

in a unity, rather than continue to assert their distinguishing

_timbre_ in all its glaring antithesis and contradiction. The true

discord, on the contrary, requires its harmonic resolution. The same

qualitative consistency is to be found in the harmony of colour, in

reference to which it is likewise one of the requirements of art

that it should neither manifest itself in a picture as a motley and

haphazard juxtaposition of pigments, nor as a neutral surface whereon

all fundamental distinction is dissolved[375], but as the artistic

expression of a whole in which essential contrast is mediated through

some principle of harmonious unity. Furthermore, we observe that

harmony contains in itself a definite number of contrasted differences,

which have naturally a particular significance of their own. Thus we

find under the differentiation of colour a definite number known as

the cardinal colours, which are primary derivatives of the fundamental

notion of colour, and are not due to accidental composition. Harmony

consists in bringing together a number of positive colours such as this

classification implies, and uniting them in concordant unity. We must,

that is to say, have in a picture not merely all the primary colours,

yellow, blue, green, and red present, but also a harmonious scheme

under which they are related; and the old masters have, without direct

consciousness of the principle involved, paid express attention to this

completeness of effect and arrived at artistic results which flowed out

of it. And furthermore, for the very reason that we find in harmony

the beginnings of a release from the bare condition of externality it

is duly qualified to absorb and express a spiritual content of wider

significance. We may mark an illustration of this in the way the old

masters distinguished between the drapery of their principal figures

and of those of less importance, painting that of the former in

elementary colours of absolute purity, but only conceding to that of

the rest compound varieties. The mantle of the Virgin Mary is almost

always blue; blue in its assuaging sense of tranquillity is accepted as

the counterfeit of the repose and tenderness of the heart. It is only

rarely that we find her in a drapery of emphatic red.

(_b_) The second aspect of externality is the relation it occupies

directly in the various material which art employs in the various media

of its presentations. The unity here consists in the clear definition

and homogeneousness of the material, which ought not to deviate

in the direction of a vague characterization and mere confusion,

or, speaking generally, give us the impression of dirtiness. This

determinacy is also entirely dependent upon the spatial condition,

that is to say, upon the purity of its delineation, the distinctness

of its rectilinear and circular lines, and so on, no less than upon a

consistent definition of Time such as we find in the accurate measure

of the musical beat. It depends furthermore on the translucency both

of specific tones and colours. In a good picture we shall find that

there is nothing unclean or "dirty"[376] in the colours employed,

but everything is clear and asserts itself openly for what it is.

The directness of its purity is, in fact, that which constitutes the

lovely impression of colour upon our sense; and those colours which

are most direct in their simplicity, such as a yellow which has no dash

of green in it, or a red that is wholly independent of blue or yellow,

produce the most emphatic effect. On the other hand, it is obviously

more difficult to maintain a harmony of the whole when colours are thus

contrasted in all their pristine simplicity. Yet in despite of this

these essentially simple colours form the foundation of every true

colour scheme, and although it may be impossible to dispense with a

considerable use of their compounds, even these should not be allowed

to appear in one dead and dull interfusion, but with their simple and

luminous derivations shining through them[377]; otherwise instead of

the clear lambency of colour we shall get nothing but a muddy residuum.

We shall find that the same thing is necessary in the _timbre_ of

musical tone. In the case of strings whether of metal or catgut it is

the vibration of the material, and, moreover, of a material of definite

tension and length, which educes the musical note. If the tension is

insufficient, or the length of the string which is struck is not the

right one, the tone inevitably loses its clearness of definition,

rings false, as we say, owing to the interfusion with it of other

tones[378]. We have the same kind of result when a purely mechanical

fretting or scraping is suffered to interfere with the purity of the

vibratory motion, and so to render the emitted sound confused and

harsh. In the same way, it is of the first importance to the art of

singing that the human voice should be produced from throat and chest

freely and with purest intonation; the voice should be heard without

the least indication of its organic instrument, or, as in the case

of hoarseness, with an obstructive accompaniment the singer fails to

repress. We may conclude, then, that this translucency and purity,

free from all admixture with anything foreign to it, and consistent

throughout in its clearness, is that which creates the beauty of tone

as immediately apprehended by our senses, and which distinguishes

it from every kind of mere noise. And we may add further it is this

which in human speech conspicuously applies to the articulation of the

vowels. A language which enunciates the five vowels with distinction

and purity, as is strongly the case in the Italian, is essentially

musical and adapted to song. The diphthongs, on the contrary, always

produce a confused tone. In literature little attention is paid to

the direct reproduction of folk-dialects; we find them rather reduced

to the simplest form of expression. In actual speech, however, this

clearness of intonation only too often entirely disappears, so that we

find, and markedly so in the case of dialects such as the South German,

Swabian, and Swiss, men actually speak with an articulation of sound

it is quite impossible to write down. We do not regard this, however,

to be necessarily a defect in human speech, but rather a reflection of

the rawness of the common folk. And here we must close our observations

upon that external aspect of art, which, from the fact that it is

external, and nothing more, is only capable of receiving an external

and abstract unity.

Now according to its more comprehensive definition it is the _concrete

individuality_ of the Ideal impregnated with reason, which takes to

itself externality as the form of its embodiment, and, moreover, in

such a way that the external semblance, which is thus the medium of

its expression, is throughout suffused with the mind inherent in this

concrete individual form. In consequence of this such modes of relation

as uniformity, symmetry, and harmony, or, in other words, the more

simple determinations of the sensuous material are no longer adequate.

This defect naturally extends our inquiry to that second aspect of the

external determination of the Ideal already stated.

2. THE COALESCENCE OF THE CONCRETE IDEAL WITH ITS EXTERNAL REALITY

The fundamental truth which we shall endeavour to substantiate before

everything in the matter which now immediately engages our attention is

this, that man is under an obligation to make himself at peace and at

home in the environment of the world; or, to put it rather differently,

his individuality must live itself into Nature and all the conditions

of that external world, and by doing so assert its freedom visibly.

And, moreover, this must take place in such a way that these two

related factors, that is, on the one side, the entirety of his inward

life and the character it possesses or displays in all conditions or

actions whatsoever, and, on the other, that objective entirety of

external existence which confronts him, must wholly lose the appearance

of two worlds which are either indifferent to or not homogeneous

with[379] each other, and forthwith proclaim themselves as harmoniously

related and identical in substance. This externally objective world

must, in so far as it is the reality of the Ideal, surrender the

semblance of its own objective self-subsistency and stubbornness, in

order that its fundamental unity with that to which it supplies the

external and particular embodiment may be exhibited in truth.

To establish this unity with more conclusiveness we propose now to

examine our subject under three different heads of discussion.

_First_, we may investigate the same from the point of view that this

unity which binds the two factors already defined is merely a bond

which possesses _no positive reality_[380], but is merely a mysterious

and secret connection both in its origin and appearance, by virtue of

which our humanity is looped together with its environment.

_Secondly_, however, as a deduction from the fact that it is the

concrete _spiritual_ life of man and the individuality which pertains

to it which constitutes the point of departure, or rather the essential

content of the Ideal, we shall further examine this association, as in

truth the creation of _human_ activity itself and only possible as such

a creation.

_Finally_, we shall prove that this unified world created by the human

Spirit is itself a complete entirety, which, in the determinate form

of its existence, is objectively valid, and in essential relation with

which every unit of our common humanity who is actively engaged with

the vital concerns of art must infallibly remain.

In opening our discussion of the position we proposed first we would

at once point out an important conclusion involved in it. We have here

posited that the environment of the Ideal is not directly due to human

activity, it can therefore only be regarded in this first step of our

inquiry as something external to man, that is to say Nature. How, then,

is this something outside man to be exhibited in the ideal work of art?

We will discuss this at least in its more general terms, and here, too,

draw attention to three aspects of importance.

(_α_) In the first place external Nature, so far as the reproduction of

its external form is concerned, is in every respect a reality which is

embodied in some _definite_ shape. If our representation is in every

respect to satisfy really all that is implied in this condition it

must be the exact counterpart of the phenomenal truth of Nature. We

have, however, already drawn attention to material points of difference

between the truth of Nature and its reproduction by art which cannot be

disregarded. We may, however, observe that it is an almost universal

characteristic of the great masters that they are conspicuously true

in their delineation and elaboration of the broad facts of Nature. And

this is not so much due to a love of imitation as it is due to the fact

that Nature is not merely in a general way the objective facts of a

heaven and an Earth with humanity suspended, as it were, in a _vacuo_

between them; but rather that the emotional life and activity of man

can only be rightly conceived as alive and operative in a given place

with all its associations of streams, rivers, hills, mountains, plains,

dales, and forests. Take the case, for example, of Homer, who is not at

all a poet of the picturesque in natural scenery as we now understand

it; we shall, nevertheless, find even in him the descriptions and

indications he gives us of actual places or natural features such

as the rivers Scamander or Simois, the coast and bays of the sea

and so forth correspond with such truth to Nature that geographical

investigators only quite recently have been able to map out the

locality to which he refers in entire accordance with his descriptions.

The ballad-singers of the Middle Ages present a sordid[381] contrast

to him in this respect, no less than in their power of depicting

character; the effect of their productions either way is bald, jejune

and nebulous. Even in the case of the Meistersingers, though they

versify old biblical stories which they locate in Jerusalem and

elsewhere, it is little more than the bare names which we get. In the

Book of heroes[382] the effect is precisely similar. Otnith rides

through the pine-forest, fights with the dragon, but it is no world

of men or distinct locality we can recognize, and our imagination is

consequently in this respect left without any support. Even in the

Nibelungenlied there is no real increase of local interest. It is

true the names of Worms, the Rhine, and the Danube are mentioned;

but practically all further detail is omitted and the result is as

barren as before. And yet it is clearly through this very clearness of

definition that our narration becomes individual and real; without this

it is a mere abstraction which directly gives the lie to the concrete

reality it proposes to present.

(_β_) In addition to these fundamental requirements of clear definition

and correspondence with the natural facts a certain elaboration of

detail will frequently much assist us in presenting the external

aspects of a picture which our perception or imagination can readily

seize. Unquestionably, owing to the nature of the particular medium

in which the several arts express themselves, there will be a marked

difference of range to which, in any particular case, this process

may be carried. If we take the art of sculpture, for example, we

shall find that the repose and universality, which are the fundamental

features of its characterization, are less consistent with this

elaboration of external detail than is the case in some other arts.

Externality is here neither defined as a particular place nor a

particular environment, but is entirely concentrated upon such details

as drapery, arrangement of hair, dress, weapons of war, mode of seat

and the like. Nay more, the actual definition of many figures in

antique sculpture is only obtained through an entirely conventional

arrangement of drapery or hair, or other distinguishing accessories.

This is not, however, the place to discuss further the significance of

the conventional. It is obviously outside the sphere of natural fact

and rather related to the contingent; or, to put the matter in this

particular case more fully, it is the means through which we arrive

at that which is more universal and persistent in our final artistic

effect.

As a reverse case to that of sculpture the subject-matter of lyrical

poetry is pre-eminently man's emotional life; for this reason it is

not so necessary in this type of poetry to lay stress on the detail of

actual facts even when reference is made to the external world. It is,

on the other hand, part of the function of epic poetry to state events

as actual facts, to be precise as to the place where actions occurred

and in what manner they were performed; and, in short, of all types

of poetry it is the one to which the widest latitude and the closest

accuracy of local detail is most essential. And, furthermore, if we

contrast all the arts together in this respect we shall find that not

one of them is, by virtue of its medium[383], so exclusively occupied

with the detail of external Nature as that of painting. At the same

time we must add a word that applies equally to all of them. Whatever

the definition of Nature may be, it never ought to give the erroneous

impression of Nature's prose reality, that is to say, as the immediate

imitation of such; nor should that fulness of detail, which is devoted

to the spiritual aspect of individual life and its events, be carried

by enthusiasm out of the due relation of its importance to the whole.

And generally we may affirm of both that such exclusive definition

ought not to be all that is anywhere presented, inasmuch as everywhere

in a work of art that which is a natural fact should only receive its

artistic embodiment in close relation to man's spiritual life.

(_γ_) We have here struck the very note we wish particularly to

emphasize. We have already remarked that there are two essential

conditions to any effective presentation of a real personality; we

must have before us both the reflection of the man's inner life and

the natural environment which surrounds him. And in order that this

external surrounding appear as one that is truly his own an essential

bond of relation must be established between him and it, one which

to a greater or less degree is part of his own spiritual substance,

where we may, doubtless, cross many traces of contingent matter and

yet find the spiritual bed of this nexus still maintained. Throughout

the entire spiritual _apparatus_ of the heroes of Epic poetry, for

example, their mode of life, that is, opinions, emotions, and all that

they do we ought to be able to recognize a subtle homogeneousness, a

harmonious _en rapport_, which fuses the two aspects of such a life

into one concordant whole. The Arab is thus united with Nature, and,

indeed, apart from his sky, his stars, his torrid deserts, his tents,

his camels, and his horses is unintelligible. He is only truly himself

and at home under such conditions. In the same way the heroes of Ossian

possess in the highest degree an intense inward life; but in their

very gloominess and melancholy they appear as the genuine growth of

their hills of heather, whose thistles are swept by the wind, of their

rain-clouds, mists, mountains, and dark caves. The physiognomy of the

conditions under which they live reveals to us as nothing else can

the secret of that inner life of emotion which is lived through with

all its sadness, mourning, its pains, its battles, and its mist-like

apparitions in such a natural setting; they are, in short, entirely at

home in it and in it alone.

Such considerations supply us with ample ground for the statement we

let fall previously unsupported that the subject-matter of history

offers unrivalled opportunities for perfecting this intimate relation

between the two aspects of human life we have been discussing, and

enabling, us to carry the same directly into the minutest particulars.

Very rarely, indeed, are we likely to find that the imagination can

simply through its own initiative create such a harmony, although

we ought to feel its presence throughout, however little it may, in

fact, have produced of the raw material it combines into artistic

completeness. No doubt there is a common tendency to rate what we

fancy is the free creation of imaginative genius above the effort of

assimilating in artistic form a material which is borrowed; but it is

for all that quite impossible that the imagination should alone create

that harmonious _entente_, the unity of the Ideal requires in the

consistent and defined form which lies before us in actual existence,

where national traits, to cite the examples above, are the veritable

growth of such a harmony.

And here we close our consideration of the principle accordant with

which we have rendered more clear that aspect of the unity of the

inner life with its natural environment which we posited as secret or

potential, not at any rate directly due to human activity.

(_b_) The second phase of this harmonious relation may be explained

more positively, being expressly due to man's own activity and his

adaptation of means to ends. For man adapts external objects to his

own uses and, by means of the satisfaction which his work supplies,

places himself in a harmonious relation to them. In contrast therefore

to our first indefinite[384], and, in fact, entirely general type of

harmonious association the present one is directly concerned with what

is particular, as exemplified in the particular needs of man and their

satisfaction by his converting to his use such natural objects as he

may require. The range of his wants and the consequent impulse of their

satisfaction is of a practically unlimited variety; yet it is nothing

in comparison with the variety of Nature herself. Simplification is

therefore inseparable from the task whereby, our humanity imposes on

the facts of Nature its own vital purposes, and interpenetrates the

external world with its own volitions. In this way man's environment is

humanized; he proves by his own acts that it is capable of satisfying

his nature and is unable to preserve any predominant independence over

against him. Here at last, by virtue, that is, of his own productive

exertions, we find him no longer in a merely general sense of the term,

but actually in every detail of his particular surroundings a real

centre of his own substance and at home.

The fundamental conception which it is most important to emphasize as

that which affects art throughout in its relation to all we have above

considered may be thus stated. If we look closely at the relative

position man occupies in all the infinite variety of his material

wants, desires, and aims, we shall find that it is not one merely of

_general_ significance, but one of actual _dependence_. The absence

of freedom implied in this relative position is antagonistic to the

Ideal; and in order that man may become a suitable object for art, he

must have already released himself from the travail of this enforced

condition, and thrown off the chains of his dependence. Moreover, this

act of mutual accommodation, when we trace it to its origin, may strike

us in one of two different ways. Either he may conclude that Nature

in all friendliness on her own part supplies man with what he needs,

and so far from throwing obstacles in the path of his interests and

objects, rather freely gives them him as one who meets him half way

wherever he goes. Or, on the contrary, we shall not fail to observe

that our humanity has wants and desires, whose immediate satisfaction

Nature is quite unable to secure. In cases that fall under the second

type it is obvious that man can only work out the self-satisfaction

vital to him through his own energies; he must take possession of that

which Nature possesses, set to rights the defects which appear, modify

their form, removing all that stands in his way with adroitness; and,

in short, convert Nature's raw material into means through which he

will be able to attain all that he proposes. The relation in which the

unity between man and his environment will be most conspicuous must be

sought for in an example, where there is already a real contact between

them, where, that is to say, human ability is on such good terms with

the amenability of Nature that all the severity of a conflict between

them as unreconciled forces disappears, and we have forthwith the

completed symphony under our eyes.

For the reasons, then, already advanced the ideal province of art must

be held secure from the bare necessities of life. Property and the

favour of circumstances, in so far as they supply a condition, under

which poverty and labour vanish not merely for this or that hour, but

for the most part altogether, are for this reason, we will not say

incompatible with art, but rather in full concurrence with the Ideal.

Yet it would only betray a real lack of comprehension[385], if in cases

where the conditions of our art compelled us to consider the facts

of life in all their multifold variety, we nevertheless omitted from

our composition all reference to the relation in which human life is

placed to these very natural constraints. It is true enough that such

are purely finite conditions; but art is not therefore able to dispense

with them. They must not, in fact, even be treated by her as something

merely bad. It is rather her function to reconcile them with the Real

in her embracing unity. And indeed the finest actions and opinions

which she reflects on her mirror, if we consider the particular form

of the determination and content alone[386], are necessarily limited

and consequently finite. That I find it necessary to provide myself

with nourishment, food and drink, a house to live in, and clothing to

wear, seats to sit upon, and everything else incidental to domestic

life is no doubt an inevitable concomitant of the fact that I live

in the world; but the life that only I myself experience within me

permeates, this external aspect of my life so completely, that men

are fain to clothe and arm the very gods themselves, and to picture

them under conditions inseparable from a variety of things they seek

to possess, and find their satisfaction in obtaining. In short, for

art to be possible, this satisfaction of the necessities of life must

be assured to us. Or to take an example where this is not so, there

is that of adventurous knights who only secure their immunity from

external hardship through the continued success of their enterprise,

which is therefore itself but a contingency, in much the same way as

the prosperity of savages is contingent upon the amenities of Nature.

The conditions in both cases are not favourable to Art. Her true Ideal

is not merely to be found where our humanity is barely lifted above

the most rigorous condition of dependence upon the smiles or frowns of

Nature, but is most of all at home in that superfluity which suffers it

in conjunction with Nature's bounty to expatiate with freedom no less

than delight.

The above remarks are obviously of very general application. Two

considerations, however, of a somewhat more restricted interest may be

deduced from them.

(_α_) The first of these relates to the kind of use to which mankind

put the objects of Nature in seeking for a satisfaction which is wholly

_aesthetic_, or due to some habit of the mind. Everything in the nature

of ornament and finery, or, in general terms, everything that men

convert to their use for the sake of mere show comes under this head.

And the point to which we draw attention is this, that when we find men

thus decorating themselves no less than their immediate surroundings,

we ought not so much to conclude that all that they thus collect

together from Nature's most costly and beautiful storehouse, whatever

may most attract their eyes in the same--whether it be gold, precious

stones, pearls, ivory, or precious raiment--that all this unrivalled

rarity and brilliancy, in short, is that which for its own sake, and

primarily as a product of Nature, interests them: rather their interest

in it all is essentially personal as a thing suitable for the houses

they live in, or for that which they most love and honour, whether it

be their rulers, their temples, or their gods. A man selects in this

way that which already appears to him as externally beautiful, pure

translucent colour, glitter of metals, fragrant woods, marble, and all

the rest. Poetry, and particularly Oriental poetry, makes a willing

use of such wealth, a fact we may even illustrate from such a poem as

the Nibelungenlied: and generally it is true enough that Art in such

matters is not merely content with a general description of the beauty

or value of such fine things; but, where the artistic form and the

occasion allows, will describe such works in all the detail of their

workmanship with as royal a bounty as the works themselves. There was

no stint of either gold or ivory on the statue of Pallas at Athens,

or that of Zeus at Olympia; and the temples of the ancient gods, the

churches of Christendom, the pictures of saints, and the palaces of

kings, are notable illustrations among all nations that possess any

of them, to what kind of service splendour and brilliant show may be

devoted; thus have nations in every age delighted in seeing upon their

gods the visible presence of their own wealth, precisely as they have

found delight in the splendour of their princes as a glory they still

possessed, though ravished from themselves.

We all know, of course, that type of moralist who is only too ready

to disturb the vision of such an enjoyment. We shall, no doubt, be

reminded how many poor Athenians the aegis of Pallas could have

supplied with a hearty meal, or how many slaves could have thus been

liberated; and, doubtless, we must admit that in the case of the

ancient world, no less than in days more near to our own wealth, all

that has been lavished on temple, cloister, or cathedral, or other

objects of public utility, has been expended under social conditions of

the direst need to many. Nay, we may carry such melancholy reflections

yet further, and find in them a condemnation not merely of particular

works of art, but of Art herself and all that she gives us. What sums

of money are involved in the building by the State of an Academy of

Arts, or the purchase of ancient and modern works of art, and the

appropriate embellishment of public galleries, theatres, and museums!

But whatever the effect of such reflections may be upon us, whether

ethical or otherwise, such is, after all, only due to the fact that

we are once more reminded of those very constraints and hardships

whose removal is a vital condition of the appearance of Fine Art. The

appropriation of a unique sphere in its life for the exposition of its

artistic treasures, which stands safe above the stress of that reality

to which it contributes so largely, can therefore only redound to the

glory and supreme honour of any people.

(_β_) But, further, mankind is not merely interested in the adornment

of individuals and the environment of their life, but is actively

employed in adapting the objects of Nature to its practical needs and

purposes. It is on this plane that we come into contact for the first

time with all the labour and struggle which the dependence of our

humanity upon the prose of its finite life implies. And the question

inevitably arises, how far all that is involved in this practical

effort is suitable to artistic presentation.

(_αα_) In attempting some answer to this problem, we would draw

attention to the historical fact that the earliest way in which Art

attempted to banish all the prose reality of human life was the

conception of the well-known golden age or, if we care to call it so,

the idyllic state. In this we have Nature depicted as satisfying man's

every want with no trouble to himself: while he, for his part, enjoys

in a state of innocence all that mead, wood, flocks, garden, shelter,

and so forth, can supply him with nourishment, dwelling, and all other

comforts incidental to such a life. Of the passions of ambition or

avarice, indeed of every impulse that may appear to run counter to the

nobility of man's spiritual nature, we hear no word at all. At first

blush, no doubt, a state of this description may strike us more or less

as ideal, and certain types of art, limited in their range, may find

definite satisfaction in presenting us with a picture of it. But we

have only to penetrate further below the surface and we shall quickly

have enough of such a vision. The writings of Gessner are little read

nowadays, and when we do read them we find in such little satisfaction.

The truth is that a restricted state of life, such as the above

described, presupposes a very elementary stage in human development.

Manhood which has attained to any real fulness of spiritual stature is

moved by impulses of loftier range, and is not likely to be satisfied

with the life which clings closest to Nature and its immediate

products. In such idyllic poverty of soul no man ought to live, but

rather to accept his birthright of toil: that which his spiritual

impulse urges him forward to, that he must secure through his own

activity. Once regard the matter in this way and these very physical

wants of man will be found to bring into being a wide and diverse range

of activities, implanting in him the conscious sense of his own powers,

from the heart of which the profounder interests and forces of his life

can slowly unravel themselves. But, at the same time, it is necessary

that here, too, the harmonious relation between the outward and inner

life should be maintained as the fundamental principle of artistic

presentation. Few things are more offensive to our aesthetic taste

than to find in a work of art the severity of some physical disaster

portrayed through every detail of horror. Dante flashes on us the

starvation of Ugolino in a few trenchant strokes. When a Gerstenberg,

in his tragedy of Ugolino, wrings out every detail of the catastrophe

to the last drop, telling us precisely how first Ugolino's two sons,

and after them their father, were done to death by starvation, we feel

at once that the subject, as thus handled, is entirely at variance with

the principles of fine art.

(_ββ_) We shall, however, find that the condition of life which offers

the strongest contrast to that we have described as the idyllic state,

we will call it the generally civilized life[387], presents, though on

other grounds, difficulties to an ideal exposition which are equally

serious. In a Culture-State the complexus of social wants and labour,

of interests and all that may go to satisfying the same, is throughout

and in all its comprehensiveness completely evolved. Every individual

here is immersed in an infinite network of relations with other units

of the whole, and with so much loss to his complete independence. What

he himself requires for himself is either nothing at all, or only, in

a quite insignificant fraction of it, the result of his own labour:

add to this the tendency of all a man's normal activities is to become

more and more mechanical. We find, too, at the heart of this industrial

development and the interchange of employment and rejection of human

labour which it implies, on the one hand the most ruthless conditions

of poverty, and on the other a class which, raised as it is above

the bare necessities of existence, stands out in relief as wealthy,

entirely released from all toil for the sake of a subsistence, able

at any rate to devote individual attention to the finer interests of

life and its pathetic contrasts. No doubt the possession of such a

superfluity may create an impression as though for the favoured few the

constant recurrence of a position of dependence had passed away, and

a man is just so much the more released from the accidents incidental

to property because his hands are at length free from the grime which

soils them in securing it. But such a consolatory reflection will never

make a man thoroughly at home in all that immediately surrounds him in

the real sense that such is the garland of his own labour. For he is

the centre of that to the upraising of which he has not himself been

instrumental; it has come there out of that provision store which was

already full without him, which quite other persons and for the most

part in a quite mechanical and, therefore, formal way have provided,

and to which he is only introduced after a long series of effort and

struggle wholly strange to himself.

(_γγ_) We are consequently led to the conclusion that it is rather a

_third_ type of human society, a society which we may place halfway

between the idyllic golden age and the burgher State in its fully

developed industrial form, which is most fitted to be the subject

matter of ideal art. We have already analysed this state of society

in another connection under the description of the _heroic_ and

pre-eminently ideal world-condition. The heroic age is no longer

restricted to that idyllic garden of spiritual attenuation, but

includes within its borders passions and aims of deeper moment; and yet

withal that which in the circle of the individual life touches closest

the satisfaction of each man's immediate wants is still the entire

product of his own activity.

Moreover, the means of nourishment such as honey, milk, and wine are

less complex and consequently lend themselves more readily to ideal

treatment[388]. A diet which includes coffee, brandy, and such like

luxuries is associated in our minds with countless industries which

are necessary to their preparation. Our heroes, on the contrary, kill

and roast their own food, break in their own chargers, are the makers

to a considerable extent of all their household gods; ploughs, armour

for defence, shields, coats of mail, swords, spears, all are either the

work of the possessor, or are made directly under his supervision. In

a condition of life of this kind a man necessarily feels that in all

the things he makes use of, and in all that encircles him, he is in

touch with something produced by himself; that in contact with external

objects he is in contact with his own substance rather than with

objects which emanate from a world strange to himself and outside that

in which he is himself master. It is, of course, assumed that all the

energy he expends upon working up the material into forms adapted for

his use is not so much troublesome labour, but a work which, through

the satisfaction it brings him, falls easy from his shoulders, a work,

in short, which he can carry over every obstacle to success.

We find a society of this type in Homer. Agamemnon's sceptre is a

family staff which his ancestor himself shaped from the block and left

as an heirloom to his descendants. Odysseus put together with his

own hands the mighty bed he shared with Penelope; and if the famous

weapons of Achilles are no work of his own we only find the various and

interfused array of his own activities abated that a god, Hephaestus

himself, may provide them at the request of his mother Thetis. In a

word, we meet everywhere the youthful delight in novel discovery, the

freshness of personal possession, the victorious sense of enjoyment.

Everything is in its place and at home, in everything a man discovers

the energy of his own sinew, the adroitness of his own hand, the

cunning of his own spirit, or somewhat that follows from his own

courage and bravery. In this way, and by this alone, the instruments

which satisfy our human sense are not as yet relegated to a merely

external relation, but men have before them the living process of the

instruments themselves, the vital consciousness of the human worth they

attach to them; and they find it there inasmuch as for them they are

not mere lifeless things or things which habit has made lifeless, but

creations impregnated with their own energies. And for the same reason

we find here an idyllic condition of things, it is true, but not in

that restricted sense of the term that the Earth and her streams, seas,

forests, and cattle supply to mankind their sustaining substance, while

man himself is only visible to us as a passive creature limited by the

active powers which support him and their enjoyment. Rather we already

see within this morning-time of human life deep interests at work, in

relation to which the great world itself is but a subordinate realm,

the ground and the instrument for bringing into being the higher aims

which are present, as a ground and environment, however, over which

that harmonious concord, yet withal independence, of both sides of our

human world prevails; and which does prevail in the sight of all for

this reason that everything there exists as the product and for the use

of human life, is at the same time the creation and enjoyment of the

man who creates and enjoys its use[389].

To apply such a mode of artistic presentation to material borrowed

from more recent times, whose completed culture offers the strongest

contrast to the heroic age above-mentioned, is always beset with

extreme difficulty and liable to failure. Yet for all that Goethe in

his "Hermann and Dorothea" has furnished us in this respect with an

admirable masterpiece. Here an attempt will only be made to elucidate

a few significant points by contrasting the same with a composition

of similar type. Voss, in his famous romance "Louise," had depicted

on much the same idyllic lines our human life and activity in a quiet

circle of narrow range, if also marked with independent characteristics

of its own. The country parson, the tobacco-pipe, the dressing-gown,

the garden-bench, and finally our coffee-pot, have all of them here

important parts to play. Coffee and sugar are, however, products, which

are really here out of place; they belong to an entirely different

world[390] throughout associated with all the varied ramifications

of commercial and textile industries. This circle of country life

is consequently not self-inclusive. In the beautiful picture of

"Hermann and Dorothea" we are, on the contrary, under no necessity to

demand such a consistency. As we already have pointed out in another

connection, we find interwoven with the main threads of this poem,

which is, no doubt, in its prevailing atmosphere entirely idyllic, the

great political interests of the time, the struggles of the French

Revolution, the defence of the Fatherland, asserted in a worthy way

no less than with decision. The more limited scope of family life in

a little country town is not so presented us as a whole which can

even possibly remain in total ignorance of that mighty wave of the

great world under stress of a real cataclysm of events, which is the

view we are given of the pastor in the "Louise" of Voss. In Goethe's

poem we have, on the contrary, by means of the interfusion of these

great world-movements, within which the idyllic characters and events

are portrayed, the picture of a life with a typical character of its

own set in the frame of a world of more significant content; and the

apothecary, who is here presented as the out-and-out Philistine, and

who merely lives within the more narrow borders of that country life's

surroundings, affected by that only, is excellently sketched for us

with the good heart, but at the same time peevish isolation, which we

find so natural. Add to this, in that which most closely touches the

life of the characters thus portrayed, we find a particular emphasis

laid on the fundamental aspect of this idyllic life as previously

indicated in our former discussion of it. To mention one point only, we

may observe that the host does not by any means drink coffee with his

guests, the parson and the apothecary; on the contrary, to cite a line

or two:

Carefully brought in the mother the sparkling and glorious red-wine,

Poured in the clear-cut glasses, with rimlets all polished of pewter,

Brought in the green-coloured rummers, those goblets most fit for the

Rhine-wine.

They drink in the fresh air what has been grown at home, of the '83

vintage, and withal in glasses that, as home-made, are just the right

ones for Rhine-wine. A few lines further on our fancy is yet further

kindled with the "streams of the Rhine river and its dearly-loved

banks," and we are even introduced to the vineyard of the host behind

the house itself; and, in short, there is nothing to arrest our

attention outside the typical circle of a self-contented life which of

its own bounty provides for its wants.

(_c_) In addition to both these types of human environment we must

mention yet another in close association with which we all necessarily

live. It is no other than the universally prevailing _spiritual_

surroundings of our life whether they be religious, legal, or moral,

the organization of the State, that is to say, the constitution of the

government, the judicial institutions, the family, the institutions

of both public and private life, and all other social relations. For

the ideal character is not merely to be portrayed in its relation

to all that satisfies material wants, but as itself a focus of

spiritual interests. It is certainly true that all that is truly

substantive, divine, and essentially necessary in all these relations

is fundamentally an envisagement of one reality. In the objective

world, however, the forms under which this reality is manifested are

various, and they are, one and all, involved in that which is wholly

contingent in particular examples, and the conventional usages which

are only valid for definite periods of time and distinct nations. In

this variety of form all the interests of men's spiritual life receive

an external embodiment of reality, with which every man is confronted

in the customs, usages, and habits of society. Every man thereby, in

addition to possessing a self-exclusive individuality of his own,

becomes, in virtue of his association with such spiritual realities,

even more a member of a whole cognate with and vital to himself than

as a unit of that external world of Nature with which he is similarly

conjoined. Speaking generally, we may attach to this spiritual

association, of human life very much the same terms and significance we

have already discussed in the foregoing sections; consequently we will

for the present pass over the more detailed consideration of it, whose

most important features will apply more strictly to another aspect of

our inquiry, and will then be more appropriately discussed.

3. THE EXTERNALITY OF THE IDEAL WORK OF ART IN ITS RELATION TO A PUBLIC

It is therefore necessary that art, as the representation of the Ideal,

must embody this Ideal in all the relations to external reality we

have above described, and thereby associate the inward possessions of

character with the objective world. A work of art, however much in form

it may be a self-including and harmonious world by itself, exists none

the less as such an object, both real and particular, not _for itself_

but for such as _behold_ and _enjoy_ it, that is the Public. Actors,

for example, in the representation they give us of a particular drama

do not merely enter into converse with one another, but appeal directly

to ourselves, their audience; and it is equally important that they

make themselves intelligible under both these aspects. Every work of

art is in fact a direct appeal to the intelligence of everyone who

confronts it. Now it is indeed true that the real Ideal, as envisaged

for us in the universal interests and passions of its gods and men, is

so far intelligible to everyone as it gives us a view of its characters

within some typical external world of customs, usages, and everything

else that characteristically distinguishes it. But the condition of art

we have above formulated makes it further necessary that this element

of external reality is not merely one with which the characters thereby

represented are harmoniously associated, but must be also one within

which we ourselves to whom the work is addressed feel equally at home.

The appropriateness of the external environment to the characters

enfolded within it must apply with equal force to our own attitude of

mind in regarding both. But it so happens that from whatever period

of the world's history the subject-matter of a work of art may be

borrowed it will be sure to contain essential features, which are quite

distinct from those which specifically determine other nations and

periods. In other words artists of every description, whether they be

poets, painters, sculptors, or musicians, select subject-matter from

the Past, which in their particular state of culture and intelligence,

ethical customs, usages, and the form of their government, differ

from the civilization of the times they live in. Moreover, as we have

already observed, this return upon the Past possesses the considerable

advantage that in having thus recourse to memory instead of being face

to face with all the facts of the present, there is an appreciable

diminution of the material from which the artist selects his subject,

and this he cannot readily dispense with. At the same time the artist

belongs only to his own century, and it is in the ethical customs,

modes of conception, and generally the intellectual outlook of that he

lives. The Homeric poems Homer, to take him for once as the individual

creator of both "Iliad" and "Odyssey," may have actually lived through

or he may not; but in any case they are at least four hundred years

later[391] than the time of the Trojan war; and further a period twice

as long separates the great Greek tragedians from the days of the

ancient heroes, who, as translated into the atmosphere of their own

time, form the subject-matter of their poetry. It is just the same

in the case of the Niebelungenlied and the artist who finally fused

together the various saga which that poem contains into one homogeneous

work. We may no doubt admit that the artist finds himself entirely on

congenial ground when dealing with everything truly pathetic, either

in the history of gods or men; but the external and actual conditions

of that ancient world, whose characters and actions he endeavours to

portray, have altered in essential features and become consequently

strange to him. And further than this a poet creates for the sake of a

Public, and primarily for his own nation and his time, both of which

should be able to enter into such a work of art with intelligence,

and feel at home in it. The most genuine works of art no doubt assert

a further claim to immortality, a hope that they may continue to be

a source of delight to all times and nations. But even in the case

of works of the highest class it is none the less true that nations

and times situated far away from those which produced them can only

fully apprehend them with the assistance of an extensive apparatus of

geographical, historical, and it may be even philosophical knowledge

and the results of much critical investigation.

Bearing in mind these fundamental, and to some extent incompatible

differences which characterize the various points of view from which

a work of art must be regarded, the question arises what kind of form

relatively to its external framework of locality, custom, usage,

and generally any and every condition of religious, political or

ethical significance a particular work of art should receive. Should

an artist suffer his own times to pass from his mind altogether, and

attempt only to secure the substantial appearance of the Past and

what actually then existed, so that his work become simply a true

portrayal of that; or is he not merely justified, but rather under

an obligation, to pay an exclusive attention to his own nation and

the life around him, elaborating his work with express regard to the

principle that it should stand in harmonious relation to his own

times? Or, to put the same thing in rather more technical language,

we may propound the problem thus: Is the subject-matter of a work

of art to be _objectively_ valid in its content as one entirely

appropriate historically considered, or should such matter be treated

_subjectively_, that is, in complete subordination to the artist's

personal standpoint relatively to the culture and social conditions

of his own time? We would rather observe that both these positions,

if thus pressed unduly, land us in extreme conclusions equally false;

and we propose now to examine them briefly that we may by their means

elucidate a more satisfactory theory.

And we would consider three fundamental aspects which this problem

suggests. We will _first_ examine what is implied in the above

subjective assertion of the particular culture of the artist's own

time; _secondly_, there is the question what may be regarded as

exclusively and objectively true when we refer to the Past; _thirdly_,

we have to consider what may still be objectively valid in the true

sense, though we still have a representation and appropriation of

material borrowed from a time and nationality foreign to that of the

artists.

(_a_) Now to start with, if we consider this purely subjective

assertion, it is obvious that when we press the position closely we

are finally driven to exclude the objective embodiment of the Past

altogether, and to maintain that artistic representation is exclusively

concerned with the appearance of present times.

(_α_) Such a result may be doubtless, under one aspect of it,

presented by mere ignorance of the Past. It is, then, rather the result

of a _naïveté_, which is unable to feel the contradiction between

the object itself and the representation given, or at least fails to

bring the same to consciousness. Such a form of artistic presentation

is therefore fundamentally due to lack of sufficient culture. We

could hardly wish for a more vivid illustration of this than we find

in the _naïve_ productions of Hans Sachs, who has, no doubt with a

vivid freshness of imaginative vigour and spirit, as we may truly say,

domesticated among us[392] our dear Lord and Father God no less than

Adam, Eve, and the rest of the patriarchs. Here, for example, God the

Father is portrayed as teaching a school in which Cain, Abel, and the

rest of Adam's children--are the pupils, precisely as any pedagogue of

the time might have done. He catechizes them upon the ten commandments

and the Lord's Prayer. Abel knows his lesson as a pious and good boy

ought to. Cain on the contrary behaves and replies to his teachers

as only naughty and wicked boys would think of doing; and when it is

his turn to repeat the commandments turns them inside out: thou shalt

steal, thou shalt not honour thy father and mother, and so forth. A

representation of much the same crude simplicity having for its subject

the tale of our Lord's Passion used to be carried out in South Germany,

was then made illegal, and has since once more been resuscitated.

In this Pilate is portrayed in the character of an insolent, rough,

and arrogant official, the common soldiers much in the same familiar

way our own might, offer Christ surreptitiously a pinch of tobacco;

he disdains it, and they flatten it out on his nose. Vulgarity finds

all the more jest in such an incident for the reason that it wholly

conforms to its notions of piety and reverence, indeed calls up such

feelings all the more readily through its immediate reference to that

which it finds in its own world, thereby making more vivid its own

sense of devotional fervour. No doubt there is a certain justification

for this mode of translating, so to speak, the appearance and form

of objective history into modern equivalents, such as we have found

in our literature; and we may even attach a kind of greatness to

the courage of Hans Sachs in making himself so familiar with God

Almighty, and those old religious ideas that without the least vestige

of impiety he could rivet them deep within the conditions of our most

commonplace life. At the same time such an attempt is none the less a

rude intrusion upon our feelings, and indicates lack of cultivation,

inasmuch as it not merely disallows to the object itself a right to

assert itself as it really is, but forces upon it a mode of appearance

so directly contrary to that which it possesses, that the result can

only impress us as an emphatic caricature.

(_β_) As an antithesis to the above type of subjectivity we find

another equally supreme asserting itself out of sheer pride in its

own culture under the belief that the views peculiar to its own

times, its ethical customs, and social conventions are those alone

worth preservation or acceptance. Owing to a bias of this kind it is

quite unable to enjoy the content of a work of art until such a form

of culture prevails in it. An illustration of this latter type is

the so-called classical good taste of the French school. Everything

that is here attempted must forthwith be Frenchified, and all that it

presents under the form of any other nationality and more particularly

with any reference to the Middle Ages is voted incorrect and barbarous

and is cast on one side with absolute contempt. Voltaire expressed

anything but the truth when he said that the French have improved the

works of the ancient world. What they have done is to nationalize

them; and by this process of recasting have corrupted them with every

kind of foreign and angular quality of their own that such a taste as

theirs could develop to any extent, requiring as it did throughout

a culture absolutely based on court etiquette, and a conformity to

conventional rule and generalization in both the meaning and mode of

any dramatic work. Indeed, we shall find the trail of this abstraction

of a superfine culture visible in the very diction of their poetry. Not

a poet among them dare venture to use the word _cochon_, or add their

own nomenclature to spoons, forks, and a thousand other simple objects.

Consequently we have roundabout definitions and circumlocutions. We

cannot have our spoons and forks; we get instead an instrument of the

hand which conveys our victuals in a liquid or arid state to the

mouth; and this by no means stands alone. And with all its refinement

their taste is vulgar to a degree; for the simple truth is that genuine

art, so far from planing away and polishing its content to one flat

and unruffled surface of generalities, is most of all anxious to set

in full relief all that makes toward the well-defined characterization

of life. It is on account of this very taste that the French can make

less of Shakespeare than any other poet. And when they have attempted

to work him up to their graces they have clipped off from him precisely

that portion which we Germans find nearest to our hearts. For the same

reason Voltaire makes merry over Pindar because he has made the remark,

_ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ._[393] And, consequently, in their works of art they

find it necessary to make Chinese, Americans, or the heroes of Greek

or Roman antiquity all speak in one tongue and in one manner--that

of their French court. Achilles, for instance, in the "Iphigenie en

Aulide"[394] is nothing more or less than a French prince; and if we

had no name to help us no one could conceivably discover one particle

of Achilles in him. It is true that in the theatrical representation of

this drama he was habited as a Greek, appeared at least in helmet and

coat of mail; but at the same time his hair was curled and powdered,

with broad hips through _poschen_[395], with red claws worked on shoes

fastened on the foot with coloured ribbons; and what is more, the

"Esther" of Racine was expressly popular in the time of Louis XIV, for

the particular reason that Ahasuerus, on his first entrance on the

stage, copied the appearance of Louis XIV himself, when he entered

the great hall of audience. No doubt, in this transcript, there was

a considerable admixture of the oriental luxuriance; but a Ahasuerus

he was none the less fully powdered and wearing the royal mantle of

ermine, and followed by a complete retinue of curled and powdered

chamberlains got up thoroughly _en habit français_ with their wigs,

their feathered caps under arm, their vests and hoses of _drap d'or_,

with their silk stockings and red buckles on their shoes. All that the

court and a select circle of the privileged few were only permitted

to see _de facto_ was here open to all classes alike--the _entrée_

of the king paraded in the poet's verses. The writing of history in

France is not unfrequently conducted on very much the same principle.

That is to say, history itself and the real objects of history are

not the main purpose of the historian, whose interest is rather

concentrated either on giving the government in vogue a lesson or

teaching others how they ought to detest it. And in the same way there

are a host of dramas which, either expressly throughout their entire

content or in passing episodes, divert the attention to the events of

the day; or, if passages occur in pieces which refer to former times

presenting anything which may bear on matters of contemporary interest,

the parallel or the contrast is deliberately emphasized with every

expression of enthusiasm.

(_γ_) A third type of this personal treatment by the artist of his

subject-matter may be sufficiently described as the separation of

the same from all genuine artistic form whether it be characteristic

of past or present works of art, a mode of production in fact which

simply presents us with the entirely evanescent colour of "the man

in the street" in his ordinary everyday action and vocation without

adding aught to the same. In other words we may describe it as the bare

counterpart of what the man of commonsense is conscious in the prosaic

facts of life, that and nothing more. In such an atmosphere of prose

no doubt everyone finds himself at home readily enough; or rather, he

will only not find himself at home who takes up such a work with some

definite conception of that which the very conditions of a work of art

demand, and consequently is aware that it is precisely from this type

of handling that Art undertakes to liberate us. Kotzebue, in his day,

obtained all his popular effects through compositions of this kind,

which aimed at nothing else but letting the general public both see and

hear life's troubles and vexations, the pocketing of silver spoons, the

risking of the pillory, or, to take particular characters, parsons,

chamberlains, ensign-bearers, secretaries, and cavalry-majors, in their

naked colours. Everyone might here recognize his own household, or, at

least, that of some relation or friend, might see at a glance where in

his own precious circumstances and aims of life the shoe pinched. An

originality of this sort necessarily fails to stir any real sense or

idea of that which is the vital content of a work of art, however much

it may awake an interest for its productions in hearts that are wont to

ask for so little and are so ready to put up with the commonplaces of

so-called ethical reflections. We may conclude, then, that the artistic

presentation of the facts of external reality under any one of these

three types just examined is subjective in a one-sided way, that is

to say, it wholly fails to present us with any adequate form of that

objective world as it really exists.

(_b_) We next propose to examine a mode of presentation the reverse of

the above, one which endeavours to restore us the characters and events

of the past so far as may be with every local detail of their former

environment no less than any and every ethical or other particular

characteristic which formerly distinguished them. We Germans have

particularly come to the front in this class of work. As a rule we are,

in striking contrast to the French, the most painstaking recorders of

all that is peculiar in nations other than our own, and consequently

make fidelity to the characteristic usages, dress, weapons, and all

such antiquarian detail appropriate to particular epochs and localities

a first requisite of our art. Add to this we have the necessary

patience to put ourselves to no end of trouble in the way of hard

study in order that we may thoroughly enter into the modes of thought

and perception which belong to foreign nations and centuries distant

from our own, and make ourselves thoroughly conversant with all their

peculiarities. This power of looking at facts from many and diverse

points of view in order to both apprehend and comprehend the spirit of

every kind of national existence makes us not merely tolerant in our

art towards all that strikes us as exceptionally strange in foreign

customs, but clamorous even to a painful degree in our insistence that

we have before us accurate correspondence with objective truth down

to the most insignificant detail. The French are, no doubt, full of

resource and energetic, but, however highly educated and practical men

they may be, such qualities do not increase, but rather diminish the

patience which they possess for quiet and exhaustive study. Criticism

is always of first importance with them. We Germans, on the contrary,

are by nature inclined to accept any picture of real truth for what

it is, and particularly this is so with foreign works of art. From

whatever part of Nature's storehouse such may come, whether it is

plants or other creations of foreign growth, implements of any kind or

form, dogs and cats, even absurdities, we accept them all genially; and

the result of this is we are able to be on excellent terms with modes

of thought the most removed from our own, ay, sacrificial customs,

legends of the saints and all the extraordinary follies that go with

them, to say nothing of a host of other marvels equally surprising.

And for the same reasons it only appears essentially rational that

in attempting to represent characters in action we should make their

conversation and pursuits conformable to their own substance, that

is to say, in strict accord with the times when they lived and their

own national characteristics, whether regarded individually or in

association with each other.

This fundamental idea that the objective truth of a work of art

is established by virtue of the type of historical accuracy above

described has obtained currency in comparatively recent times, mainly,

that is to say, since the literary work of Frederick von Schlegel. From

that time the importance of a first principle in literary criticism has

attached to it; and further than this, it is asserted that our purely

personal interest should above all restrict itself to the enjoyment we

may derive from historical accuracy of this kind and the life it thus

reproduces. Once accept these hard and fast rules and the conclusion

is obvious that we are allowed no additional interest of any superior

quality which an enquiry into the essential significance of any

artistic content may or may not provide for us any more than we are

permitted to derive any interest more vital to ourselves from aspects

of such a work directly associated with the culture and aims of our own

times. It is much on these lines that we find also in Germany, where

the enthusiasm of Herder in this direction started a closer attention

on all sides to the "Volkslied," a poetic inundation of national

folk-songs imitating native tones of every sort of nationality whether

it be the Iroquois, latter-day Greek, Lap, Turk, Tartar, Mongol, and

many another; and, of course, it is assumed to be indicative of

nothing less than first-rate genius[396] to possess the power of thus

diving into the ways and ideas of other folk, and converting all

we discover into poetry. At the same time it is clear that however

completely your poet may work his way into and emotionally realize all

this strange kind of world, it remains and must continue to remain for

that public to whose enjoyment these songs are addressed as something

very much aloof from it.

The truth is that such a theory, if pressed to its abstract logical

conclusion, limits its boundaries solely to the truth of history in

its formal accuracy, and by doing so neglects all consideration of

the nature of Art's content and questions relative to its essential

significance, just as it disregards every aspect of it in which the

culture and resources of modern thought and contemporary life are

asserted. But it is as impossible to detach ourselves from the truth

implied in this theory as it is from equally important truths which it

neglects; all equally claim satisfaction, and imperatively force upon

us the necessity of finding a further solution in which the claims of

historical truth may be reconciled with these rival aspects of truth

in a very different way to that just examined. And this brings us to

the third question we proposed as to the nature of that objectivity and

subjectivity which can be fully sustained together as the reality to

which a genuine work of art conforms.

(_c_) The point of essential importance which we should before

all others wish to emphasize here is this, that no one of those

various aspects of truth we have above indicated should be allowed a

predominant significance such as would impair the relative force of

the others; and, further, or rather notwithstanding this, historical

accuracy pure and simple in external matters, such as local conditions,

customs, usages, and social institutions generally, must receive in a

work of art their due place, if a subordinate one, it being only right

that the interest of mere historical truth should give way before that

of a vitally true and imperishable content for the present no less than

the past.

We cannot, perhaps, do better by way of explaining what we consider

to be the true form of artistic representation than by setting up in

contrast a few examples of some we take to be defective.

(_α_) Now, to start with, the presentation of the characteristic

features of a given period may be entirely just, accurate, and

impregnated with life, nay more, wholly intelligible to a modern

audience, and notwithstanding fail to escape the ordinary atmosphere of

prose, and present us with the real substance of poetry. Goethe's "Götz

von Berlichingen" will alone furnish us with notable illustrations of

this defect. It is only necessary to open the book at the first scene,

which introduces us to an inn near Schwarzenberg in Franconia; the

_dramatis personae_ are Metzler, and Sievers sitting at a table, two

grooms by the fire, also the landlord.

_Sievers._ Another glass of brandy, Hans, my boy, and good

Christian measure.

_Landlord._ You carry a glass that is never full.

_Metzler._ [_Aside to Sievers_.] Tell us that once again about

Berlichingen; the Bambergers are in a pretty fume out there;

ay, black as thunder (etc.).

The same kind of thing we find in the third Act.

_George._ [_Enters with a gutter-spout._] There you have lead

and to spare; spot the target with but one half of it, and

devil a soul shall get off, who is like to say to your Majesty,

that's a miss this time[397].

_Lerse._ [_Aloud._] A fine piece of metal.

_George._ The rain may take another road for all I care; a

brave knight and a real good rain get through most things.

_Lerse._ [_Pours into glass._] Hold the spoon. [_Goes to the

window._] There's one of those imperial cockades prowling about

with his musket; they believe we have aimed a point too far.

He shall have a taste of my bullet, hot too and fresh from the

pan. [_Loads._]

_George._ [_Drops the spoon._] Let me have a look.

_Lerse._ [_Fires._] There lies the fool (etc.).

All this is exceedingly vivid, intelligible, depicted in perfect

keeping with the situation and the characters portrayed. Yet for all

that these scenes are both trivial to a degree and essentially prosaic.

All we get from either the matter or the form is just the ordinary

man's way of seeing things and reality as it appears to him or rather

all of us to some extent. We find the same tendency in many another

of Goethe's youthful productions, which no doubt were deliberately

directed against everything which previously had passed for the rule

of the guild, and which sought for their most impressive effect by

means of the nearness made clear to ourselves, an impression gained by

the extraordinary grasp with which the poet's imagination and feeling

seized upon everything. But the nearness was itself too near, and the

vital content in part so petty, that such compositions ran constantly

into mere triviality. We are most conscious of this kind of triviality

in dramatic works when we see them on the stage; it is then that

after being worked up to some excitement by all the concomitants of a

theatrical performance, lights, well-dressed folk, and the rest of it,

we expect to see something more than a couple of peasants, and troopers

and a glass of schnapps thrown in[398]. This phase has mainly found its

admirers in readers; it never had a long run on the stage.

(_β_) If we now consider our subject from an opposite point of view

it may be admitted that we can sufficiently make ourselves acquainted

with and assimilate the historical content of a former mythology

and all that is most strange to ourselves in earlier conditions of

state-life and national custom to secure through such an intimacy

with, the general culture then prevailing a varied knowledge of the

past. In fact, this acquaintance with the art, mythology, literature,

_cultus_, and usages of antiquity is the starting point of our present

system of education. Every schoolboy knows something about the gods

and heroes of Greece and the prominent characters in ancient history.

It is therefore quite possible, in so far as they really enter into

the imaginative life of our own times, that we may find enjoyment in

the imaginative representation of such characters and interests. It

is further impossible to predict whether or no such an intimacy may

not be eventually carried equally as far in the case of the Indian,

Egyptian, and Scandinavian mythologies. We may further observe that

in the religious conceptions of all these peoples the Universal God

is presented. The determinate form, however, of such conceptions,

that is to say, the particular gods of Greece or India, are no longer

_true_ for us as so personified. We do not believe in their existence,

and the pleasure we take in them is derived from their appeal to our

imagination. For this reason they stand entirely apart from our deepest

emotional life, and we can imagine nothing more empty and cold than

such exclamations we hear only too often in opera: "O ye gods!" or "O

Jupiter!" or even "O Isis and Osiris!" And the folly of it all reaches

its height when we have the wretched saws of oracular wisdom thrown

in--and the opera can seldom get along without them--a position of

dignity which nowadays for the first time in tragic drama is occupied

by pure folly and clairvoyance.

The same criticism applies with equal truth to all other historical

material relating to national customs, laws, and the like. Such

historical fact is excellent in its way, but it belongs to the past;

and when it has once ceased to have anything in common with present

life it necessarily ceases, in spite of all our knowledge of it, to

belong to us. We have, in short, no interest[399] in what has passed

away on the mere ground that it once existed. What is historical can

only truly be said to belong to us when it is the possession of the

nation, to which we ourselves belong, or when we are able to regard

the present as in a general way casually connected with the events

in question, to whose continuous series the characters or actions

represented are united by a bond of essential membership. For if we

carefully consider the matter we shall find that the mere fact of

being formerly bound together with the same external environment and

people to which we ourselves belong is not sufficient--rather the very

part of our nation must present features in still closer relation

to the conditions, life, and existence of our own times. To take an

example of what we mean, we find ourselves in the Niebelungenlied

geographically on a soil that belongs to us still, but the Burgundians

and King Etzel are so absolutely cut off from all that touches our

present civilization and every interest which is now coincident with

patriotism that, without borrowing anything from the learning of the

subject, it is but simple truth to say we feel infinitely more at home

in the poems of Homer[400]. Klopstock, no doubt, in his enthusiasm for

everything that concerned the Fatherland, was prompted to substitute

his Scandinavian gods for those of Hellenic mythology; but, for all his

zeal, Wotan, Walhalla, and Freja remain mere names for us, which appeal

to our imaginations and patriotic emotions even less than Zeus and his

compeers of Olympus.

The point above all we desire to emphasize is this. Works of art are

not composed primarily for the mere student or the professor, but with

the express purpose that they shall be intelligible on their face,

and a source of enjoyment without any one having to undertake first a

circuitous route of extensive historical investigation. For Art is not

addressed to a small and select circle of the privileged few, but to

the nation at large. What, moreover, is generally valid for a work of

art applies also to the external form of the historical reality therein

portrayed. Such exposition also must express itself with clearness open

to the common apprehension requiring no considerable research to make

it intelligible, must be clear to ourselves as representations of our

century and our own people, so that we may be able to find ourselves

entirely at home in it, and not have before us a world foreign to that

we live in, if not actually unintelligible.

(_γ_) Considerations such as the foregoing have already brought us

within reach of the truer conception of the objective truth of art and

the mode under which it assimilates the material of past history. We

propose now to offer further illustrations in support of the same.