Chapter III · (continued 3)

In apparent association with the positive powers we have enumerated must be added others set over against them, that is to say, the forces of that which is negative and bad, evil in short. That which is purely negative, however, ought not to be taken in the ideal representation of an action as the essential ground-motive for the necessary reaction. The reality of the purely negative case, it is true, corresponds to the negative and its appropriate character, but, if the implied[334] notion and object is already in itself rendered nugatory, it is even less possible that the ugliness which is exposed in the inward life should manifest any genuine beauty upon its external reality. The sophistry of passion can, indeed, by means of the capacity, strength, and energy of a character, make the attempt to graft positive characteristics upon the negative, but we only obtain thereby the vision of a whitewashed grave. For that which is purely negative is generally flat and stale and leaves us consequently either void or drives us back, whether it be used as the motive force of an action or merely as a means to promote a reaction in another. The horrible, unfortunate, the harshness of dominion, and the obduracy of superior power may form part of the content and burden of the imagination when such characteristics are exalted and carried by the abundant greatness of a particular character or object. Evil, however, taken simply for what it is, envy, cowardice, and meanness, is merely repulsive. The devil, if we take him for what he really ought to be, is consequently a bad subject, or rather a figure for which Art has no uses at all. He is just a falsehood and nothing more, and consequently an extremely prosaic personality. In the same way it is perfectly true that the Furies of hate and many other allegorical figures of later times are potencies of a kind, but they are without affirmative subsistency and holdfastness[335], unfavourable to ideal representation, although in this respect a wide margin of difference is permissible in the several arts respectively, and in the particular mode in which they may immediately visualize such objects. Evil is, to express it in most general terms, essentially cold and devoid of content, because as such it is merely the source of negation, discord, and misfortune. All art, however, which is true to its essential notion, should reflect on us the vision of a harmony. Meanness, above all, is despicable, for it is a quality which arises from the envy and hatred of all that is noble, and does not shrink from distorting even a power that is essentially based upon the good into a means conformable to its own perverse and shameless passion. The great poets and artists of the classical world have in consequence never presented us with the vision of absolute evil and depravity. Shakespeare, on the contrary, in his tragedy of "King Lear," unfolds before us the spectacle of wickedness in all its horrors. The old Lear divides his kingdom among his daughters, and, while doing so, is foolish enough to believe in their false and flattering speeches, and to misinterpret the silent and faithful Cordelia. There is already folly and madness in this, and it is followed by the most outrageous ingratitude and worthlessness of the elder daughters and their husbands to the point of absolute craze. As an antithesis of this the heroes of the French school of tragedy are stretched and puffed out with every sort of grandiose and sublime motive, and make a great parade of their honour and nobility, and yet despite of it all destroy the very meaning of such motives by the mere fact of what they really are and accomplish. But it is in modern times more especially that we find this unstable dissolution of everything spiritual[336], which forces its way through every dissonance, however repulsive, become quite à la mode; moreover, it has even given us what we may describe as the humour of the abominable thing, a kind of burlesque simulation of irony, an atmosphere in which a Theodor Hoffmann, for example, has found himself so much at home.

(γ) We may conclude, then, that it is the essentially positive and substantive powers in the spiritual world which supply the real content of the ideal action. These sources of energy, however, in their artistic embodiment, must not appear in their inherent universality, albeit within the reality of the action they are essential phases of the Idea. Rather they must receive the form of independent individuals. If this were not so they would remain as merely the universals of thought or abstract conceptions which do not properly fall within the province of art. Though in their origin they should be held as intact as it is possible to hold them from mere caprices of the fancy, it is equally necessary that in their development they should acquire determinacy no less than self-consistency[337], and in this way appear as essentially particularized. Such definition as they possess ought not to be carried to the point of the particularity of external objects, nor should their concentration be carried to that of the subjective self-consciousness[338]. Otherwise the individuality of those universal powers is necessarily involved in all the developments of finite existence. In this respect we may say, then, that the determinacy of their individuality is not to be taken too seriously. The gods of the Greek Pantheon are the most conspicuous example of this manifestation and sway of the universal forces we have just discussed in their self-subsistent form. However they may be brought before us, their blessedness and cheerfulness remains unaffected. Regarded separately as particular gods no doubt they engage in conflict, but in all their battles we shall ultimately find they are not really serious in the sense that they concentrate themselves on any definite object with the entire consequential energy of their character and passion, fully prepared to stake their existence upon the result. They engage in this affair or that wherever it may take place, identify particular interests in concrete examples with their own; they are, however, equally ready to leave the matter at any point and wing their way back happily to Olympus. Such is the view we get of the gods when they engage in warfare on the pages of Homer. The determinacy of their characterization is capable of conflict, but they remain for all that the purely universal determinations which at bottom they are. A battle begins to rage; heroes advance singly one against another; then we lose sight of individuals altogether in the universal storm and crush; it is no longer the specific qualities of individuals which are now set in relief against each other—it is the universal rush of the fight, the daemon of war loosed and roaring, and now it is that the universal powers, the gods themselves, step forth on the scene of battle. From such a temporary display of the contrasts of their characterization they ever withdraw themselves into the solitude of their self-subsistency and repose. For though the individuality of their form carries them perforce into the region of time and contingency, nevertheless inasmuch as the universal they claim as gods is that which ultimately must prevail, the individual characteristic shrinks away into the determination of external form only; they are unable in their personality to penetrate the true arcana of conscious spirit[339].

Their physical definition is, in fact, either more or less only the accommodating form of their divinity. But this self-subsistency and careless repose is precisely that which gives to them their plastic individuality, and relieves them of any anxiety and constraint[340] in relation to earthly objects and events[341]. For this reason we find in the gods of Homer no final result when actively occupied with the concrete facts of human life, although such activity is displayed for us in many and diverse directions. The material and interest of human events which happen in time is that which gives them something to do and nothing more. And in like manner we may remark other peculiar characteristics attached to the Greek gods, which we can only regard as essentially unrelated to the general notion of divinity which each god respectively connotes. Mercury is, for example, the slayer of Argus; Apollo that of the hydra; of the love affairs of Zeus we have countless tales, and, among other things, he hangs his wife on an anvil. These and many other stories like them are merely supplementary additions, which attach to the gods in their aspect of natural forces by virtue of symbol and allegory, the origin of which we propose to discuss more fully later on. In modern art we shall, it is true, find certain indications which point to a conception of definite and at the same time universal powers. These are, however, for the most part simply cold and frost-like allegories of hate, envy, hope, love, faithfulness, that is to say, generally of virtues and vices in the actual truth of which we can retain no belief. For with us moderns it is the concrete subjectivity alone, for which we, in the representations of art, feel that profounder interest, wherein abstractions such as these do not appear in their isolation, but are made to appear merely as phases or aspects of human character, whether we regard it in its particularity or as a concrete whole. In much the same way the angels possess no essential universality and self-subsistency such as characterize Mars, Venus, and Apollo, or even Oceanus and Helios. They are, it is true, objects of imaginative conception, but their specific character is that of vassals of the one Divine and essential substance, which is not in this case broken up into self-subsistent individualities, as we find it in the Greek Pantheon. For this reason we have here no imaginative vision of many objective powers dwelling in a state of tranquillity, which may be represented as essentially Divine personalities. We find, on the contrary, the essential content of such either as subsisting in the Godhead, or realized in a mode which is both particular and subjective in wholly human characters and actions. Nevertheless it was precisely in the conception[342] of self-subsistency and individualization that the ideal representation of the gods originated.

(b) The Individuals in the Action

In the cases we have just discussed of the ideal gods it is not a difficult matter for art to secure the ideality she requires. But in approaching the concrete action, ideal representation is confronted with a real difficulty. For though it is here that the gods and, in general terms, the universal powers may be identified with a principle which stimulates and compels activity, we are not therefore on the plane of reality entitled to find in them the source of genuine individual action. Action is rather essentially the manifestation of human life. Consequently there are in this connection two distinct aspects of the problem to be considered. On the one hand we have these universal forces in their self-subsistent repose and for that reason more abstract substantiality; on the other there is the individuality of men, in which we must seek the final spring and determinating impulse to action no less than its actual accomplishment. It is, of course, only the simple truth that these eternally dominant powers are immanent in the identical nature of mankind, constituting, in fact, the substantive core of its character; but in so far as they are comprehended in their Divine nature themselves as individuals[343], and thereby in an exclusive way, their relation to the subject of human consciousness must remain an external one. And this fact enables us to see the essential difficulty we noticed above. There is, in truth, a contradiction immediately involved in this relation between the gods and men. It is quite true that the content of the gods is that which belongs to humanity, and announces itself as his passion, resolve, and will. It is, however, equally true that the gods must not only be assumed to be and comprehended as independent from man individually considered in their actual existence, but, furthermore, as the forces at the root of all his activity and determination. And this, too, in such a way that we are forced to consider the same determinations at one time as personified in the self-subsistent and Divine personality, and at another that which appears most essentially to belong to the human heart. And it is for this reason that the free self-subsistency of the gods no less than the freedom of human individuals in their activity is seriously compromised if, to the detriment of human independence, which we have already stated to be of most essential importance to the Ideal of Art, we ascribe an exclusive power of command to the gods. And we may observe this is precisely the same kind of difficulty which confronts us in the form of the religious conceptions of Christianity. It is stated in terms that the spirit of God leads up to God. Taken strictly such a phrase can only imply that the inward life of man is regarded as a purely passive ground, upon which the spirit of God labours. In such a conception the human will disappears as a free will, and at the same time the Divine purpose which motives the "in working" above mentioned can only appear to man as a kind of Fate, under which he fails to come by his own true personality[344].

(α) If, however, this question of mutual relation[345] is so understood that man in his action is conceived as standing in a purely external opposition to God, here posited as eternal substance, the relation of both is one of pure matter of fact[346]. God gives a command, and man is obliged to hearken. Even great poets have found themselves unable to dispense with this conception of external opposition between gods and men. In the "Philoctetes" of Sophocles, for example, we find that Philoctetes, after he has confounded the deceit of Odysseus, persists in his determination not to return to the Grecian camp until Heracles appears at length as Deus ex machina, and orders him to yield to the entreaty of Neoptolimus. The content of this apparition is, no doubt, sufficiently motived, and answers to our own expectation; the catastrophe itself, however, is for all that not rightly homogeneous, but rather outside the action; and in his noblest tragedies Sophocles makes no such use of this kind of representation, according to which, if we but carry it one step further, the gods are reduced to lifeless machines, and individual men simply to the instruments of a foreign caprice. In a similar way we constantly in epic poetry meet with the active intervention of the gods represented in a mode which is external to human freedom. Hermes, for example, conducts Priam to Achilles; Apollo gives Patroclus the blow between the shoulders which ends his life. We also frequently find mythological traits treated in such a way that they appear as wholly external to the actual lives of the individuals thus affected. Achilles, for example, is dipped by his mother in the Styx and thereby rendered invulnerable and invincible to the one point of his heels. If we reflect on this rationally it is obvious that all real bravery disappears, and all that is heroic in the character of Achilles is converted from a real trait of his essential manhood to a purely physical advantage. Such a mode of representation is, however, far more permissible to the epic than it is to the dramatic type of poetry, for the good reason that in the epic that aspect of spiritual life which is directly concerned with the intention implied in the execution of objects falls into the background and a larger field is, in general, offered for the play of external characteristics. Such a criticism of the prosaic understanding as the one above, which charges a poet with the absurdity that his heroes are no heroes at all, should only be advanced with the greatest caution, for it is partly in such traits as will appear shortly, that the poetical relation between gods and men is preserved. It is another matter, and we have nothing left us but prose, when in addition the powers, which are posited as substantive individuals, are mere empty shadows, the creations of the caprice of fancy and the arbitrariness of a false originality. They are then for the most part only the adjuncts of superstition or imbecility.

(β) The truly poetic relation of ideality consists, then, in the identity of gods and men; and this must assert itself even though the universal powers are presented as independent and free from the particularity of human beings and passions. In other words, all that we attribute to the gods must at the same time establish itself as that which is essentially cognate with the spiritual life of particular men in this sense, that while the dominating powers appear as essentially personified, yet at the same time all that is thus posited in an external relation to man is none the less clearly that which is immanent in his own spirit and character. The true function of the artist is, therefore, to introduce a mediating link between the difference involved in these two aspects, to bind them, in short, by a finely conceived thread of relation which, while clearly emphasizing their springs in the spiritual life of man, shall make no less visible the universal and essential element which is therein implied and present such to the imagination in individual form. The emotional life of man must reveal itself in the gods, who, in fact, are the self-subsistent and universal embodiments of that which is active and dominant in his own spiritual experience. Then alone are the gods at the same time gods in cognate relation with his own heart and emotions. When, for example, we are told by the ancients that Venus or Amor has put a constraint upon the heart, no doubt in the first place these divinities are apprehended as external powers; but human love is equally a stimulus and a passion, which is implanted in the heart and is part of that it independently contains.

In much the same sense is the frequent reference to the Eumenides. We have to picture in the first instance no doubt these avenging maidens as Furies, who pursue the transgressor in an external form. But this pursuit is but another aspect of the Fury which drives through the soul of the perpetrator of crime; and Sophocles in the Œdipus Colonus (I. 1434) actually refers to them in this sense of inward spiritual forces, as the Eumenides of Œdipus himself, that is to say, who signify the father's curse as the result of the stress of emotion caused by the conduct of his sons. We have, then, and equally have not reason on our side whether we identify the gods with powers external to man, or find in them that which belongs exclusively to his spiritual life. They are in fact both. In Homer, for example, the activity of gods and men is a constantly involved skein[347]. The gods appear to accomplish what is foreign to human activity, and yet for all that execute only that which is in vital co-ordination with his own emotional life. In the "Iliad," for example, when Achilles, in the stress of controversy, is about to raise his sword against Agamemnon, Athene steps forth behind him and takes hold of his head of flaxen hair, visible only to himself. Hero, who is equally anxious over Achilles and Agamemnon, sends for them from Olympus, and their admission there appears to be wholly independent of the desire of Achilles. On the other hand we have no difficulty in seeing that the sudden appearance of Athene, the wisdom which puts constraint upon the hero's wrath, is simply a reflection of internal conflict, that the entire description but states in imaginative form what was experienced in the heart of our hero. In fact Homer himself points this out a few verses previously ("Iliad," I, v, 190), when he relates about the debate that took place in his heart in the following terms:

ἢ ὅγε φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ τοὺς μὲν ἀναστήσειεν, ὃ δ᾽ Ἀτρέιδην ἐναρίξοι, ἡὲ χόλον πάυσειεν ἐρητύσείε τε θυμὀν.[348]

This inward breaking up of anger into a divided self, this constraint, for it is in opposition to the anger, and Achilles appears at first to be wholly filled with wrath, the epic poet has a perfect right to represent at the same time as an external event. In a similar case in the "Odyssey" we find Minerva acting the part of escort for Telemachus. This attendance is rather more difficult to grasp as a personal experience of the emotional life of Telemachus, although we can readily fix on certain points of contact between the external image and the emotion experienced. And this it is we may generally say which constitutes the cheerful buoyancy of the Homeric gods, and the irony implied in the honour paid to them. Their self-consistency and seriousness are characteristics which tend to dissolve like a cloud, precisely to the extent that they unfold themselves as the very powers which are native to man's emotional life, and thereby, in their manifestation, leave humanity alone with its own possessions.

However, it is not necessary to look so far abroad for a complete example of the conversion of a purely mechanical conception of Divine activity into the atmosphere of the subjective consciousness, the sphere, that is, of freedom and ethical beauty. In his Iphigenia in Tauris Goethe has in this connection carried the process through with a beauty that we cannot sufficiently admire. In the drama of Euripides Orestes in complicity with Iphigenia carries off the statue of Diana. This is simply an act of stealing. Then Thoas comes on the scene, and orders their pursuit, and the recovery of the bust of the goddess. Finally, in very prosaic fashion, Athene appears and orders Thoas to stay his hand on the ground that she has independently commended Orestes to the charge of Poseidon, and he, in deference to her wishes, has already carried Orestes far over seas. Thoas submits to her advice and replies to it in the following terms (v, 1442, 43): "Lady Athene, whoever, on hearing the words of the gods, does not obey them is but a fool. For how could it be right and fit to contend with the mighty gods."

In this relation we can only see the bare external command of Athene on the one side, and an equally futile submission of Thoas on the other. In Goethe's treatment of the subject, on the contrary, Iphigenia becomes herself exalted to the rank of a goddess, in reliance upon the truth she feels within herself, the truth of a human heart. In this sense she turns to Thoas and exclaims:

Is it then man alone who has the right To accomplish things none ever heard before! Shall he alone impress upon the strength Of hearts heroic the impossible?

That which in the drama of Euripides the command of Athene effects, the change in the attitude of Thoas, Goethe's Iphigenia endeavours to bring about, and in fact does bring about, through the depth of the feelings and ideas with which she confronts him.

With motions strange An enterprise audacious soars within me; A vast reproach and ills yet graver still Will break on me if the event miscarry; But, see, I place it on your knees! Be true, Be only true and worthy of your fame, So your assistance shall declare it truth, Truth glorified through me.

And to this reply of Thoas:

What! you believe The Scythian wild and the barbarian Hear the wise voice of Truth and hearts humane When Atreus of Greece still failed to hear.

she answers with the gentlest, purest trust:

Nay, all thus hear Beneath whatever sky their birth was laid; All needs must hear for whom the springs of life Flow without let and purely through the soul.

Then it is she makes the final call upon her greatness of soul, and the tenderness of her faith at its highest point of effort; her entreaty touches, then masters and wrings from him, in a way that must appeal to every heart, the permission to return to her own. This alone is necessary. She has no need of the statue of the goddess; she can depart on her journey without deceit or betrayal of trust. And it is with the finest sense of beauty that Goethe refers here to the oracular word of the god:

Bring but to Greece again the sister who All loth at heart in holy temple bides On shores of Tauris, and the curse is gone.

The very human reconciliation disclosed in these words is clearly that the pure and holy Iphigenia, the sister, is in fact the divine personification and the protectress of the house.

Noble and beautiful I wot in sooth All that the goddess counselled seemed to me,

exclaims Orestes to Thoas and Iphigenia:

Like to a holy picture The fate unalterable which walled our town By one mysterious word, one word Divine, Is banished, now that city takes thee back, Who art the true protectress of our home; Reserve thyself in holy quietness, A blessing to thy brother and thine own; It seemed that all deliverance on Earth Had passed away, and all comes back with thee.

In the spirit of these healing words of reconciliation Iphigenia has already revealed herself to Orestes by virtue of the purity and ethical beauty of her inner life. It is true that her discernment drives him half mad, who in the convulsion of his spirit has lost all faith in peace; but the pure love of the sister does not fail to heal him from every pang with which he is tortured by the Furies of his soul:

Within thine arms The evil clawed me with its direst clutch For the last time, and to the very marrow I shuddered horribly: and then it vanished, E'en as a serpent to its lair. Anew, And all through thee, the day's breadth I enjoy.

Here, as elsewhere throughout it, we can hardly emphasize sufficiently our admiration for the profound beauty of this poem.

The material which has the impress of Christianity upon it is more open to criticism than that which was the subject-matter of antique art. In the sacred legends, and generally speaking where the religious conceptions of Christendom prevail, no doubt we may find the appearance of Christ, the Virgin Mary and other saints the subject of universal belief; but along with them the imagination has clothed itself with fanciful aberrations in every direction, so that witches, ghosts, and every sort of spectral apparition are yet more conspicuous objects. In the face of such conceptions, so far at least as they appear foreign powers to our human nature, and man submits himself unreservedly to the charm, seduction, and influence of their illusions, artistic representation is wholly given up to every kind of folly and caprice of mere contingency. It is of unique importance that in the treatment of such material the artist take care that the freedom and independence of judgment are in no way impaired. Shakespeare has shown us how to do this in most noble fashion. The witches in Macbeth, for example, appear as external powers, who foretell for Macbeth his future destiny. What they do foretell, however, is precisely that which is his own most secret wish, which is reflected back on him and declared in this, merely in appearance, external form[349]. With a still closer regard to beauty, yet profounder insight, is the ghost in Hamlet treated as the purely objective embodiment of Hamlet's own intuitions. We find Hamlet in the first instance overpowered with a vague feeling that something horrible has taken place. His father's ghost then appears and gives definite form to these awful premonitions. We naturally expect that Hamlet, after receiving the facts set forth in his father's warning, will at once proceed with energy and bring the murderer to book, a revenge which appears to have ample excuse. But he delays and delays. Critics have made this inactivity a matter of reproach to Shakespeare, blamed him, in fact, as though for this reason the play to some extent never gets properly off. But we must remember Hamlet is not a strongly practical nature, rather a finely strung one, with emotions held in persistent reserve; a nature which finds it difficult to tear itself from its internal harmony; melancholy too, prone to subtleties, hypochondriacal, with emotions deeply rooted. For this reason it is obvious that he is prima facie indisposed to prompt action. And this is fundamentally Goethe's conception of him when he tells us that what Shakespeare sought to represent "was the imposition of some supreme action on a soul whose growth was unadapted to its execution." He in fact interprets the entire drama relatively to this conception of Hamlet. "We have here," he maintains, "an oak tree planted in an exquisite vase, which ought really only to contain and shelter the fair flowers; the roots spread, the vase is shattered." But it should be noticed that Shakespeare, when referring to the apparition of the ghost, contributes a far profounder trait of character in explanation of this debated point. Hamlet delays, because he does not right off wholly believe in the ghost.

The spirit that I have seen May be a devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea and perhaps, Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

In this passage it is obvious that the apparition as such does not leave Hamlet merely devoid of all stability[350], but that he entertains a reasonable doubt, and is determined to make his conviction a certainty by his own experiments before he proceeds to act upon it.

(γ) As a summary description of these universal powers, which appear not merely in their external independence, but are the vital and moving forces in the human heart and all that is implied in its most intimate life, we may borrow an expression in use among the ancients, that is to say Pathos (πάθος.) To translate this word adequately is not easy. Passion almost always implies as its concomitant an element of meanness or baseness. We contend in ordinary parlance that a man should not surrender himself to his passions. It must therefore be understood that we use the expression pathos in a nobler and more universal sense than this without the slightest implication of anything blameworthy or egotistic. The devoted love of the sister Antigone is an excellent example of a pathos in the full significance of the Greek use of the term. Pathos in this sense is a power of the emotional life which completely justifies itself, an essential part of the content of rationality and the free will. Orestes, for example, kills his mother not so much on account of any force of his emotional life which we strictly can call passion; rather it is a pathos in itself fully considered upon and essentially sane which carries him on to the awful deed. Thus understood we may add that it is impossible to say that the gods possess pathos. They are merely the universal content of that which is the stimulating energy in the resolves and actions of human individuality. The gods as such continue in their repose and freedom from passion, and however much they may quarrel or contend among themselves, there is nothing really serious in it all, or their strife possessed merely a symbolical significance in the view we may take of it as a universal war of the gods. We must therefore strictly limit pathos to the actions of mankind, and conceive thereunder the essential or rational content, which is present in the human consciousness identical with itself and throughout suffuses the emotional life.

(αα) We may say, then, that pathos constitutes the true mediating link[351], the veritable domain of art. The representation of it is the most truly effective part of a work of art, as it is its influence upon those who look at it. Pathos sets a string in motion, which vibrates through every human heart. Every one must know the type of worth and reason, which underlies the content of a genuine example of pathos, must recognize it at once when he sees it. And the cause of this is that pathos moves us because it is that which is essentially the vital force of our human existence. And it equally follows that that which is wholly external, the natural environment and particular scene, in its active support of the effect of pathos, need only be treated quite subordinately. Nature must in consequence be drawn upon as a fact essentially symbolical and suffer the pathos to re-echo from her walls, which is the most real subject-matter of artistic representation. Landscape is, for example, a type or genre of painting of less importance than historical painting; but even there we find that the school of landscape most independent should not be without a general harmonic relation to human feeling, and, in fact, possesses a certain type of pathos. In this sense we are told art generally ought to touch the emotions. Before accepting this principle, however, we ought first to inquire through what means this peculiar effect of art must be brought about. "To touch the emotions" is in general the activity of something in union with feeling, and mankind, more particularly the mankind of to-day, are, or a more considerable portion of them are, only too readily open to such experiments. The man who showers tears on us, starts the seeds of tears, which grow up fast enough. In art, however, only that ought to move us which contains in itself the real import of pathos.

(ββ) For such reasons we may affirm that neither in comedy nor in tragedy ought pathos to be that which is only folly or personal idiosyncracy. Shakespeare's Timon, for example, is on purely material grounds a misanthrope; his friends have eaten him up, consumed his substance, and when he himself requires their gold desert him. He consequently becomes a passionate enemy of mankind. The situation is both conceivable and consistent with nature, but it contains no pathos that can be justified on principle. Even to a more striking extent is the hate we find in "The Misanthrope," that play of Schiller's apprenticeship, purely a vagary of modern ideas. For in this latter case the misanthrope is in addition a thoughtful, perspicacious, and entirely noble man, great-hearted towards his peasants, whom he has freed from their villeinage, and devoted to his daughter, who is, apart from her beauty, in all respects worthy of his love. In much the same way, in that novel of August Lafontaine, Quintius Heimeran von Flaming is worried with the follies of mankind. It is, however, our most latter-day poetry which, above all, loves to wind itself into every conceivable knot of fantastical falsehood[352], attempting thereby to secure an effect through mere oddity, but failing to find the slightest response in any sane person for the reason that every vestige of what is really present in human life has vanished from such refinements of mental athletics.

In another direction we may remark that everything which depends solely, that is to say, in so far as scientific apprehension is the main requirement, upon instruction, testimony to the truth, and insight of what is offered as such, is no fit subject-matter for the representation of a genuine pathos. The facts of scientific knowledge are a part of this material. And the reason of this is that science demands a particular form of education, an effort towards and a knowledge of the specific forms of science and their relative importance of exceptional variety and extension; an interest in this type of study is by no means a universally moving influence in the hearts of men, but is limited and must ever remain limited to a narrow circle of votaries. The treatment of purely religious instruction presents similar difficulty, if we mean by that the development of the same in its profoundest import. No doubt the universal content of religion, such as the belief in God and similar theses, is of the deepest interest to anyone worthy of it. Art is, however, not directly concerned either in the exposition of religious dogmas, nor, indeed, in any exceptional insight into their truth; it is consequently of importance that she should be held aloof front such disquisitions. It is all the more necessary that we should through art entrust every type of pathos to the human heart, every motive of ethical significance, which are of practical and vital interest. The influence of religious ideas is rather upon the subjective world of emotion, the heaven of the heart, the ever-repeated consolation and uplifting of the individual life, than upon direct action in the strict sense. For that which is Divine in religion on its practical side is morality and the powers which are potent in the ethical life. These powers, however, in contrast with the heaven of religion in its purest form, are in definite relation to the world and that which is entirely human. Among the ancients this worldly content was fundamentally included in their conception of Deity, and consequently their gods could be related directly to human action and its artistic presentation.

From all this it will readily appear that the significant moments of volitional activity which present to us the pathos we have just endeavoured to define are numerically small and the range of them restricted. In the opera especially it is inevitable that the sphere from which such may be selected is a narrow one; we consequently have for ever dinned in our ears the plaints and delights, the misfortunes and happiness of love, fame, honour, friendship, maternal and marital devotion.

(γγ) Now a pathos of this kind requires for its display not merely the power of exposition, but also that of perfected elaboration[353]. And what is more, the soul which entrusts to its pathos the spiritual wealth it possesses must be one with real wealth to dispose of, and not one that can rest in a condition of purely intensive self-concentration. It must, in short, be ready to give an outward semblance to its self-expression and rise to the finished perfection of that. The distinction between this power of self-concentration and that of self-revelation is of great importance; and we shall find that in this respect the types of individuality such as generically represent different races offer essential points of contrast. Nations whose reflective consciousness has been highly trained are more eloquent in the expression of their passions than others who are not so. The ancients, for example, were accustomed to unfold the pathos, which is the animating principle of human personality, in its profoundest significance, without running off into cold generalities or empty tattle. The French also in this respect are naturally gifted, and their eloquence in the expression of passion is not by any means always merely a piling up of words, as we Germans, following the bent of our national reserve, to which the repeated expression of emotion appears to be a kind of wrong inflicted upon it, are only too ready to think it is. In fact, we have gone so far in this direction that we could mention a distinct phase in our poetical history, when the younger spirits, at any rate, sick to death of that which they dubbed "the flush of French rhetorical water-drops," yearned to such an extent after the simplicity of Nature that their artistic energy could only express itself for the most part in interjections. It is hardly necessary to observe, however, that we shall arrive at no "open sesame" with Ahs and Ohs, a damn here and there thrown in, or any other random note of storm and bluster. The inspiration of mere interjections is a feeble one, or rather is simply the way in which the still unrefined nature expresses itself. The spirit which is to reveal to us pathos must be a spirit which is full to running over, which is able to spread itself abroad and give expression to its virtue.

We may add, too, that in this respect Goethe and Schiller present a most marked contrast. Goethe is less pathetic than Schiller, makes use of a mode of artistic expression which is more intensive; more especially in his lyrics we are struck by this characteristic of self-reserve. His songs, and this is the true quality of the pure lyric, go naturally on their way, without entirely giving us all that they contain. Schiller, on the contrary, is clearly anxious to unfold the pathos of his subject to its furthest limit, and with all the clearness and force of expression he can muster. Claudius in "Wands-becker Boten"[354] has contrasted Voltaire and Shakespeare in much the same fashion, maintaining that the one is what the other only appears to be. "Master Arouet tells us: 'I weep'; Shakespeare really weeps!" To this we can only reply that it is precisely with such telling and appearance that art is concerned and not with the mere positive fact. If Shakespeare merely wept while Voltaire made others think he wept, so much the worse for the poet Shakespeare.

To conclude, then, it is necessary that pathos, in order to be in itself concrete, as it should be in ideal art, be presented in its artistic manifestation as the pathos issuing from a spiritual nature, rich and comprehensive. And this result carries us forward to that third aspect of our consideration of "the action" already adverted to, that is to say, an inquiry into what is implied by character in this connection.

(c) Character

We will summarize the proceeding argument. Our point of departure was the universal and substantive powers which are the original stimulus to action. Such require as the medium of their active realization human individuality, in which they then appear as affecting pathos[355]. But, furthermore, the universal inherent in these powers must in particular individuals acquire the concentrated unity and concreteness of a whole, and a single whole. This totality is man apprehended in his fulfilled spiritual content and the subjectivity therein comprised, in one word the entire self-contained human individuality which we designate as character. The gods are born into the pathos of men, and pathos in its more concrete form of activity is human character.

In character, then, we find the real focus[356] of the ideal exposition of art, that is to say in so far as the embodiment unites in itself the separate aspects of it already developed as consistent phases, in the construction of its own totality. For the Idea as Ideal, by which we mean as clothed in a form within the grasp of sensuous imagination and perception, and in its activity as action and accomplishment, is, if we define it strictly, just this self-relation of the subjective individuality. The individuality, however, which is truly free, and nothing short of this will satisfy the Ideal, has not merely to declare itself as universality, but at the same time, to assert its nature as concrete singularity, as the mediating bond which unites and transpierces both sides thus related, which in their self-related actuality subsist as unity. And this is precisely what we understand by character, the ideal form of which consists in the wealth of energy with which all the constituent aspects of the subjective life are welded in one whole.

We will now inquire rather more closely into the nature of this conception of character viewed under three distinct aspects.

First, as co-extensive[357] individuality, that is to say, with, our attention directed to the wealth of substance contained in it.

Secondly, with direct reference to its particularity, the form in which it is bound to appear, albeit still a totality, as one that is more defined or specific.

Thirdly, in our final apprehension of it as a unity which is fully identified with its own determinate form, that is, which is throughout fused with the same by virtue of its own principle of subjective self-identity, and thereby attaches to the whole the significance of an essentially assured character.

We will now develop and elucidate more fully what we conceive to be implied in the above general propositions.

(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.