Chapter III · (continued 4)

Now according to its more comprehensive definition it is the concrete individuality of the Ideal impregnated with reason, which takes to itself externality as the form of its embodiment, and, moreover, in such a way that the external semblance, which is thus the medium of its expression, is throughout suffused with the mind inherent in this concrete individual form. In consequence of this such modes of relation as uniformity, symmetry, and harmony, or, in other words, the more simple determinations of the sensuous material are no longer adequate. This defect naturally extends our inquiry to that second aspect of the external determination of the Ideal already stated.

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

The fundamental truth which we shall endeavour to substantiate before everything in the matter which now immediately engages our attention is this, that man is under an obligation to make himself at peace and at home in the environment of the world; or, to put it rather differently, his individuality must live itself into Nature and all the conditions of that external world, and by doing so assert its freedom visibly. And, moreover, this must take place in such a way that these two related factors, that is, on the one side, the entirety of his inward life and the character it possesses or displays in all conditions or actions whatsoever, and, on the other, that objective entirety of external existence which confronts him, must wholly lose the appearance of two worlds which are either indifferent to or not homogeneous with[379] each other, and forthwith proclaim themselves as harmoniously related and identical in substance. This externally objective world must, in so far as it is the reality of the Ideal, surrender the semblance of its own objective self-subsistency and stubbornness, in order that its fundamental unity with that to which it supplies the external and particular embodiment may be exhibited in truth.

To establish this unity with more conclusiveness we propose now to examine our subject under three different heads of discussion.

First, we may investigate the same from the point of view that this unity which binds the two factors already defined is merely a bond which possesses no positive reality[380], but is merely a mysterious and secret connection both in its origin and appearance, by virtue of which our humanity is looped together with its environment.

Secondly, however, as a deduction from the fact that it is the concrete spiritual life of man and the individuality which pertains to it which constitutes the point of departure, or rather the essential content of the Ideal, we shall further examine this association, as in truth the creation of human activity itself and only possible as such a creation.

Finally, we shall prove that this unified world created by the human Spirit is itself a complete entirety, which, in the determinate form of its existence, is objectively valid, and in essential relation with which every unit of our common humanity who is actively engaged with the vital concerns of art must infallibly remain.

In opening our discussion of the position we proposed first we would at once point out an important conclusion involved in it. We have here posited that the environment of the Ideal is not directly due to human activity, it can therefore only be regarded in this first step of our inquiry as something external to man, that is to say Nature. How, then, is this something outside man to be exhibited in the ideal work of art? We will discuss this at least in its more general terms, and here, too, draw attention to three aspects of importance.

(α) In the first place external Nature, so far as the reproduction of its external form is concerned, is in every respect a reality which is embodied in some definite shape. If our representation is in every respect to satisfy really all that is implied in this condition it must be the exact counterpart of the phenomenal truth of Nature. We have, however, already drawn attention to material points of difference between the truth of Nature and its reproduction by art which cannot be disregarded. We may, however, observe that it is an almost universal characteristic of the great masters that they are conspicuously true in their delineation and elaboration of the broad facts of Nature. And this is not so much due to a love of imitation as it is due to the fact that Nature is not merely in a general way the objective facts of a heaven and an Earth with humanity suspended, as it were, in a vacuo between them; but rather that the emotional life and activity of man can only be rightly conceived as alive and operative in a given place with all its associations of streams, rivers, hills, mountains, plains, dales, and forests. Take the case, for example, of Homer, who is not at all a poet of the picturesque in natural scenery as we now understand it; we shall, nevertheless, find even in him the descriptions and indications he gives us of actual places or natural features such as the rivers Scamander or Simois, the coast and bays of the sea and so forth correspond with such truth to Nature that geographical investigators only quite recently have been able to map out the locality to which he refers in entire accordance with his descriptions. The ballad-singers of the Middle Ages present a sordid[381] contrast to him in this respect, no less than in their power of depicting character; the effect of their productions either way is bald, jejune and nebulous. Even in the case of the Meistersingers, though they versify old biblical stories which they locate in Jerusalem and elsewhere, it is little more than the bare names which we get. In the Book of heroes[382] the effect is precisely similar. Otnith rides through the pine-forest, fights with the dragon, but it is no world of men or distinct locality we can recognize, and our imagination is consequently in this respect left without any support. Even in the Nibelungenlied there is no real increase of local interest. It is true the names of Worms, the Rhine, and the Danube are mentioned; but practically all further detail is omitted and the result is as barren as before. And yet it is clearly through this very clearness of definition that our narration becomes individual and real; without this it is a mere abstraction which directly gives the lie to the concrete reality it proposes to present.

(β) In addition to these fundamental requirements of clear definition and correspondence with the natural facts a certain elaboration of detail will frequently much assist us in presenting the external aspects of a picture which our perception or imagination can readily seize. Unquestionably, owing to the nature of the particular medium in which the several arts express themselves, there will be a marked difference of range to which, in any particular case, this process may be carried. If we take the art of sculpture, for example, we shall find that the repose and universality, which are the fundamental features of its characterization, are less consistent with this elaboration of external detail than is the case in some other arts. Externality is here neither defined as a particular place nor a particular environment, but is entirely concentrated upon such details as drapery, arrangement of hair, dress, weapons of war, mode of seat and the like. Nay more, the actual definition of many figures in antique sculpture is only obtained through an entirely conventional arrangement of drapery or hair, or other distinguishing accessories. This is not, however, the place to discuss further the significance of the conventional. It is obviously outside the sphere of natural fact and rather related to the contingent; or, to put the matter in this particular case more fully, it is the means through which we arrive at that which is more universal and persistent in our final artistic effect.

As a reverse case to that of sculpture the subject-matter of lyrical poetry is pre-eminently man's emotional life; for this reason it is not so necessary in this type of poetry to lay stress on the detail of actual facts even when reference is made to the external world. It is, on the other hand, part of the function of epic poetry to state events as actual facts, to be precise as to the place where actions occurred and in what manner they were performed; and, in short, of all types of poetry it is the one to which the widest latitude and the closest accuracy of local detail is most essential. And, furthermore, if we contrast all the arts together in this respect we shall find that not one of them is, by virtue of its medium[383], so exclusively occupied with the detail of external Nature as that of painting. At the same time we must add a word that applies equally to all of them. Whatever the definition of Nature may be, it never ought to give the erroneous impression of Nature's prose reality, that is to say, as the immediate imitation of such; nor should that fulness of detail, which is devoted to the spiritual aspect of individual life and its events, be carried by enthusiasm out of the due relation of its importance to the whole. And generally we may affirm of both that such exclusive definition ought not to be all that is anywhere presented, inasmuch as everywhere in a work of art that which is a natural fact should only receive its artistic embodiment in close relation to man's spiritual life.

(γ) We have here struck the very note we wish particularly to emphasize. We have already remarked that there are two essential conditions to any effective presentation of a real personality; we must have before us both the reflection of the man's inner life and the natural environment which surrounds him. And in order that this external surrounding appear as one that is truly his own an essential bond of relation must be established between him and it, one which to a greater or less degree is part of his own spiritual substance, where we may, doubtless, cross many traces of contingent matter and yet find the spiritual bed of this nexus still maintained. Throughout the entire spiritual apparatus of the heroes of Epic poetry, for example, their mode of life, that is, opinions, emotions, and all that they do we ought to be able to recognize a subtle homogeneousness, a harmonious en rapport, which fuses the two aspects of such a life into one concordant whole. The Arab is thus united with Nature, and, indeed, apart from his sky, his stars, his torrid deserts, his tents, his camels, and his horses is unintelligible. He is only truly himself and at home under such conditions. In the same way the heroes of Ossian possess in the highest degree an intense inward life; but in their very gloominess and melancholy they appear as the genuine growth of their hills of heather, whose thistles are swept by the wind, of their rain-clouds, mists, mountains, and dark caves. The physiognomy of the conditions under which they live reveals to us as nothing else can the secret of that inner life of emotion which is lived through with all its sadness, mourning, its pains, its battles, and its mist-like apparitions in such a natural setting; they are, in short, entirely at home in it and in it alone.

Such considerations supply us with ample ground for the statement we let fall previously unsupported that the subject-matter of history offers unrivalled opportunities for perfecting this intimate relation between the two aspects of human life we have been discussing, and enabling, us to carry the same directly into the minutest particulars. Very rarely, indeed, are we likely to find that the imagination can simply through its own initiative create such a harmony, although we ought to feel its presence throughout, however little it may, in fact, have produced of the raw material it combines into artistic completeness. No doubt there is a common tendency to rate what we fancy is the free creation of imaginative genius above the effort of assimilating in artistic form a material which is borrowed; but it is for all that quite impossible that the imagination should alone create that harmonious entente, the unity of the Ideal requires in the consistent and defined form which lies before us in actual existence, where national traits, to cite the examples above, are the veritable growth of such a harmony.

And here we close our consideration of the principle accordant with which we have rendered more clear that aspect of the unity of the inner life with its natural environment which we posited as secret or potential, not at any rate directly due to human activity.

(b) The second phase of this harmonious relation may be explained more positively, being expressly due to man's own activity and his adaptation of means to ends. For man adapts external objects to his own uses and, by means of the satisfaction which his work supplies, places himself in a harmonious relation to them. In contrast therefore to our first indefinite[384], and, in fact, entirely general type of harmonious association the present one is directly concerned with what is particular, as exemplified in the particular needs of man and their satisfaction by his converting to his use such natural objects as he may require. The range of his wants and the consequent impulse of their satisfaction is of a practically unlimited variety; yet it is nothing in comparison with the variety of Nature herself. Simplification is therefore inseparable from the task whereby, our humanity imposes on the facts of Nature its own vital purposes, and interpenetrates the external world with its own volitions. In this way man's environment is humanized; he proves by his own acts that it is capable of satisfying his nature and is unable to preserve any predominant independence over against him. Here at last, by virtue, that is, of his own productive exertions, we find him no longer in a merely general sense of the term, but actually in every detail of his particular surroundings a real centre of his own substance and at home.

The fundamental conception which it is most important to emphasize as that which affects art throughout in its relation to all we have above considered may be thus stated. If we look closely at the relative position man occupies in all the infinite variety of his material wants, desires, and aims, we shall find that it is not one merely of general significance, but one of actual dependence. The absence of freedom implied in this relative position is antagonistic to the Ideal; and in order that man may become a suitable object for art, he must have already released himself from the travail of this enforced condition, and thrown off the chains of his dependence. Moreover, this act of mutual accommodation, when we trace it to its origin, may strike us in one of two different ways. Either he may conclude that Nature in all friendliness on her own part supplies man with what he needs, and so far from throwing obstacles in the path of his interests and objects, rather freely gives them him as one who meets him half way wherever he goes. Or, on the contrary, we shall not fail to observe that our humanity has wants and desires, whose immediate satisfaction Nature is quite unable to secure. In cases that fall under the second type it is obvious that man can only work out the self-satisfaction vital to him through his own energies; he must take possession of that which Nature possesses, set to rights the defects which appear, modify their form, removing all that stands in his way with adroitness; and, in short, convert Nature's raw material into means through which he will be able to attain all that he proposes. The relation in which the unity between man and his environment will be most conspicuous must be sought for in an example, where there is already a real contact between them, where, that is to say, human ability is on such good terms with the amenability of Nature that all the severity of a conflict between them as unreconciled forces disappears, and we have forthwith the completed symphony under our eyes.

For the reasons, then, already advanced the ideal province of art must be held secure from the bare necessities of life. Property and the favour of circumstances, in so far as they supply a condition, under which poverty and labour vanish not merely for this or that hour, but for the most part altogether, are for this reason, we will not say incompatible with art, but rather in full concurrence with the Ideal. Yet it would only betray a real lack of comprehension[385], if in cases where the conditions of our art compelled us to consider the facts of life in all their multifold variety, we nevertheless omitted from our composition all reference to the relation in which human life is placed to these very natural constraints. It is true enough that such are purely finite conditions; but art is not therefore able to dispense with them. They must not, in fact, even be treated by her as something merely bad. It is rather her function to reconcile them with the Real in her embracing unity. And indeed the finest actions and opinions which she reflects on her mirror, if we consider the particular form of the determination and content alone[386], are necessarily limited and consequently finite. That I find it necessary to provide myself with nourishment, food and drink, a house to live in, and clothing to wear, seats to sit upon, and everything else incidental to domestic life is no doubt an inevitable concomitant of the fact that I live in the world; but the life that only I myself experience within me permeates, this external aspect of my life so completely, that men are fain to clothe and arm the very gods themselves, and to picture them under conditions inseparable from a variety of things they seek to possess, and find their satisfaction in obtaining. In short, for art to be possible, this satisfaction of the necessities of life must be assured to us. Or to take an example where this is not so, there is that of adventurous knights who only secure their immunity from external hardship through the continued success of their enterprise, which is therefore itself but a contingency, in much the same way as the prosperity of savages is contingent upon the amenities of Nature. The conditions in both cases are not favourable to Art. Her true Ideal is not merely to be found where our humanity is barely lifted above the most rigorous condition of dependence upon the smiles or frowns of Nature, but is most of all at home in that superfluity which suffers it in conjunction with Nature's bounty to expatiate with freedom no less than delight.

The above remarks are obviously of very general application. Two considerations, however, of a somewhat more restricted interest may be deduced from them.

(α) The first of these relates to the kind of use to which mankind put the objects of Nature in seeking for a satisfaction which is wholly aesthetic, or due to some habit of the mind. Everything in the nature of ornament and finery, or, in general terms, everything that men convert to their use for the sake of mere show comes under this head. And the point to which we draw attention is this, that when we find men thus decorating themselves no less than their immediate surroundings, we ought not so much to conclude that all that they thus collect together from Nature's most costly and beautiful storehouse, whatever may most attract their eyes in the same—whether it be gold, precious stones, pearls, ivory, or precious raiment—that all this unrivalled rarity and brilliancy, in short, is that which for its own sake, and primarily as a product of Nature, interests them: rather their interest in it all is essentially personal as a thing suitable for the houses they live in, or for that which they most love and honour, whether it be their rulers, their temples, or their gods. A man selects in this way that which already appears to him as externally beautiful, pure translucent colour, glitter of metals, fragrant woods, marble, and all the rest. Poetry, and particularly Oriental poetry, makes a willing use of such wealth, a fact we may even illustrate from such a poem as the Nibelungenlied: and generally it is true enough that Art in such matters is not merely content with a general description of the beauty or value of such fine things; but, where the artistic form and the occasion allows, will describe such works in all the detail of their workmanship with as royal a bounty as the works themselves. There was no stint of either gold or ivory on the statue of Pallas at Athens, or that of Zeus at Olympia; and the temples of the ancient gods, the churches of Christendom, the pictures of saints, and the palaces of kings, are notable illustrations among all nations that possess any of them, to what kind of service splendour and brilliant show may be devoted; thus have nations in every age delighted in seeing upon their gods the visible presence of their own wealth, precisely as they have found delight in the splendour of their princes as a glory they still possessed, though ravished from themselves.

We all know, of course, that type of moralist who is only too ready to disturb the vision of such an enjoyment. We shall, no doubt, be reminded how many poor Athenians the aegis of Pallas could have supplied with a hearty meal, or how many slaves could have thus been liberated; and, doubtless, we must admit that in the case of the ancient world, no less than in days more near to our own wealth, all that has been lavished on temple, cloister, or cathedral, or other objects of public utility, has been expended under social conditions of the direst need to many. Nay, we may carry such melancholy reflections yet further, and find in them a condemnation not merely of particular works of art, but of Art herself and all that she gives us. What sums of money are involved in the building by the State of an Academy of Arts, or the purchase of ancient and modern works of art, and the appropriate embellishment of public galleries, theatres, and museums! But whatever the effect of such reflections may be upon us, whether ethical or otherwise, such is, after all, only due to the fact that we are once more reminded of those very constraints and hardships whose removal is a vital condition of the appearance of Fine Art. The appropriation of a unique sphere in its life for the exposition of its artistic treasures, which stands safe above the stress of that reality to which it contributes so largely, can therefore only redound to the glory and supreme honour of any people.

(β) But, further, mankind is not merely interested in the adornment of individuals and the environment of their life, but is actively employed in adapting the objects of Nature to its practical needs and purposes. It is on this plane that we come into contact for the first time with all the labour and struggle which the dependence of our humanity upon the prose of its finite life implies. And the question inevitably arises, how far all that is involved in this practical effort is suitable to artistic presentation.

(αα) In attempting some answer to this problem, we would draw attention to the historical fact that the earliest way in which Art attempted to banish all the prose reality of human life was the conception of the well-known golden age or, if we care to call it so, the idyllic state. In this we have Nature depicted as satisfying man's every want with no trouble to himself: while he, for his part, enjoys in a state of innocence all that mead, wood, flocks, garden, shelter, and so forth, can supply him with nourishment, dwelling, and all other comforts incidental to such a life. Of the passions of ambition or avarice, indeed of every impulse that may appear to run counter to the nobility of man's spiritual nature, we hear no word at all. At first blush, no doubt, a state of this description may strike us more or less as ideal, and certain types of art, limited in their range, may find definite satisfaction in presenting us with a picture of it. But we have only to penetrate further below the surface and we shall quickly have enough of such a vision. The writings of Gessner are little read nowadays, and when we do read them we find in such little satisfaction. The truth is that a restricted state of life, such as the above described, presupposes a very elementary stage in human development. Manhood which has attained to any real fulness of spiritual stature is moved by impulses of loftier range, and is not likely to be satisfied with the life which clings closest to Nature and its immediate products. In such idyllic poverty of soul no man ought to live, but rather to accept his birthright of toil: that which his spiritual impulse urges him forward to, that he must secure through his own activity. Once regard the matter in this way and these very physical wants of man will be found to bring into being a wide and diverse range of activities, implanting in him the conscious sense of his own powers, from the heart of which the profounder interests and forces of his life can slowly unravel themselves. But, at the same time, it is necessary that here, too, the harmonious relation between the outward and inner life should be maintained as the fundamental principle of artistic presentation. Few things are more offensive to our aesthetic taste than to find in a work of art the severity of some physical disaster portrayed through every detail of horror. Dante flashes on us the starvation of Ugolino in a few trenchant strokes. When a Gerstenberg, in his tragedy of Ugolino, wrings out every detail of the catastrophe to the last drop, telling us precisely how first Ugolino's two sons, and after them their father, were done to death by starvation, we feel at once that the subject, as thus handled, is entirely at variance with the principles of fine art.

(ββ) We shall, however, find that the condition of life which offers the strongest contrast to that we have described as the idyllic state, we will call it the generally civilized life[387], presents, though on other grounds, difficulties to an ideal exposition which are equally serious. In a Culture-State the complexus of social wants and labour, of interests and all that may go to satisfying the same, is throughout and in all its comprehensiveness completely evolved. Every individual here is immersed in an infinite network of relations with other units of the whole, and with so much loss to his complete independence. What he himself requires for himself is either nothing at all, or only, in a quite insignificant fraction of it, the result of his own labour: add to this the tendency of all a man's normal activities is to become more and more mechanical. We find, too, at the heart of this industrial development and the interchange of employment and rejection of human labour which it implies, on the one hand the most ruthless conditions of poverty, and on the other a class which, raised as it is above the bare necessities of existence, stands out in relief as wealthy, entirely released from all toil for the sake of a subsistence, able at any rate to devote individual attention to the finer interests of life and its pathetic contrasts. No doubt the possession of such a superfluity may create an impression as though for the favoured few the constant recurrence of a position of dependence had passed away, and a man is just so much the more released from the accidents incidental to property because his hands are at length free from the grime which soils them in securing it. But such a consolatory reflection will never make a man thoroughly at home in all that immediately surrounds him in the real sense that such is the garland of his own labour. For he is the centre of that to the upraising of which he has not himself been instrumental; it has come there out of that provision store which was already full without him, which quite other persons and for the most part in a quite mechanical and, therefore, formal way have provided, and to which he is only introduced after a long series of effort and struggle wholly strange to himself.

(γγ) We are consequently led to the conclusion that it is rather a third type of human society, a society which we may place halfway between the idyllic golden age and the burgher State in its fully developed industrial form, which is most fitted to be the subject matter of ideal art. We have already analysed this state of society in another connection under the description of the heroic and pre-eminently ideal world-condition. The heroic age is no longer restricted to that idyllic garden of spiritual attenuation, but includes within its borders passions and aims of deeper moment; and yet withal that which in the circle of the individual life touches closest the satisfaction of each man's immediate wants is still the entire product of his own activity.

Moreover, the means of nourishment such as honey, milk, and wine are less complex and consequently lend themselves more readily to ideal treatment[388]. A diet which includes coffee, brandy, and such like luxuries is associated in our minds with countless industries which are necessary to their preparation. Our heroes, on the contrary, kill and roast their own food, break in their own chargers, are the makers to a considerable extent of all their household gods; ploughs, armour for defence, shields, coats of mail, swords, spears, all are either the work of the possessor, or are made directly under his supervision. In a condition of life of this kind a man necessarily feels that in all the things he makes use of, and in all that encircles him, he is in touch with something produced by himself; that in contact with external objects he is in contact with his own substance rather than with objects which emanate from a world strange to himself and outside that in which he is himself master. It is, of course, assumed that all the energy he expends upon working up the material into forms adapted for his use is not so much troublesome labour, but a work which, through the satisfaction it brings him, falls easy from his shoulders, a work, in short, which he can carry over every obstacle to success.

We find a society of this type in Homer. Agamemnon's sceptre is a family staff which his ancestor himself shaped from the block and left as an heirloom to his descendants. Odysseus put together with his own hands the mighty bed he shared with Penelope; and if the famous weapons of Achilles are no work of his own we only find the various and interfused array of his own activities abated that a god, Hephaestus himself, may provide them at the request of his mother Thetis. In a word, we meet everywhere the youthful delight in novel discovery, the freshness of personal possession, the victorious sense of enjoyment. Everything is in its place and at home, in everything a man discovers the energy of his own sinew, the adroitness of his own hand, the cunning of his own spirit, or somewhat that follows from his own courage and bravery. In this way, and by this alone, the instruments which satisfy our human sense are not as yet relegated to a merely external relation, but men have before them the living process of the instruments themselves, the vital consciousness of the human worth they attach to them; and they find it there inasmuch as for them they are not mere lifeless things or things which habit has made lifeless, but creations impregnated with their own energies. And for the same reason we find here an idyllic condition of things, it is true, but not in that restricted sense of the term that the Earth and her streams, seas, forests, and cattle supply to mankind their sustaining substance, while man himself is only visible to us as a passive creature limited by the active powers which support him and their enjoyment. Rather we already see within this morning-time of human life deep interests at work, in relation to which the great world itself is but a subordinate realm, the ground and the instrument for bringing into being the higher aims which are present, as a ground and environment, however, over which that harmonious concord, yet withal independence, of both sides of our human world prevails; and which does prevail in the sight of all for this reason that everything there exists as the product and for the use of human life, is at the same time the creation and enjoyment of the man who creates and enjoys its use[389].

To apply such a mode of artistic presentation to material borrowed from more recent times, whose completed culture offers the strongest contrast to the heroic age above-mentioned, is always beset with extreme difficulty and liable to failure. Yet for all that Goethe in his "Hermann and Dorothea" has furnished us in this respect with an admirable masterpiece. Here an attempt will only be made to elucidate a few significant points by contrasting the same with a composition of similar type. Voss, in his famous romance "Louise," had depicted on much the same idyllic lines our human life and activity in a quiet circle of narrow range, if also marked with independent characteristics of its own. The country parson, the tobacco-pipe, the dressing-gown, the garden-bench, and finally our coffee-pot, have all of them here important parts to play. Coffee and sugar are, however, products, which are really here out of place; they belong to an entirely different world[390] throughout associated with all the varied ramifications of commercial and textile industries. This circle of country life is consequently not self-inclusive. In the beautiful picture of "Hermann and Dorothea" we are, on the contrary, under no necessity to demand such a consistency. As we already have pointed out in another connection, we find interwoven with the main threads of this poem, which is, no doubt, in its prevailing atmosphere entirely idyllic, the great political interests of the time, the struggles of the French Revolution, the defence of the Fatherland, asserted in a worthy way no less than with decision. The more limited scope of family life in a little country town is not so presented us as a whole which can even possibly remain in total ignorance of that mighty wave of the great world under stress of a real cataclysm of events, which is the view we are given of the pastor in the "Louise" of Voss. In Goethe's poem we have, on the contrary, by means of the interfusion of these great world-movements, within which the idyllic characters and events are portrayed, the picture of a life with a typical character of its own set in the frame of a world of more significant content; and the apothecary, who is here presented as the out-and-out Philistine, and who merely lives within the more narrow borders of that country life's surroundings, affected by that only, is excellently sketched for us with the good heart, but at the same time peevish isolation, which we find so natural. Add to this, in that which most closely touches the life of the characters thus portrayed, we find a particular emphasis laid on the fundamental aspect of this idyllic life as previously indicated in our former discussion of it. To mention one point only, we may observe that the host does not by any means drink coffee with his guests, the parson and the apothecary; on the contrary, to cite a line or two:

Carefully brought in the mother the sparkling and glorious red-wine, Poured in the clear-cut glasses, with rimlets all polished of pewter, Brought in the green-coloured rummers, those goblets most fit for the Rhine-wine.

They drink in the fresh air what has been grown at home, of the '83 vintage, and withal in glasses that, as home-made, are just the right ones for Rhine-wine. A few lines further on our fancy is yet further kindled with the "streams of the Rhine river and its dearly-loved banks," and we are even introduced to the vineyard of the host behind the house itself; and, in short, there is nothing to arrest our attention outside the typical circle of a self-contented life which of its own bounty provides for its wants.

(c) In addition to both these types of human environment we must mention yet another in close association with which we all necessarily live. It is no other than the universally prevailing spiritual surroundings of our life whether they be religious, legal, or moral, the organization of the State, that is to say, the constitution of the government, the judicial institutions, the family, the institutions of both public and private life, and all other social relations. For the ideal character is not merely to be portrayed in its relation to all that satisfies material wants, but as itself a focus of spiritual interests. It is certainly true that all that is truly substantive, divine, and essentially necessary in all these relations is fundamentally an envisagement of one reality. In the objective world, however, the forms under which this reality is manifested are various, and they are, one and all, involved in that which is wholly contingent in particular examples, and the conventional usages which are only valid for definite periods of time and distinct nations. In this variety of form all the interests of men's spiritual life receive an external embodiment of reality, with which every man is confronted in the customs, usages, and habits of society. Every man thereby, in addition to possessing a self-exclusive individuality of his own, becomes, in virtue of his association with such spiritual realities, even more a member of a whole cognate with and vital to himself than as a unit of that external world of Nature with which he is similarly conjoined. Speaking generally, we may attach to this spiritual association, of human life very much the same terms and significance we have already discussed in the foregoing sections; consequently we will for the present pass over the more detailed consideration of it, whose most important features will apply more strictly to another aspect of our inquiry, and will then be more appropriately discussed.

3. THE EXTERNALITY OF THE IDEAL WORK OF ART IN ITS RELATION TO A PUBLIC

It is therefore necessary that art, as the representation of the Ideal, must embody this Ideal in all the relations to external reality we have above described, and thereby associate the inward possessions of character with the objective world. A work of art, however much in form it may be a self-including and harmonious world by itself, exists none the less as such an object, both real and particular, not for itself but for such as behold and enjoy it, that is the Public. Actors, for example, in the representation they give us of a particular drama do not merely enter into converse with one another, but appeal directly to ourselves, their audience; and it is equally important that they make themselves intelligible under both these aspects. Every work of art is in fact a direct appeal to the intelligence of everyone who confronts it. Now it is indeed true that the real Ideal, as envisaged for us in the universal interests and passions of its gods and men, is so far intelligible to everyone as it gives us a view of its characters within some typical external world of customs, usages, and everything else that characteristically distinguishes it. But the condition of art we have above formulated makes it further necessary that this element of external reality is not merely one with which the characters thereby represented are harmoniously associated, but must be also one within which we ourselves to whom the work is addressed feel equally at home. The appropriateness of the external environment to the characters enfolded within it must apply with equal force to our own attitude of mind in regarding both. But it so happens that from whatever period of the world's history the subject-matter of a work of art may be borrowed it will be sure to contain essential features, which are quite distinct from those which specifically determine other nations and periods. In other words artists of every description, whether they be poets, painters, sculptors, or musicians, select subject-matter from the Past, which in their particular state of culture and intelligence, ethical customs, usages, and the form of their government, differ from the civilization of the times they live in. Moreover, as we have already observed, this return upon the Past possesses the considerable advantage that in having thus recourse to memory instead of being face to face with all the facts of the present, there is an appreciable diminution of the material from which the artist selects his subject, and this he cannot readily dispense with. At the same time the artist belongs only to his own century, and it is in the ethical customs, modes of conception, and generally the intellectual outlook of that he lives. The Homeric poems Homer, to take him for once as the individual creator of both "Iliad" and "Odyssey," may have actually lived through or he may not; but in any case they are at least four hundred years later[391] than the time of the Trojan war; and further a period twice as long separates the great Greek tragedians from the days of the ancient heroes, who, as translated into the atmosphere of their own time, form the subject-matter of their poetry. It is just the same in the case of the Niebelungenlied and the artist who finally fused together the various saga which that poem contains into one homogeneous work. We may no doubt admit that the artist finds himself entirely on congenial ground when dealing with everything truly pathetic, either in the history of gods or men; but the external and actual conditions of that ancient world, whose characters and actions he endeavours to portray, have altered in essential features and become consequently strange to him. And further than this a poet creates for the sake of a Public, and primarily for his own nation and his time, both of which should be able to enter into such a work of art with intelligence, and feel at home in it. The most genuine works of art no doubt assert a further claim to immortality, a hope that they may continue to be a source of delight to all times and nations. But even in the case of works of the highest class it is none the less true that nations and times situated far away from those which produced them can only fully apprehend them with the assistance of an extensive apparatus of geographical, historical, and it may be even philosophical knowledge and the results of much critical investigation.

Bearing in mind these fundamental, and to some extent incompatible differences which characterize the various points of view from which a work of art must be regarded, the question arises what kind of form relatively to its external framework of locality, custom, usage, and generally any and every condition of religious, political or ethical significance a particular work of art should receive. Should an artist suffer his own times to pass from his mind altogether, and attempt only to secure the substantial appearance of the Past and what actually then existed, so that his work become simply a true portrayal of that; or is he not merely justified, but rather under an obligation, to pay an exclusive attention to his own nation and the life around him, elaborating his work with express regard to the principle that it should stand in harmonious relation to his own times? Or, to put the same thing in rather more technical language, we may propound the problem thus: Is the subject-matter of a work of art to be objectively valid in its content as one entirely appropriate historically considered, or should such matter be treated subjectively, that is, in complete subordination to the artist's personal standpoint relatively to the culture and social conditions of his own time? We would rather observe that both these positions, if thus pressed unduly, land us in extreme conclusions equally false; and we propose now to examine them briefly that we may by their means elucidate a more satisfactory theory.

And we would consider three fundamental aspects which this problem suggests. We will first examine what is implied in the above subjective assertion of the particular culture of the artist's own time; secondly, there is the question what may be regarded as exclusively and objectively true when we refer to the Past; thirdly, we have to consider what may still be objectively valid in the true sense, though we still have a representation and appropriation of material borrowed from a time and nationality foreign to that of the artists.

(a) Now to start with, if we consider this purely subjective assertion, it is obvious that when we press the position closely we are finally driven to exclude the objective embodiment of the Past altogether, and to maintain that artistic representation is exclusively concerned with the appearance of present times.

(α) Such a result may be doubtless, under one aspect of it, presented by mere ignorance of the Past. It is, then, rather the result of a naïveté, which is unable to feel the contradiction between the object itself and the representation given, or at least fails to bring the same to consciousness. Such a form of artistic presentation is therefore fundamentally due to lack of sufficient culture. We could hardly wish for a more vivid illustration of this than we find in the naïve productions of Hans Sachs, who has, no doubt with a vivid freshness of imaginative vigour and spirit, as we may truly say, domesticated among us[392] our dear Lord and Father God no less than Adam, Eve, and the rest of the patriarchs. Here, for example, God the Father is portrayed as teaching a school in which Cain, Abel, and the rest of Adam's children—are the pupils, precisely as any pedagogue of the time might have done. He catechizes them upon the ten commandments and the Lord's Prayer. Abel knows his lesson as a pious and good boy ought to. Cain on the contrary behaves and replies to his teachers as only naughty and wicked boys would think of doing; and when it is his turn to repeat the commandments turns them inside out: thou shalt steal, thou shalt not honour thy father and mother, and so forth. A representation of much the same crude simplicity having for its subject the tale of our Lord's Passion used to be carried out in South Germany, was then made illegal, and has since once more been resuscitated. In this Pilate is portrayed in the character of an insolent, rough, and arrogant official, the common soldiers much in the same familiar way our own might, offer Christ surreptitiously a pinch of tobacco; he disdains it, and they flatten it out on his nose. Vulgarity finds all the more jest in such an incident for the reason that it wholly conforms to its notions of piety and reverence, indeed calls up such feelings all the more readily through its immediate reference to that which it finds in its own world, thereby making more vivid its own sense of devotional fervour. No doubt there is a certain justification for this mode of translating, so to speak, the appearance and form of objective history into modern equivalents, such as we have found in our literature; and we may even attach a kind of greatness to the courage of Hans Sachs in making himself so familiar with God Almighty, and those old religious ideas that without the least vestige of impiety he could rivet them deep within the conditions of our most commonplace life. At the same time such an attempt is none the less a rude intrusion upon our feelings, and indicates lack of cultivation, inasmuch as it not merely disallows to the object itself a right to assert itself as it really is, but forces upon it a mode of appearance so directly contrary to that which it possesses, that the result can only impress us as an emphatic caricature.

(β) As an antithesis to the above type of subjectivity we find another equally supreme asserting itself out of sheer pride in its own culture under the belief that the views peculiar to its own times, its ethical customs, and social conventions are those alone worth preservation or acceptance. Owing to a bias of this kind it is quite unable to enjoy the content of a work of art until such a form of culture prevails in it. An illustration of this latter type is the so-called classical good taste of the French school. Everything that is here attempted must forthwith be Frenchified, and all that it presents under the form of any other nationality and more particularly with any reference to the Middle Ages is voted incorrect and barbarous and is cast on one side with absolute contempt. Voltaire expressed anything but the truth when he said that the French have improved the works of the ancient world. What they have done is to nationalize them; and by this process of recasting have corrupted them with every kind of foreign and angular quality of their own that such a taste as theirs could develop to any extent, requiring as it did throughout a culture absolutely based on court etiquette, and a conformity to conventional rule and generalization in both the meaning and mode of any dramatic work. Indeed, we shall find the trail of this abstraction of a superfine culture visible in the very diction of their poetry. Not a poet among them dare venture to use the word cochon, or add their own nomenclature to spoons, forks, and a thousand other simple objects. Consequently we have roundabout definitions and circumlocutions. We cannot have our spoons and forks; we get instead an instrument of the hand which conveys our victuals in a liquid or arid state to the mouth; and this by no means stands alone. And with all its refinement their taste is vulgar to a degree; for the simple truth is that genuine art, so far from planing away and polishing its content to one flat and unruffled surface of generalities, is most of all anxious to set in full relief all that makes toward the well-defined characterization of life. It is on account of this very taste that the French can make less of Shakespeare than any other poet. And when they have attempted to work him up to their graces they have clipped off from him precisely that portion which we Germans find nearest to our hearts. For the same reason Voltaire makes merry over Pindar because he has made the remark, ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ.[393] And, consequently, in their works of art they find it necessary to make Chinese, Americans, or the heroes of Greek or Roman antiquity all speak in one tongue and in one manner—that of their French court. Achilles, for instance, in the "Iphigenie en Aulide"[394] is nothing more or less than a French prince; and if we had no name to help us no one could conceivably discover one particle of Achilles in him. It is true that in the theatrical representation of this drama he was habited as a Greek, appeared at least in helmet and coat of mail; but at the same time his hair was curled and powdered, with broad hips through poschen[395], with red claws worked on shoes fastened on the foot with coloured ribbons; and what is more, the "Esther" of Racine was expressly popular in the time of Louis XIV, for the particular reason that Ahasuerus, on his first entrance on the stage, copied the appearance of Louis XIV himself, when he entered the great hall of audience. No doubt, in this transcript, there was a considerable admixture of the oriental luxuriance; but a Ahasuerus he was none the less fully powdered and wearing the royal mantle of ermine, and followed by a complete retinue of curled and powdered chamberlains got up thoroughly en habit français with their wigs, their feathered caps under arm, their vests and hoses of drap d'or, with their silk stockings and red buckles on their shoes. All that the court and a select circle of the privileged few were only permitted to see de facto was here open to all classes alike—the entrée of the king paraded in the poet's verses. The writing of history in France is not unfrequently conducted on very much the same principle. That is to say, history itself and the real objects of history are not the main purpose of the historian, whose interest is rather concentrated either on giving the government in vogue a lesson or teaching others how they ought to detest it. And in the same way there are a host of dramas which, either expressly throughout their entire content or in passing episodes, divert the attention to the events of the day; or, if passages occur in pieces which refer to former times presenting anything which may bear on matters of contemporary interest, the parallel or the contrast is deliberately emphasized with every expression of enthusiasm.

(γ) A third type of this personal treatment by the artist of his subject-matter may be sufficiently described as the separation of the same from all genuine artistic form whether it be characteristic of past or present works of art, a mode of production in fact which simply presents us with the entirely evanescent colour of "the man in the street" in his ordinary everyday action and vocation without adding aught to the same. In other words we may describe it as the bare counterpart of what the man of commonsense is conscious in the prosaic facts of life, that and nothing more. In such an atmosphere of prose no doubt everyone finds himself at home readily enough; or rather, he will only not find himself at home who takes up such a work with some definite conception of that which the very conditions of a work of art demand, and consequently is aware that it is precisely from this type of handling that Art undertakes to liberate us. Kotzebue, in his day, obtained all his popular effects through compositions of this kind, which aimed at nothing else but letting the general public both see and hear life's troubles and vexations, the pocketing of silver spoons, the risking of the pillory, or, to take particular characters, parsons, chamberlains, ensign-bearers, secretaries, and cavalry-majors, in their naked colours. Everyone might here recognize his own household, or, at least, that of some relation or friend, might see at a glance where in his own precious circumstances and aims of life the shoe pinched. An originality of this sort necessarily fails to stir any real sense or idea of that which is the vital content of a work of art, however much it may awake an interest for its productions in hearts that are wont to ask for so little and are so ready to put up with the commonplaces of so-called ethical reflections. We may conclude, then, that the artistic presentation of the facts of external reality under any one of these three types just examined is subjective in a one-sided way, that is to say, it wholly fails to present us with any adequate form of that objective world as it really exists.

(b) We next propose to examine a mode of presentation the reverse of the above, one which endeavours to restore us the characters and events of the past so far as may be with every local detail of their former environment no less than any and every ethical or other particular characteristic which formerly distinguished them. We Germans have particularly come to the front in this class of work. As a rule we are, in striking contrast to the French, the most painstaking recorders of all that is peculiar in nations other than our own, and consequently make fidelity to the characteristic usages, dress, weapons, and all such antiquarian detail appropriate to particular epochs and localities a first requisite of our art. Add to this we have the necessary patience to put ourselves to no end of trouble in the way of hard study in order that we may thoroughly enter into the modes of thought and perception which belong to foreign nations and centuries distant from our own, and make ourselves thoroughly conversant with all their peculiarities. This power of looking at facts from many and diverse points of view in order to both apprehend and comprehend the spirit of every kind of national existence makes us not merely tolerant in our art towards all that strikes us as exceptionally strange in foreign customs, but clamorous even to a painful degree in our insistence that we have before us accurate correspondence with objective truth down to the most insignificant detail. The French are, no doubt, full of resource and energetic, but, however highly educated and practical men they may be, such qualities do not increase, but rather diminish the patience which they possess for quiet and exhaustive study. Criticism is always of first importance with them. We Germans, on the contrary, are by nature inclined to accept any picture of real truth for what it is, and particularly this is so with foreign works of art. From whatever part of Nature's storehouse such may come, whether it is plants or other creations of foreign growth, implements of any kind or form, dogs and cats, even absurdities, we accept them all genially; and the result of this is we are able to be on excellent terms with modes of thought the most removed from our own, ay, sacrificial customs, legends of the saints and all the extraordinary follies that go with them, to say nothing of a host of other marvels equally surprising. And for the same reasons it only appears essentially rational that in attempting to represent characters in action we should make their conversation and pursuits conformable to their own substance, that is to say, in strict accord with the times when they lived and their own national characteristics, whether regarded individually or in association with each other.

This fundamental idea that the objective truth of a work of art is established by virtue of the type of historical accuracy above described has obtained currency in comparatively recent times, mainly, that is to say, since the literary work of Frederick von Schlegel. From that time the importance of a first principle in literary criticism has attached to it; and further than this, it is asserted that our purely personal interest should above all restrict itself to the enjoyment we may derive from historical accuracy of this kind and the life it thus reproduces. Once accept these hard and fast rules and the conclusion is obvious that we are allowed no additional interest of any superior quality which an enquiry into the essential significance of any artistic content may or may not provide for us any more than we are permitted to derive any interest more vital to ourselves from aspects of such a work directly associated with the culture and aims of our own times. It is much on these lines that we find also in Germany, where the enthusiasm of Herder in this direction started a closer attention on all sides to the "Volkslied," a poetic inundation of national folk-songs imitating native tones of every sort of nationality whether it be the Iroquois, latter-day Greek, Lap, Turk, Tartar, Mongol, and many another; and, of course, it is assumed to be indicative of nothing less than first-rate genius[396] to possess the power of thus diving into the ways and ideas of other folk, and converting all we discover into poetry. At the same time it is clear that however completely your poet may work his way into and emotionally realize all this strange kind of world, it remains and must continue to remain for that public to whose enjoyment these songs are addressed as something very much aloof from it.

The truth is that such a theory, if pressed to its abstract logical conclusion, limits its boundaries solely to the truth of history in its formal accuracy, and by doing so neglects all consideration of the nature of Art's content and questions relative to its essential significance, just as it disregards every aspect of it in which the culture and resources of modern thought and contemporary life are asserted. But it is as impossible to detach ourselves from the truth implied in this theory as it is from equally important truths which it neglects; all equally claim satisfaction, and imperatively force upon us the necessity of finding a further solution in which the claims of historical truth may be reconciled with these rival aspects of truth in a very different way to that just examined. And this brings us to the third question we proposed as to the nature of that objectivity and subjectivity which can be fully sustained together as the reality to which a genuine work of art conforms.

(c) The point of essential importance which we should before all others wish to emphasize here is this, that no one of those various aspects of truth we have above indicated should be allowed a predominant significance such as would impair the relative force of the others; and, further, or rather notwithstanding this, historical accuracy pure and simple in external matters, such as local conditions, customs, usages, and social institutions generally, must receive in a work of art their due place, if a subordinate one, it being only right that the interest of mere historical truth should give way before that of a vitally true and imperishable content for the present no less than the past.

We cannot, perhaps, do better by way of explaining what we consider to be the true form of artistic representation than by setting up in contrast a few examples of some we take to be defective.

(α) Now, to start with, the presentation of the characteristic features of a given period may be entirely just, accurate, and impregnated with life, nay more, wholly intelligible to a modern audience, and notwithstanding fail to escape the ordinary atmosphere of prose, and present us with the real substance of poetry. Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen" will alone furnish us with notable illustrations of this defect. It is only necessary to open the book at the first scene, which introduces us to an inn near Schwarzenberg in Franconia; the dramatis personae are Metzler, and Sievers sitting at a table, two grooms by the fire, also the landlord.

Sievers. Another glass of brandy, Hans, my boy, and good Christian measure.

Landlord. You carry a glass that is never full.

Metzler. [Aside to Sievers.] Tell us that once again about Berlichingen; the Bambergers are in a pretty fume out there; ay, black as thunder (etc.).

The same kind of thing we find in the third Act.

George. [Enters with a gutter-spout.] There you have lead and to spare; spot the target with but one half of it, and devil a soul shall get off, who is like to say to your Majesty, that's a miss this time[397].

Lerse. [Aloud.] A fine piece of metal.

George. The rain may take another road for all I care; a brave knight and a real good rain get through most things.

Lerse. [Pours into glass.] Hold the spoon. [Goes to the window.] There's one of those imperial cockades prowling about with his musket; they believe we have aimed a point too far. He shall have a taste of my bullet, hot too and fresh from the pan. [Loads.]

George. [Drops the spoon.] Let me have a look.

Lerse. [Fires.] There lies the fool (etc.).

All this is exceedingly vivid, intelligible, depicted in perfect keeping with the situation and the characters portrayed. Yet for all that these scenes are both trivial to a degree and essentially prosaic. All we get from either the matter or the form is just the ordinary man's way of seeing things and reality as it appears to him or rather all of us to some extent. We find the same tendency in many another of Goethe's youthful productions, which no doubt were deliberately directed against everything which previously had passed for the rule of the guild, and which sought for their most impressive effect by means of the nearness made clear to ourselves, an impression gained by the extraordinary grasp with which the poet's imagination and feeling seized upon everything. But the nearness was itself too near, and the vital content in part so petty, that such compositions ran constantly into mere triviality. We are most conscious of this kind of triviality in dramatic works when we see them on the stage; it is then that after being worked up to some excitement by all the concomitants of a theatrical performance, lights, well-dressed folk, and the rest of it, we expect to see something more than a couple of peasants, and troopers and a glass of schnapps thrown in[398]. This phase has mainly found its admirers in readers; it never had a long run on the stage.

(β) If we now consider our subject from an opposite point of view it may be admitted that we can sufficiently make ourselves acquainted with and assimilate the historical content of a former mythology and all that is most strange to ourselves in earlier conditions of state-life and national custom to secure through such an intimacy with, the general culture then prevailing a varied knowledge of the past. In fact, this acquaintance with the art, mythology, literature, cultus, and usages of antiquity is the starting point of our present system of education. Every schoolboy knows something about the gods and heroes of Greece and the prominent characters in ancient history. It is therefore quite possible, in so far as they really enter into the imaginative life of our own times, that we may find enjoyment in the imaginative representation of such characters and interests. It is further impossible to predict whether or no such an intimacy may not be eventually carried equally as far in the case of the Indian, Egyptian, and Scandinavian mythologies. We may further observe that in the religious conceptions of all these peoples the Universal God is presented. The determinate form, however, of such conceptions, that is to say, the particular gods of Greece or India, are no longer true for us as so personified. We do not believe in their existence, and the pleasure we take in them is derived from their appeal to our imagination. For this reason they stand entirely apart from our deepest emotional life, and we can imagine nothing more empty and cold than such exclamations we hear only too often in opera: "O ye gods!" or "O Jupiter!" or even "O Isis and Osiris!" And the folly of it all reaches its height when we have the wretched saws of oracular wisdom thrown in—and the opera can seldom get along without them—a position of dignity which nowadays for the first time in tragic drama is occupied by pure folly and clairvoyance.

The same criticism applies with equal truth to all other historical material relating to national customs, laws, and the like. Such historical fact is excellent in its way, but it belongs to the past; and when it has once ceased to have anything in common with present life it necessarily ceases, in spite of all our knowledge of it, to belong to us. We have, in short, no interest[399] in what has passed away on the mere ground that it once existed. What is historical can only truly be said to belong to us when it is the possession of the nation, to which we ourselves belong, or when we are able to regard the present as in a general way casually connected with the events in question, to whose continuous series the characters or actions represented are united by a bond of essential membership. For if we carefully consider the matter we shall find that the mere fact of being formerly bound together with the same external environment and people to which we ourselves belong is not sufficient—rather the very part of our nation must present features in still closer relation to the conditions, life, and existence of our own times. To take an example of what we mean, we find ourselves in the Niebelungenlied geographically on a soil that belongs to us still, but the Burgundians and King Etzel are so absolutely cut off from all that touches our present civilization and every interest which is now coincident with patriotism that, without borrowing anything from the learning of the subject, it is but simple truth to say we feel infinitely more at home in the poems of Homer[400]. Klopstock, no doubt, in his enthusiasm for everything that concerned the Fatherland, was prompted to substitute his Scandinavian gods for those of Hellenic mythology; but, for all his zeal, Wotan, Walhalla, and Freja remain mere names for us, which appeal to our imaginations and patriotic emotions even less than Zeus and his compeers of Olympus.

The point above all we desire to emphasize is this. Works of art are not composed primarily for the mere student or the professor, but with the express purpose that they shall be intelligible on their face, and a source of enjoyment without any one having to undertake first a circuitous route of extensive historical investigation. For Art is not addressed to a small and select circle of the privileged few, but to the nation at large. What, moreover, is generally valid for a work of art applies also to the external form of the historical reality therein portrayed. Such exposition also must express itself with clearness open to the common apprehension requiring no considerable research to make it intelligible, must be clear to ourselves as representations of our century and our own people, so that we may be able to find ourselves entirely at home in it, and not have before us a world foreign to that we live in, if not actually unintelligible.

(γ) Considerations such as the foregoing have already brought us within reach of the truer conception of the objective truth of art and the mode under which it assimilates the material of past history. We propose now to offer further illustrations in support of the same.

(αα) And we may start at once by drawing attention to a characteristic which is common alike to the genuine national poetry of all peoples and in every period of past history, namely, that the historical and formal aspect of that poetry is entirely national, that is to say, it retains nothing incongruous to the people for whom it is composed. This is a feature shared alike by the great epics of India, the Homeric poems and the Greek drama. Sophocles never made his Philoctetes, Antigone, Ajax, Orestes, Œdipus, his choregi and choruses speak in the speech and manner that would have been entirely appropriate to their own times. The Spaniards have written their romances of the Cid under the same guiding principle. Tasso in his "Jerusalem Liberated" celebrated the universal interests of Catholic Christendom. Camoens, the poet of Portugal, depicted the discovery of the seaway to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and all the infinitely various adventures of the sea heroes that made it possible; and these acts of daring were the acts of his own people. Shakespeare threw into dramatic form the tragic history of his own country and even a Voltaire wrote his "Henriade." Far indeed have we Germans strayed from the path thus marked for us when we hope to work up into national epics histories remote from our own, which carry no longer with them a national interest of any kind. Bodmer's "Noachide" and Kloptock's "Messias" have started a new fashion of their own, ay, as they have overturned that old one which taught us that it redounds to a nation's glory to have its Homer, to say nothing of its Pindar and Sophocles. Those biblical stories, it is true, present points of special affinity with the national imagination owing to our close acquaintance with the old and new Testaments; but the historical material in its association with ancient custom and the like remains for all that only intelligible to the savant, and all the most of us can pick up from such epics is the prosaic interfusion of events and characters, which, in such a process of translation, have merely some novel form of speech thrust into their mouths, and the final result can only impress us as hollow and artificial.

(ββ) At the same time art cannot be restricted wholly to material borrowed from one nation. And as a matter of fact the more nationalities have come into contact with one another, the more their poets have looked abroad among all nations and times for the subject-matter of their poems. But however this may be the case, it is none the less an error to suppose that the mere fact that a poet is able, so to speak, to live into times aloof from his own at once stamps him as a man of creative genius. It is more to the point to recollect that this historical framework must, in the co-ordination of a poem, be retained only in strict subordination, and as a means of expressing that which permanently belongs to our humanity. Precisely in this way the Middle Ages long ago borrowed much from antiquity, but so absolutely suffused it with the content of its own epoch that, in this respect verging on the opposite extreme, we really get nothing from that antiquity but the bare names of Alexander, Aeneas, and the emperor Octavius.

First in importance, then, is this permanent condition of true art, immediate intelligibility. It will be found an invariable truth that all nations have emphasized precisely that in this life which was most agreeable to their artistic sense, their desire being always to find what was most intimate to themselves, their life and existence in their art. It was this independent flavour of patriotism which Calderon worked into such characters as his Zenobia and Semiramis; and Shakespeare in the same way was able to imprint upon the most varied subject-matter the hall-mark of his English ancestry, although he knew how to preserve along with it the essential traits of historical characters belonging to nations foreign to his own, the Roman for example, in a far profounder degree than was possible to the Spanish poets. Even the Greek tragedians had their eyes constantly directed to the actual conditions of their times and the particular city in which they lived. The "Œdipus Colonus" in its local references is not merely in a peculiar way associated with Athens but, by virtue of the fact that Œdipus dies in this locality, at once indicates him as the future Preserver of that city. In somewhat other associations the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus is, owing to the decisive sentence of the Areopagus, marked by an interest of more vital interest to the Athenians[401]. On the other hand Greek mythology, despite all the varied and oft repeated use that has been made of it since the revival of the arts and learning, has never fully come home to the general sense of modern emotions and in various degrees in the plastic arts and still more in poetry, despite its very extensive influence here, has failed to arouse real enthusiasm. No one thinks now of writing an ode to Venus, Zeus, or Pallas[402]. Sculpture, it is true, can hardly get along even in modern times without the assistance of the Greek Pantheon, but for that very reason it is mainly only appreciated by and intelligible to a select circle of cultivated men who are either connoisseurs or critics. As one of these, Goethe spared no pains in his endeavour to arouse in contemporary artists an enthusiasm which should go so far as to imitate the pictures of Philostratus, but for the most part his pains were thrown away. Such examples of the work of antiquity, on account of the very flavour of past time and a life that has vanished, which clings to them, remain as strange to contemporary art as they do to the general public. As a contrary example of real success on the part of Goethe we may instance the far profounder insight he has shown us during the later period of his poetic activity in fusing by means of his "Westöstlicher Divan" the colour of the East with the poetry that really appeals to us to-day, giving to the Orient, in fact, its modern embodiment. In this process of assimilation he has clearly shown himself alive to the fact that he is a poet of the West and a German as well, and consequently while preserving the fundamental key-note of the Oriental spirit in his delineation of characters and situations to which it was appropriate, was able at the same time fully to satisfy the claims of the modern spirit and those of his own personality. Subject to such reservations it is undoubtedly in the province of a poet to borrow his material from remote regions, past centuries and foreign nations, maintaining in their broad and most characteristic outlines the historical form of ancient mythology, custom, and institution. At the same time he will take care to utilize such forms only as the external frame of his delineations, never permitting the essential content of such productions to fall into any disharmony with the profounder instincts of his own native world. As the most extraordinary example of this Goethe's "Iphigenia" still stands without a rival.

In their relation to such a transformation the several arts dispose of their material very differently. In the love-poems of lyrical poetry very little use is made of local associations depicted with historical accuracy. The emotional situation and the movement of sentiment is here the main thing. We receive, for example, in the sonnets of Petrarch a very small substratum of natural fact relatively to Laura, hardly anything more than her name, which might just as well have been another. Of local interest we get the barest scraps, and that entirely of general significance, such as the existence of the fountain of Vaucluse and things of that kind. Epical poetry, on the contrary, requires the greatest detail in its natural descriptions, and we are most readily pleased with their historical truth, provided always that the picture is both clear and intelligible. The use of the external truth of historical facts presents the greatest pitfalls to dramatic art, more particularly in reference to its theatrical presentation, where everything is directly addressed to an audience, or purports to strike upon sense with the vividness of life, so that we are willing to recognize and entrust ourselves therein with equal directness. Here the delineation of historical truth in its external aspects must for the most part be of subsidiary importance, in fact retain little more than the framework of it. It must, in short, remain true to that natural relation we find in love-poetry, in which at the same time that we are able completely to sympathize with the feelings expressed in every way another name is given to the beloved than that of the lady most loved by ourselves[403]. It does not here in the least signify whether or no our critics fail to discover absolute precision in the picture presented of the particular manners, culture, and emotional expression of the time. In Shakespeare's historical dramas we find a great deal that remains strange to us and of no considerable interest. We are contented enough on a mere reading, but in the theatre our enjoyment ceases. Critics and men of learning no doubt stick fast to their idea that such exquisite scraps of genuine history should be presented on the stage on their own merits and come down severely upon the wretched taste of the public, when it lets us see how bored it is over such things. Unfortunately a work of art and the direct enjoyment we receive from it is in no sense particularly for critics or savants, but for this very public. Critics have really no reason to give themselves such airs. They are after all but units of this public, and the mere attention to historical detail can be of as little serious interest to them as any other members of it. For this reason the English nowadays in their theatrical performances only include such scenes from the Shakespearean drama which require nothing further to make them clear and intelligible, being happily free from the pedantry of our aesthetic professors who held that all that is most remote in historical incident from the apprehension of an average audience should be thrust before their eyes. It follows also from our view of the matter that when foreign dramas are reproduced on the stage the public is clearly entitled to have them considerably remodelled[404]. Even that which is excellent in itself may require some alteration. No doubt it will be contended that what is essentially first-rate art retains its excellence for all times; but a work of art has also an aspect of transitory worth, which yields to the years, and it is this of course which requires remodelling. As people change so too the sense of beauty alters; and it is important that the particular public, before whom any work is represented, should feel themselves quite at home in the whole of such a work including that aspect which derives all its significance from external history.

It is this conditional acceptance of historical truth which at once explains and justifies that which is generally known in Art as anachronism, and which is usually attributed to artists as a serious defect. Primarily such examples of anachronism will be found to attach to matters of purely external interest. That a Falstaff should talk about pistols is no matter of consequence whatever. The case is more serious when we have a violin placed in the hands of Orpheus, for here the association of such prehistorical times with an instrument so essentially modern as the violin, one which everybody knows was not invented in those days, presents too glaring a violation of truth. For this reason it is now the fashion in theatrical circles to bestow incredible pains and care upon the historical accuracy of details in the matter of costume and the getting up of a piece, as, for example, the infinite trouble lavished upon the historical procession in the "Maid of Orleans."[405] Such efforts are in the majority of eases lost labour, for the simple reason that they only concern matters of relative interest or points that might be wholly passed over. The more important type of anachronisms has nothing whatever to do with stage costume and all that with which stage business is concerned, but consists in making characters express their emotions and ideas, venture upon soliloquies and actions in a form or of a substance which absolutely contradicts the conditions of their times and culture, their religious and general preconceptions. It is common to apply the conception of natural truth to such examples of anachronism, in other words, to say that it is unnatural for characters to speak or act otherwise than they would have spoken and acted in their own days. If we stick, however, too closely to the logic of this naturalism we shall only land ourselves in further complications[406]. For an artist, in depicting the emotional life with all that results from it, and the fundamental passions that belong to it, being mainly interested in the affirmation of individuality, ought not merely to repeat that life under its ordinary daily dress; it is rather his business to show every true manifestation of pathos in the particular light which best reveals its real quality. The whole object of his attainment as an artist is not merely to understand what is of vital significance in the truth he faces, but to be able to give it the precise form which will best direct our own eyes and ears and heart to his own discovery. To attain this it is obvious that he must keep in view the particular culture of his own time no less than all its various powers of expression. In the time of the Trojan war the kind of speech in general use, and indeed the whole fabric of social life, was as far removed from the type of culture which is reflected on us from the pages of the "Iliad" as the mass of the nation and the pre-eminent worthies of the royal houses then reigning in Greece were separated from the fully developed form of ideas and expression such as arouse our wonder when we read our Aeschylus, or behold the perfected beauty of the style of Sophocles. A violation of the so-called "path of Nature" of this kind is in art an anachronism implied in her laws. The inward kernel of that which she reveals remains unaffected, but the more developed power at the artist's command, in revealing and disclosing this essential core of his subject, renders some change in the mode of its expression inevitable. It is a wholly different matter when a modification of this kind proceeds so far as to impose ideas and conceptions of a later form of the religious and moral consciousness on a century or a nation whose entire spiritual outlook is opposed to such more recent conceptions. The Christian religion has gathered in its train forms of the moral life, which were entirely foreign to the moral consciousness of ancient Greece. That inward introspection of conscience, for example, ever on the alert to decide the ethical significance of action, with its accompanying remorse and repentance, first appears in the moral culture of a more modern date. The heroic character knows nothing of a repentance which sets itself in hostility to its past. What it has done it abides by. Orestes does not repent of his mother's murder. The Furies that rise out of the shadow of his action pursue him, no doubt; but the Eumenides are, at the same time, represented as universal powers, and not as voices that cry out to him from his own conscience simply. This very heart and substance of a given period of man's history a poet must master, and only when we find him interfusing with this central core of reality matter that directly contradicts it is he guilty of any truly grave anachronism. In conclusion, then, we may say that it is indeed part of the poet's function to live into the spirit of past times and foreign peoples, for this substance of their life, if it be truly such, remains a possession for all time; but to attempt to reflect with every accuracy of detail all the definition of that external show now buried beneath the rust of antiquity is merely the effort of a learning essentially childish, intent on preserving what is itself shadow rather than substance. No doubt even in this direction, the truth of general outlines should be carefully respected, but never to such lengths as would compel art to forfeit her claim of drawing upon the fiction of her invention, and the truth of fact with equal impartiality.

(γγ) We are now in a better condition to understand all that is really implied in the assimilation by art of that which is strange in the external features of remote history, and the true conception of the objective life of her creations. A work of art must primarily enclose for us within its embrace the higher interests of spirit and volitional power, all that is essentially human, and possesses real weight, the depths, that is to say, of man's emotional life. The main thing of all is that this embodied content[407] should transpierce all purely external conditions of manifestation, should ring, as it were, through all that is less vital in its significance[408] this fundamental chord of truth. The real objectivity, therefore, unfolds as from a sheath, the pathos, that is the substantive content of a situation, unfolds, moreover, the rich and powerful personality in which the essential phases of spirit are alive, and find their realization and expression. For such embodiment all that is absolutely indispensable is a definition and determination of the real, which is generally suitable to the object thus defined, and which requires nothing further to explain it. If we have once got hold of such a form unfolded in strict accordance with our Ideal principle, then we have a work of art essentially objective in the true sense, and the question whether each and every historical detail is justified is of no further importance. We have before us a work of art which appeals directly to our inner life, and one which is our own possession. Once possessed of that, and we may take as much as we please of that element of the form which lay more closely to periods of life which have passed; but the eternal foundation is that which appeals to all men in all places, which is carried forward with a power that never wanes or fails to influence us, and it does so because the objective life it reveals is the same that abounds in and overflows our own souls. That which is merely historical in the appearance is, on the contrary, the element that vanishes; and, in dealing with works of art created in days remote from our own, we must do our best to resolve the discordance, and, indeed, must be fully prepared to blot out from our vision similar defects in works that spring from our own times. Thus it is that the Psalms of David, with their immortal celebration of the Lord in His goodness, and the wrath of His almightiness, no less than the profound sorrows of the Hebrew prophets as they face Babylon and Zion, touch men with the same force to-day as they did of old time: nay, even a moral diatribe, such as is sung by Sarastro in the "Zauberflöte," may come home to the hearts of us all, including the sons of Egypt[409], owing to the soul and vitality which rings through its melodies.

And we may add that every individual to whom a work of art objective in this, the true sense, is presented, must on his part discard his own false prepossessions, wherein he merely wishes to find his own idiosyncrasies repeated. On the first reproduction of "William Tell," it appears, not a single Swiss among the audience was satisfied. In much the same way, when the most beautiful love-songs have been sung, many another, failing to find therein his own passions reflected, has presumed to think the beauty untrue to life; just as so many more, whose knowledge of love is confined to the perusal of romances, have imagined that the love-god would only then be their immortal possession when they found themselves face to face with precisely the same emotions and situations their favourite studies had propounded.

C. THE ARTIST

We have, in this first part of our aesthetical philosophy, examined as a first step the universal Idea of beauty; we then proceeded to inquire in what respects it was defective in its existence as the beauty of Nature, and after thus clearing the way we were in a position to grasp the complete notion of the Ideal as the adequate realization of beauty. We developed the Ideal, first, as conceived abstractly according to the general notion of it, and having determined that were assisted thereby to elucidate the modes of its particular manifestations. Inasmuch, however, as a work of art has its origin in the human spirit it requires the pregnant activity of an individual life from which it proceeds, and as the creation of the same exists for others, that is, a Public which is emotionally receptive. This spiritual and informing activity is the imagination of the artist. We have consequently now, and this is the third and last aspect of the Ideal to which we shall refer, to raise the question how it comes about that this product of men's inner world is not the direct and native growth[410] of that world, but receives its due form through the creative impulse of particular men, in other words, by virtue of the genius and talent of the artist. At the same time we must admit that the question is only raised that we may be able to add the statement that it really is excluded from the sphere of scientific investigation, or, at the most, we can only furnish a few general remarks towards its solution. Yet it is undoubtedly a question frequently raised this, namely, from what source an artist receives the gift and faculty of conception and execution with which he creates his work. We should all of us like, no doubt, to have a ready prescription, a recipe of what we must exactly do, what conditions we must impose on ourselves to produce something as wonderful. We would emulate Cardinal von Este when he asked Ariosto, with reference to his raging Roland: "But, Master Louis, where in the world did you get all this damned stuff from?" Raphael replied to a similar question in a letter we still possess, that he was hunting after a certain idea.

The more obvious aspects of artistic activity we propose to examine under the following heads of discussion:

First, we will give our definition of the general conception of artistic genius and the inspiration it implies.

Secondly, we will make a few observations on the objective character of this creative activity.

Thirdly, we will endeavour to ascertain in virtue of what real artistic originality consists.

1. IMAGINATION, GENIUS, AND INSPIRATION

Before inquiring more closely into the meaning of the term "genius" we must obviously limit the field within which we propose to discuss it. Genius is an expression of very wide connotation, and is used not merely in its application to artists, but equally when we refer to great generals and kings, as also to the heroic captains of scientific discovery. For the sake of simplification we would once more discuss the distinctions involved under a triple division of our subject-matter.

(a) The Imagination[411]

The most conspicuous faculty of an artist which arrests our attention when we direct it expressly upon the capacities implied in artistic productivity is the imagination. And we must be careful here not to confuse it with a visionary fancy which is wholly passive. The imagination creates.