Chapter III · (continued 3)

Now if we abide in these entirely vacant forms, which originate in the absoluteness of the abstract Ego, nothing can then be regarded as of value in itself, that is, essentially and on its own account[124]. It is exclusively produced by the subjectivity of the Ego. But this being so, it follows that the Ego remains lord and master over everything. In no sphere of morals or law, of all that is human or divine, profane or sacred, is there anything at all which would not in the first instance have to be posited by the Ego, and which consequently could not equally be nullified by the same agency. This is nothing less than making all that exists on its own actual and independent warranty a mere semblance, not true and a part of reality on account of itself and by its own instrumentality, but a mere show in virtue of the Ego, within whose power and caprice it remains at the free disposition of such. To suffer its presence and to destroy it stands purely in the favour of the Ego, which has attained the absolute standpoint as essentially the Ego, that and nothing more than that.

Thirdly, the Ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in bringing home its individuality to itself no less than to others, in giving expression to itself and revealing itself among phenomena[125]. For every man during his life endeavours to realize himself and does realize himself. In relation to the beautiful and art this means that he lives the life of an artist, and shapes his life artistically. But, according to the principle now discussed, I live as artist when all my action and expression whatever, in so far as it has to do with a content, is for myself on the plane of mere semblance, and assumes a formal content which is wholly at my disposal. So I am not truly serious either about this content or, speaking generally, about its expression and realization. Genuine seriousness only issues from a substantive interest, a subject-matter which itself possesses a rich content, such as truth, morality, and so on—in other words, from a content which as it stands I regard as essential, so that I only become essential on my own account, in so far as I have absorbed myself in such a content, and have come to conform myself to it in the entire range of my thought and action. At the standpoint at which the artist is the Ego, which both posits and resolves everything through its own essential fiat[126], for which no content of consciousness appears as absolute and essentially independent, but only as itself a semblance created and destroyable, such seriousness can find no place, nothing here receiving a right to be save the formalism of the Ego.

No doubt for others my self-revealment, in which I appear to them, may be taken seriously, inasmuch as they interpret me as though in reality I was in earnest about the business; but therein they are deluded, poor, borné creatures, without the faculty or the power to comprehend and attain to the height of my argument. And by this it is brought home to me that everyone is not so free (e.g., that is formally free) as to see in all which is usually of value, dignity and sanctity to mankind, merely a product of each man's own possibilities of inclination, which is operative in permitting him to determine and make rich the course of his life, or the reverse. It is thus that this virtuosity of your ironical artist's life comes to be credited as some god-like geniality, for which every conceivable thing is a purely spectral creature, to which the free creator, knowing himself to be absolutely unattached, does not yoke himself, for he can ever annihilate the same no less than create it. Whoever has reached such a standpoint of god-like geniality consequently looks down in his superior fashion on all other mortals. They are ruled out as narrow and dull, in so far, that is, as law, morals, and the rest retain for them a validity that is assured, obligatory, and essential. And the individual who thus lives this artist life, which he does no doubt associate with others, whether friends or mistresses or I know not what, yet as man of genius sets no real stock on such relations as they stand to his individual personality and particular actions. All these are as nothing in their contrast to the universal which is his in its own and independent warranty, namely that genius which faces all such with irony. This is the universal import of the genial god-like irony as this concentration of the Ego in itself, for which all bands are broken, and which can only live in the bliss of self-enjoyment. This irony was the discovery of Herr Fried, von Schlegel, and many have chattered about it after him, or it may be are giving us a fresh sample of such chatter.

The proximate form of this negativity which has been called irony is, then, on the one hand, the illusory nature[127] of all that is matter of fact, or moral, or of substantive content, the nothingness of all that is objective and of essential and independent worth. So long as the Ego adheres to such, a standpoint as this, everything appears to be null and void, the personal subjectivity alone excepted, which thereby becomes hollow and empty, and nothing but conceit itself. Conversely, however, from the opposite point of view, the Ego may also fail to find satisfaction in this self-delight; it may prove an insufficient supply to its craving, so that it now feels a thirst for what is secure and substantive, definite and essential interests. From a situation such as this there arises unhappiness and the contradiction, that whereas, on the one hand, the individual seeks to penetrate into truth and longs after objectivity, yet on the other he is unable to divest himself of this isolation and self-seclusion, is unable to overcome this unsatisfied and abstract soul-inwardness, and consequently is seized with a fit of sentimental yearning, which we have also marked as one of the emanations of the philosophy of Fichte. The discontent of this quiescence and impotence, which is unable either to act or set its hands to anything, lest it have to surrender the harmony within, and which remains unreal and empty, even though it may be essentially unflecked, despite all its craving for reality and the absolute—is the source of morbid saintliness[128] and yearning. A soul that is fair or saintly in a true sense acts and is a reality. But all that yearning and heart burning is merely the feeling of the nothingness of the empty and vain personage, who has it, and yet has not the power to cast himself adrift of this empty void, and fill himself with that which is solid and substantive. In so far, however, as the irony is made an art type it did not restrict itself in giving artistic shape to the life and particular individuality of the man who appropriated the irony. Over and beyond the artistic content of his own actions, etc., the artist had also to produce objective works of art as the creations of his imagination. The principle of such productions, which mainly are confined to the domain of poetry, is once more the display of the god-like as Irony. The ironical here, however, as genial individuality, consists in the self-annihilation of what is noble, great, and excellent. Consequently the independent figures of art will also have to illustrate the principle of absolute subjectivity, and to do so by exhibiting all that is of human worth and dignity as a mere naught in this process of self-annihilation. This implies not merely that we are not to take seriously justice, morality and truth, but that there is really nothing in what is highest and best. In short it amounts to this, that irony contradicts and annihilates itself as manifested in individuals, characters and actions, and consequently is an irony which overreaches itself[129]. This mode or art-type, abstractly considered, approaches closely to the principle of comedy. At the same time we ought fundamentally to distinguish the comic from the ironical as thus associated. For the comic must be limited to the making null what is essentially itself of no worth, that is to say, a false and contradictory appearance, a whim, for instance, a piece of egotism, a particular caprice, as set over against a mighty passion; or even some principle, assumed to be efficacious, or rigid maxims may be thus exposed in their nullity. But it is wholly a different matter, when what is in fact moral and true, generally something with really substantive core, is asserted in an individual and through the same as essentially of no account. Such an individual is then nugatory and despicable in his character, and the weakness and absence of character are thus introduced into the representation. In this distinction, therefore, between the ironical and the comic the point of real importance is what is the nature of the content which is destroyed. They are in the case of irony evil, good for nothing subjects, persons unable to hold staunchly to their fixed and important purposes, only too ready to give it up and to permit its destruction within them. Your "Irony" loves this irony of the characterless. For true character implies on the one hand an essential substance in its purpose, and on the other adherence to such a purpose, so that individuality would be rifled of its veritable existence, if it was compelled to let it drop and give it up. This doggedness and stability constitutes the keynote of character. Cato can only live as Roman and republican. Now if irony is made the keynote of the representation, we have the extreme antithesis to art accepted as the true principle of the work of art. For what we have here is in part insipid figures, in part figures that have neither content nor defined position[130]. Seeing that what is of substance in them is proved to be an illusion. And, last of all, we have into the bargain those yearning floods and unresolved contradictions of the soul. Compositions of this kind are not likely to arouse real interest. And for this very reason it is precisely from the advocates of this Irony that we have the continuous round of lament over the public's want of critical sense, artistic insight and genius, which of course cannot appreciate the lofty ways of such an Irony; in other words what the public does not like is this very mediocrity, which is the half of it mere trifling[131], and the other half without distinctive character. And it is right that these spectre-like, moon-shine gazing natures are no favourites; it is a comfort to think that this insincerity and hypocrisy is not in fashion, and that what men, on the contrary, demand imperatively are full and veritable interests, and no less so characters which remain true to the weighty substance at their core. We may add as a matter of historical interest that it was Solger and Ludwig Tieck who above all accepted irony as the highest principle of art.

This is not the place to speak of Solger at the length he really merits; and I must content myself with a few general remarks. Solger was not, as the others were, satisfied with a superficial philosophical culture. A truly speculative impulse of his innermost nature made him probe the very depths of the philosophical idea. And in doing so he came upon the dialectical phase of the Idea, that transition point which I call the infinite absolute negativity, the activity of the idea in its negation of itself as infinite and universal, in order to pass into finiteness and particularity, and with no less truth once more in order to annul this negation, and in so doing to establish again the universal and infinite within the finite and particular. Solger did not get beyond this negativity; and unquestionably it is a phase[132] in the speculative idea; but nevertheless, as exclusively conceived in this dialectic unrest and dissolution of the infinite no less than the finite, it is only such a phase contributory, and not, as Solger imagined, the Entire Idea. Unfortunately Solger's life was too early broken off to permit him to grasp the concrete evolvement of the philosophical Idea in all it implies. And so he never got beyond this aspect of negativity, which possesses an affinity with the dissolution by irony of all that is determinate no less than essentially substantive, a negative movement which he identified with the principle of artistic activity. Yet in the actual conditions of his life, and with due reference to the stability, seriousness, and sterling qualities of his character, he was neither himself an ironic artist in the sense we have previously described, nor was his really profound instinct for true works of art, a sense which a long course of study of art had developed greatly, either of such an ironical character. So much we will venture in the vindication of Solger, whose life, philosophy, and actual contributions to art merit being wholly kept separate from the apostles of irony previously named.

With regard to Ludwig Tieck, his culture, too, dates from that period in which Jena was the literary centre. Tieck and others who belonged to these superior people are on excellent terms with such modes of expression, without being able to tell us much what they mean. Thus Tieck always insists on the importance of Irony. But when it comes to delivering judgment on great works of art, though his recognition and description of their greatness is no doubt beyond reproach, yet if one imagines that in any particular example—let us say "Romeo and Juliet"—we have the opportunity put for an explanation of that in which here the irony consists, we are wide of the mark. We hear nothing more whatever about Irony.

V[133]

1. After the above introductory observations we may now pass on to the consideration of our subject itself. We are, however, still within the introduction; and being so I do not propose to attempt anything more than indicate by way of sketch the main outlines of the general course of the scientific inquiry which is to follow it. Inasmuch, however, as we have referred to art as issuing from the absolute Idea itself, and, indeed, have assigned as its end the sensuous presentation of the Absolute itself, it will be incumbent on us to conduct this survey of the entire field in such a way, as at least to disclose generally, how the particular parts originate in the notional concept of the beauty of art. We must therefore attempt to awaken some idea of this notion in its broadest significance.

It has already been stated that the content of art is the Idea, and the form of its display the configuration of the sensuous or plastic image. It is further the function of art to mediate these two aspects under the reconciled mode of free totality. The first determinant implied by this is the demand that the content, which has to secure artistic representation, shall disclose an essential capacity for such display. If this is not so all that we possess is a defective combination. A content that, independently, is ill adapted to plastic form and external presentment is compelled to accept this form, or a matter that is of itself prosaic in its character is driven to make the best it can of a mode of presentation which is antagonistic to its nature.

The second requirement, which is deducible from the first, is the demand that the content of art should be nothing essentially abstracts This does not mean, however, that it should be merely concrete in the sense that the sensuous object is such in its contrast to all that is spiritual and the content of thought, regarding these as the essentially simple and abstract. Everything that possesses truth for Spirit; no less than, as part of Nature, is essentially concrete, and, despite its universality, possesses both ideality[134] and particularity essentially within it. When we state, for example, of God that he is simple One, the Supreme Being as such, we have thereby merely given utterance to a lifeless abstraction of the irrational understanding. Such a God, as He is thus not conceived in His concrete truth, can supply no content for art, least of all plastic art. Consequently neither the Jews nor the Turks have been able to represent their God, who is not even an abstraction of the understanding in the above sense, under the positive mode in which Christians have represented Him. For in Christianity God is conceived in His Truth, and as such essentially concrete, as personality[135], as the subjective focus of conscious life, or, more accurately defined, as Spirit. And what He is as Spirit is made explicit to the religious apprehension as a trinity of persons, which at the same time are, in their independence, regarded as One. Here is essentiality, universality, and particularity, no less than their reconciled unity, and it is only a unity such as this which gives us the concrete. And inasmuch as a content, in order to unveil truth at all, must be of this concrete character, art makes the demand for a like concreteness, and, for this reason, that a purely abstract universal does not in itself possess the property to proceed to particularity and external manifestation, and to unity with itself therein.

If, then, a sensuous form and configuration is to be correspondent with a true and therefore concrete content, such must in the third place likewise be as clearly individual, entirely concrete and a self-enclosed unity. This character of concreteness, predicable of both aspects of art, the content no less than the representation, is just the point in which both coalesce and fall in with one another. The natural form of the human body is, for example, such a sensuous concrete capable of displaying Spirit in its essential concreteness and of adapting itself wholly to such a presentment. For which reason we must quit ourselves of the idea that it is a matter of mere accident that an actual phenomenon of the objective world is accepted as the mode in which to embody such a form coalescent with truth. Art does not lay hold of this form either because it is simply there or because there is no other. The concrete content itself implies the presence of external and actual, we may even add the sensuous appearance. But to make this possible this sensuous concrete, which is essentially impressed with a content that is open to mind, is also essentially addressed to the inward conscious life, and the external mode of its configuration, whereby it is visible to perception and the world of idea, has for its aim the being there exclusively for the soul and mind of man. This is the sole reason that content and artistic conformation are dovetailed one into the other. The purely sensuous concrete, that is external Nature as such, does not exclusively originate in such an end. The variously coloured plumage of birds is resplendent unseen; the notes of this song are unheard. The Cereus[136], which only blossoms for a night, withers away without any admiration from another in the wilderness of the southern forests; and these forests, receptacles themselves of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the richest and most aromatic perfumes, perish and collapse in like manner unenjoyed. The work of art has no such naïve and independent being. It is essentially a question, an address to the responding soul of man, an appeal to affections and intelligence.

Although the endowment by art of sensuous shape is not in this respect accidental, yet on the other hand it is not the highest mode of grasping the spiritually concrete. Thought is a higher mode of presentment than that of the sensuous concrete. Though abstract in a relative sense; yet it must not be one-sided, but concrete thinking, in order to be true and rational. The extent to which a definite content possesses for its appropriate form sensuous artistic representation, or essentially requires, in virtue of its nature, a higher and more spiritual embodiment is a question of difference exemplified at once if we compare the Greek gods with God as conceived under Christian ideas. The Greek god is not abstract, but individual, and is in close association with the natural human form. The Christian God is also, no doubt, a concrete personality, but under the mode of pure spiritual actuality, who is cognized as Spirit and in Spirit[137]. His medium of determinate existence is therefore essentially knowledge of the mind and not external natural shape, by means of which His representation can only be imperfect, and not in the entire depths of His idea or notional concept.

Inasmuch, however, as it is the function of art to represent the Idea to immediate vision in sensuous shape and not in the form of thought and pure spirituality in the strict sense, and inasmuch as the value and intrinsic worth of this presentment consists in the correspondence and unity of the two aspects, that is the Idea and its sensuous shape, the supreme level and excellence of art and the reality, which is truly consonant with its notion, will depend upon the degree of intimacy and union with which idea and configuration appear together in elaborated fusion. The higher truth consequently is spiritual content which has received the shape adequate to the conception of its essence; and this it is which supplies the principle of division for the philosophy of art. For before the mind can attain to the true notion of its absolute essence, it is constrained to traverse a series of stages rooted in this very notional concept; and to this course of stages which it unfolds to itself, corresponds a coalescent series, immediately related therewith, of the plastic types of art, under the configuration whereof mind as art-spirit presents to itself the consciousness of itself[138].

This evolution within the art-spirit has further itself two sides in virtue of its intrinsic nature. First, that is to say, the development is itself a spiritual and universal one; in other words there are the definite and comprehensive views of the world[139] in their series of gradations which give artistic embodiment to the specific but widely embracing consciousness of Nature, man, and God. Secondly, this ideal or universal art-development has to provide for itself immediate existence and sensuous configuration, and the definite modes of this art-actualization in the sensuous medium are themselves a totality of necessary distinctions in the realm of art—that is to say, they are the particular types of art. No doubt the types of artistic configuration on the one hand are, in respect to their spirituality, of a general character, and not restricted to any one material, and the sensuous existence is similarly itself of varied multiplicity of medium. Inasmuch, however, as this material potentially possesses, precisely as the mind or spirit does, the Idea for its inward soul or significance, it follows that a definite sensuous involves with itself a closer relation and secret bond of association with the spiritual-distinctions and specific types of artistic embodiment[140].

Relatively to these points of view our philosophy will divided into three fundamental parts.

First, we have a general part. It has for its content object the universal Idea of fine art, conceived here as the Ideal, together with the more elaborated relation under which it is placed respectively to Nature and human artistic production.

Secondly, we have evolved from the notional concept of the beauty of art a particular part, in so far as the essential distinctions, which this idea contains in itself, are unfolded in a graduated series of particular modes of configuration[141].

Thirdly, there results a final part which has to consider the particularized content of fine art itself. It consists in the advance of art to the sensuous realization of its shapes and its consummation in a system of the several arts and their genera and species.

2. In respect to the first and second of these divisions it is important to recollect, in order to make all that follows intelligible, that the Idea, viewed as the beautiful in art, is not the Idea in the strict sense, that is as a metaphysical Logic apprehends it as the Absolute. It is rather the Idea as carried into concrete form in the direction of express realization, and as having entered into immediate and adequate unity with such reality. For the Idea as such, although it is both potentially and explicitly true, is only truth in its universality and not as yet presented in objective embodiment. The Idea as fine art, however, is the Idea with the more specific property of being essentially individual reality, in other words, an individual configuration of reality whose express function it is to make manifest the Idea—in its appearance. This amounts to the demand that the Idea and its formative configuration as concrete realization must be brought together under a mode of complete adequacy. The Idea as so conceived, a reality, that is to-say, moulded in conformity with the notional concept of the Idea, is the Ideal. The problem of such consonancy might, in the first instance, be understood in the wholly formal sense that the Idea might be any idea so long as the actual shape, it matters not what the shape might be, represented this particular Idea and no other. In that case, however, the required truth of the Ideal is a fact simply interchangeable with mere correctness, a correctness which consists in the expression of any significance in a manner adapted to it, provided that its meaning is thereby directly discoverable in the form. The Ideal, however, is not to be thus understood. According to the standard or test of its own nature any content whatever can receive adequate presentation, but it does not necessarily thereby possess a claim to be the fine art of the Ideal. Nay, more, in comparison with ideal beauty the presentation will even appear defective. And in this connection we may once for all observe—though actual proof is reserved to a later stage—that the defects of a work of art are not invariably to be attributed to defects of executive skill. Defectiveness of form arises also from defectiveness of content. The Chinese, Hindoos, and Egyptians, for example, in their artistic images, sculptured deities and idols, never passed beyond a formless condition, or a definition of shape that was vicious and false, and were unable to master true beauty. And this was so for the reason that their mythological conceptions, the content and thought of their works of art, were still essentially indeterminate, or only determinate in a false sense, did not, in fact, attain to a content which was absolute in itself. Viewed in this sense the excellence of works of art is so much the greater in the degree that their content and thought is ideal and profound. And in affirming this we have not merely in our mind the degree of executive mastery displayed in the grasp and imitation of natural form as we find it in the objective world. For in certain stages of the artistic consciousness and its reproductive effects the desertion and distortion of the conformations of Nature is not so much due to unintentional technical inexperience or lack of ability, as it is to deliberate alteration, which originates in the mental content itself, and is demanded by the same. From this point of view there is therefore imperfect art, which, both in technical and other respects, may be quite consummate in its own specific sphere, yet if tested with the true notion of art and the Ideal can only appear as defective. Only in the highest art are the Idea and the artistic presentation truly consonant with one another in the sense that the objective embodiment of the Idea is in itself essentially and as realized the true configuration, because the content of the Idea thus expressed is itself in truth the genuine content. It is appertinent to this, as already noted, that the Idea must be defined in and through itself as concrete totality, thereby essentially possessing in itself the principle and standard of its particularization and definition as thus manifested objectively. For example, the Christian imagination will only be able to represent God in human form and with man's means of spiritual expression, because it is herein that God Himself is fully known in Himself as mind or Spirit. Determinacy is, as it were, the bridge to phenomenal presence. Where this determinacy is not totality derived from the Idea itself, where the Idea is not conceived as that which is self-definitive and self-differentiating, it remains abstract and possesses its definition, and with it the principle for the particular mode of embodiment adapted to itself not within itself but as something outside it. And owing to this the Idea is also still abstract and the configuration it assumes is not as yet posited by itself. The Idea, however, which is essentially concrete, carries the principle of its manifestation in itself, and is thereby the means of its own free manifestation. Thus it is only the truly concrete Idea that is able to evoke the true embodiment, and this appropriate coalescence of both is the Ideal.

3. But inasmuch as in this way the Idea is concrete unity, this unity can only enter the artistic consciousness by the expansion and further mediation of the particular aspects of the Idea; and it is through this evolution that the beauty of art receives a totality of particular stages and forms. Therefore, after we have considered fine art in its essence and on its own account, we must see how the beautiful in its entirety breaks up into its particular determinations. This gives, as our second part, the doctrine of the types of art. The origin of these types is to be found in the varied ways under which the Idea is conceived as the content of art; it is by this means that a distinction in the mode of form under which it manifests itself is conditioned. These types are therefore simply the different modes of relation which obtain between the Idea and its configuration, relations which emanate from the Idea itself, and thereby present us with the general basis of division for this sphere. For the principle of division must always be found in the notional concept, the particularization and division of which it is.

We have here to consider three relations of the Idea to its external process of configuration.

(a) First, the origin of artistic creation proceeds from the Idea when, being itself still involved in defective definition and obscurity, or in vicious and untrue determinacy, it becomes embodied in the shapes of art. As indeterminate it does not as yet possess in itself that individuality which the Ideal demands. Its abstract character and one-sidedness leaves its objective presentment still defective and contingent. Consequently this first type of art is rather a mere search after plastic configuration than a power of genuine representation. The Idea has not as yet found the formative principle within itself, and therefore still continues to be the mere effort and strain to find it. We may in general terms describe this form as the symbolic type of art. The abstract Idea possesses in it its external shape outside itself in the purely material substance of Nature, from which the shaping process proceeds, and to which in its expression it is entirely yoked. Natural objects are thus in the first instance left just as they are, while, at the same time the substantive Idea is imposed upon them as their significance, so that their function is henceforth to express the same, and they claim to be interpreted, as though the Idea itself was present in them. A rationale of this is to be found in the fact that the external objects of reality do essentially possess an aspect in which they are qualified to express a universal import. But as a completely adequate coalescence is not yet possible, all that can be the outcome of such a relation is an abstract attribute, as when a lion is understood to symbolize strength.

On the other hand this abstractness of the relation makes present to consciousness no less markedly how the Idea stands relatively to natural phenomena as an alien; and albeit it expatiates in all these shapes, having no other means of expression among all that is real, and seeks after itself in their unrest and defects of genuine proportion, yet for all that it finds them inadequate to meet its needs. It consequently exaggerates natural shapes and the phenomena of Nature in every degree of indefinite and limitless extension; it flounders about in them like a drunkard, and seethes and ferments, doing violence to their truth with the distorted growth of unnatural shapes, and strives vainly by the contrast, hugeness, and splendour of the forms accepted to exalt the phenomena to the plane of the Idea. For the Idea is here still more or less indeterminate, and unadaptable, while the objects of Nature are wholly definite in their shape.

Hence, on account of the incompatibility of the two sides of ideality and objective form to one another, the relation of the Idea to the other becomes a negative one. The former, being in its nature ideal, is unsatisfied with such an embodiment, and posits itself as its inward or ideally universal substance under a relation of sublimity over and above all this inadequate superfluity of natural form. In virtue of this sublimity the natural phenomena, of course, and the human form and event are accepted and left simply as they are, but at the same time, recognized as unequal to their significance, which is exalted far above all earthly content.

These features constitute in general terms the character of the primitive artistic pantheism of the East, which, on the one hand, charges the meanest objects with the significance of the absolute Idea, or, on the other, compels natural form, by doing violence to its structure, to express its world-ideas. And, in consequence, it becomes bizarre, grotesque, and deficient in taste, or turns the infinite but abstract freedom of the substantive Idea contemptuously against all phenomenal existence as alike nugatory and evanescent. By such means the significance cannot be completely presented in the expression, and despite all straining and endeavour the final inadequacy of plastic configuration to Idea remains insuperable. Such may be accepted as the first type of art—symbolic art with its yearning, its fermentation, its mystery, and sublimity.

(b) In the second type of art, which we propose to call "Classical," the twofold defect of symbolic art is annulled. Now the symbolic configuration is imperfect, because, first, the Idea here only enters into consciousness in abstract determinacy or indeterminateness: and, secondly, by reason of the fact that the coalescence of import with embodiment can only throughout remain defective, and in its turn also wholly abstract. The classical art-type solves both these difficulties. It is, in fact, the free and adequate embodiment of the Idea in the shape which, according to its notional concept, is uniquely appropriate to the Idea itself. The Idea is consequently able to unite in free and completely assonant concord with it. For this reason the classical type of art is the first to present us with the creation and vision of the complete Ideal, and to establish the same as realized fact.

The conformability, however, of notion and reality in the classical type ought not to be taken in the purely formal sense of the coalescence of a content with its external form, any more than this was possible in the case of the Ideal. Otherwise every copy from Nature, and every kind of portrait, every landscape, flower, scene, and so forth, which form the aim of the presentment, would at once become classical in virtue of the fact of the agreement it offers between such content and form. In classical art, on the contrary, the characteristic feature of the content consists in this, that it is itself concrete Idea, and as such the concrete spiritual; for it is only that which pertains to Spirit which is veritable ideality[142]. To secure such a content we must find out that in Nature which on its own account is that which is essentially and explicitly appropriate to the spiritual. It must be the original notion itself[143], which has invented the form for concrete spirituality, and now the subjective notion—in the present case the spirit of art—has merely discovered it, and made it, as an existence possessed of natural shape, concordant with free and individual spirituality. Such a configuration, which the Idea essentially possesses as spiritual, and indeed as individually determinate spirituality, when it must perforce appear as a temporal phenomenon, is the human form. Personification and anthropomorphism have frequently been abused as a degradation of the spiritual. But art, in so far as its function is to bring to vision the spiritual in sensuous guise, must advance to such anthropomorphism, inasmuch as Spirit is only adequately presented to perception in its bodily presence. The transmigration of souls in this respect an abstract conception[144], and physiology ought to make it one of its fundamental principles, that life has necessarily, in the course of its evolution, to proceed to the human form, for the reason that it is alone the visible phenomenon adequate to the expression of intelligence.

The human bodily form, then, is employed in the classical type of art not as purely sensuous existence, but exclusively as the existence and natural shape appropriate to mind. It has therefore to be relieved of all the defective excrescences which adhere to it in its purely physical aspect, and from the contingent finiteness of its phenomenal appearance. The external shape must in this way be purified in order to express in itself the content adequate for such a purpose; and, furthermore, along with this, that the coalescence of import and embodiment may be complete, the spirituality which constitutes the content must be of such a character that it is completely able to express itself in the natural form of man, without projecting beyond the limits of such expression within the sensuous and purely physical sphere of existence. Under such a condition Spirit is at the same time defined as particular, the spirit or mind of man, not as simply absolute and eternal. In this latter case it is only capable of asserting and expressing itself as intellectual being[145].

Out of this latter distinction arises, in its turn, the defect which brings about the dissolution of the classical type of art, and makes the demand for a third and higher form, namely the romantic type.

(c) The romantic type of art annuls the completed union of the Idea and its reality, and occurs, if on a higher plane, to the difference and opposition of both sides, which remained unovercome in symbolic art. The classical type of art no doubt attained the highest excellence of which the sensuous embodiment of art is capable. The defect, such as it is, is due to the defect which obtains in art itself throughout, the limitations of its entire province, that is to say. The limitation consists in this, that art in general and, agreeably to its fundamental idea, accepts for its object Spirit, the notion of which is infinite concrete universality, under the guise of sensuously concrete form. In the classical type it sets up the perfected coalescence of spiritual and sensuous existence as adequate conformation of both. As a matter of fact, however, in this fusion mind itself is not represented agreeably to its true notional concept. Mind is the infinite subjectivity of the Idea, which as absolute inwardness[146], is not capable of freely expanding in its entire independence, so long as it remains within the mould of the bodily shape, fused therein as in the existence wholly congenial to it.

To escape from such a condition the romantic type of art once more cancels that inseparable unity of the classical type, by securing a content which passes beyond the classical stage and its mode of expression. This content, if we may recall familiar ideas—is coincident with what Christianity affirms to be true of God as Spirit, in contrast to the Greek faith in gods which forms the essential and most fitting content of classical art. In Greek art the concrete ideal substance is potentially, but not as fully realized, the unity of the human and divine nature; a unity which for the very reason that it is purely immediate and not wholly explicit, is manifested without defect under an immediate and sensuous mode. The Greek god is the object of naïve intuition and sensuous imagination. His shape is therefore the bodily form of man. The sphere of his power and his being is individual and individually limited; and in his opposition to the individual person[147] is an essence and a power with whom the inward life of soul[148] is merely potentially in unity, but does not itself possess this unity as inward subjective knowledge. The higher stage is the knowledge of this implied unity, which in its latency the classical art-type receives as its content and is able to perfectly represent in bodily shape. This elevation of mere potentiality into self-conscious knowledge constitutes an enormous difference. It is nothing less than the infinite difference which, for example, separates man generally from the animal creation. Man is animal; but even in his animal functions he is not restricted within the potential sphere as the animal is, but becomes conscious of them, learns to understand them, and raises them—as, for instance, the process of digestion—into self-conscious science. By this means man dissolves the boundaries of his merely potential immediacy; in virtue of the very fact that he knows himself to be animal he ceases to be merely animal, and as mind is endowed with self-knowledge.

If, then, in this way the unity of the human and divine nature, which in the previous stage was potential, is raised out of this immediate into a self-conscious unity, it follows that the genuine medium for the reality of this content is no longer the sensuous and immediate existence of what is spiritual, that is, the physical body of man, but the self-aware inner life of soul itself. Now it is Christianity—for the reason that it presents to mind God as Spirit, and not as the particular individual spirit, but as absolute in spirit and in truth—which steps back from the sensuousness of imagination into the inward life of reason, and makes this rather than bodily form the medium and determinate existence of its content. So also, the unity of the human and divine nature is a conscious unity exclusively capable of realization by means of spiritual knowledge, and in Spirit. The new content secured thereby is consequently not indefeasibly bound up with the sensuous presentation, as the mode completely adequate, but is rather delivered from this immediate existence, which has to be hypostatized as a negative factor, overcome and reflected back into the spiritual unity. In this way romantic art must be regarded as art transcending itself, albeit within the boundary of its own province, and in the form of art itself.

We may therefore briefly summarize our conclusion that in this third stage the object of art consists in the free and concrete presence of spiritual activity[149], whose vocation it is to appear as such a presence or activity for the inner world of conscious intelligence. In consonance with such an object art cannot merely work for sensuous perception. It must deliver itself to the inward life, which coalesces with its object simply as though this were none other than itself[150], in other words, to the intimacy of soul, to the heart, the emotional life, which as the medium of Spirit itself essentially strives after freedom, and seeks and possesses its reconciliation only in the inner chamber of spirit. It is this inward or ideal world which constitutes the content of the romantic sphere: it will therefore necessarily discover its representation as such inner idea or feeling, and in the show or appearance of the same. The world of the soul and intelligence celebrates its triumph over the external world, and, actually in the medium of that outer world, makes that victory to appear, by reason of which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.

On the other hand, this type of art, like every other, needs an external vehicle of expression. As already stated, the spiritual content has here withdrawn from the external world and its immediate unity into its own world. The sensuous externality of form is consequently accepted and represented, as in the symbolic type, as unessential and transient; furthermore the subjective finite spirit and volition is treated in a similar way; a treatment which even includes the idiosyncrasies or caprice of individuals, character, action, or the particular features of incident and plot. The aspect of external existence is committed to contingency and handed over to the adventurous action of imagination, whose caprice is just as able to reflect the facts given as they are[151], as it can change the shapes of the external world into a medley of its own invention and distort them to mere caricature. For this external element has no longer its notion and significance in its own essential province, as in classical art. It is now discovered in the emotional realm, and this is manifested in the medium of that realm itself rather than in the external and its form of reality, and is able to secure or to recover again the condition of reconciliation with itself in every accident, in all the chance circumstance that falls into independent shape, in all misfortune and sorrow, nay, in crime itself.

Hence it comes about that the characteristics of symbolic art, its indifference, incompatibility and severance of Idea from configurative expression, are here reproduced once more, if with essential difference. And this difference consists in the fact that in romantic art the Idea, whose defectiveness, in the case of the symbol, brought with it the defect of external form, has to display itself as Spirit and in the medium of soul-life as essentially self-complete. And it is to complete fundamentally this higher perfection that it withdraws itself from the external element, It can, in short, seek and consummate its true reality and manifestation nowhere but in its own domain.

This we may take to be in general terms the character of the symbolic, classical, and romantic types of art, which in fact constitute the three relations of the Idea to its embodiment in the realm of human art. They consist in the aspiration after, the attainment and transcendency of the Ideal, viewed as the true concrete notion of beauty.

4. In contrast to these two previous divisions of our subject the third part presupposes the notional concept of the Ideal, and the universal art-types. It in other words consists in their realization through specific sensuous media. We have consequently no longer to deal with the inner or ideal evolution of the beauty of art in conformity with its widest and most fundamental determinations. What we have now before us to consider is how these ideal determinants pass into actual existence, how they are distinguishable in their external aspect, and how they give an independent and a realized shape to every element implied in the evolution of this Idea of beauty as a work of art, and not merely as a universal type. Now it is the peculiar differences immanent in the Idea of beauty which are carried over by it into external existence. For this reason in this third fundamental division these general art-types must themselves supply the basic principle for the articulation and definition of the particular arts. Or, to put the same thing another way, the several species of art possess in themselves the same essential differences, which we have already become acquainted with as the universal art-types. External objectivity, however, to which these types are subjected in a sensuous and consequently specific material, necessitates the differentiation of these types into diverse and independent modes of realization, in other words, those of particular arts. Each general type discovers its determinate character in one determinate external material or medium, in which its adequate presentation is secured under the manner it prescribes. But, from another point of view, these types of art, inasmuch as their definition is none the less consistent with the fact of the universality of their typical import, break through the boundaries of their specific realization in some definite art-species, and achieve an existence in other arts no less, although their position in such is of subordinate importance. For this reason, albeit the particular arts belong specifically to one of these general art-types respectively, the adequate external embodiment whereof they severally constitute, yet this does not prevent them, each after its own mode of external configuration, from representing the totality of these art-types[152]. To summarize, then, in this third principal division we are dealing with the beauty of art, as it unveils itself in a world of realized beauty by means of the arts and their creations. The content of this world is the beautiful, and the true beautiful, as we have seen, is spiritual being in concrete form, the Ideal; or apprehended with still more intimacy it is the absolute mind and truth itself. This region of divine truth artistically presented to sensuous vision and emotion forms the centre of the entire world of art. It is the independent, free and divine Image[153], which has completely appropriated the externality of form and medium, and now wears them simply as the means of its self-manifestation. Inasmuch, however, as the beautiful is unfolded here as objective reality, and in this process is differentiated into particular aspects and phases, this centre posits its extremes, as realized in their peculiar actuality, in antithetical relation to itself. Thus one of these extremes consists of an objectivity as yet devoid of mind, which we may call the natural environment of God. Here the external element, when it receives form, remains as it was, and does not possess its spiritual aim and content in itself, but in another[154]. The other extreme is the divine as inward, something known, as the manifold particularized subjective existence of Deity. It is the truth as operative and vital in sense, soul, and intelligence of particular persons, which does not persist as poured forth into its mould of external shape, but returns into the inward life of individuals. The Divine is under such a mode at once distinguishable from its pure manifestation as Godhead, and passes itself thereby into the variety of particularization which belongs to every kind of particular subjective knowledge, feeling, perception, and emotion. In the analogous province of religion with which art, at its highest elevation, is immediately connected, we conceive the same distinction as follows. First, we imagine the natural life on Earth in its finitude as standing on one side; but then, secondly, the human consciousness accepts God for its object, in which the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity falls away; then, finally, we advance from God as such to the devotion of the community, that is to God as He is alive and present in the subjective consciousness. These three fundamental modifications present themselves in the world of art in independent evolution.

(a) The first of the particular arts with which, according to their fundamental principle, we have to start is architecture considered as a fine art. Its function consists in so elaborating the external material of inorganic Nature that the same becomes intimately connected with Spirit as an artistic and external environment. Its medium is matter itself as an external object, a heavy mass that is subject to mechanical laws; and its forms persist as the forms of inorganic Nature co-ordinated with the relations of the abstract understanding such as symmetry and so forth. In this material and in these forms the Ideal is incapable of realization as concrete spirituality, and the reality thus presented remains confronting the Idea as an external fabric with which it enters into no fusion, or has only entered so far as to establish an abstract relation. And it is in consequence of this that the fundamental type of the art of building is that of symbolism. Architecture is in fact the first pioneer on the highway toward the adequate realization of Godhead. In this service it is put to severe labour with objective nature, that it may disengage it by its effort from the confused growth of finitude and the distortions of contingency. By this means it levels a space for the God, informs His external environment, and builds Him His temple, as a fit place for the concentration of Spirit, and its direction to the absolute objects of intelligent life. It raises an enclosure for the congregation of those assembled, as a defence against the threatening of the tempest, against rain, the hurricane, and savage animals. It in short reveals the will thus to assemble, and although under an external relation, yet in agreement with the principles of art. A significance such as this it can to a greater or less extent import into its material and its forms, in proportion as the determinate content of its fabric, which is the object of its operations and effort, is more or less significant, is more concrete or more abstract, more profound in penetrating its own essential depth, or more obscure and superficial. Indeed architecture may in this respect proceed so far in the execution of such a purpose as to create an adequate artistic existence for such an ideal content in its very forms and material. In doing so, however, it has already passed beyond its peculiar province and is diverted into the stage immediately above it of sculpture. For the boundary of sculpture lies precisely, in this that it retains the spiritual as an inward being which persists in direct contrast to the external embodiment of architecture. It can consequently merely point to that which is absorbed in soul-life as to something external to itself.

(b) Nevertheless, as above explained, the external and inorganic world is purified by architecture, it is co-ordinated under symmetrical laws, and made cognate with mind, and as a result the temple of God, the house of his community, stands before us. Into this temple, in the second place, the God himself enters in the lightning-flash of individuality which smites its way into the inert mass, permeating the same with its presence. In other words the infinite[155] and no longer purely symmetrical form belonging to intelligence brings as it were to a focus and informs the shape in which it is most at home. This is the task of sculpture. In so far as in it the inward life of Spirit, to which the art of architecture can merely point away to, makes its dwelling within the sensuous shape and its external material, and to the extent that these two sides come into plastic communion with one another in such a manner that neither is predominant, sculpture receives as its fundamental type the classical art-form.

For this reason the sensuous element on its own account admits of no expression here which is not affected by spiritual affinities[156], just as, conversely, sculpture can reproduce with completeness no spiritual content, which does not maintain throughout adequate presentation to perception in bodily form. What sculpture, in short, has to do is to make the presence of Spirit stand before us in its bodily shape and in immediate union therewith at rest and in blessedness; and this form has to be made vital by means of the content of spiritual individuality. The external sensuous material is consequently no longer elaborated either in conformity with its mechanical quality alone, as a mass of weight, nor in shapes of the inorganic world simply, nor in entire indifference to colour, etc. It is carried into the ideal forms of the human figure, and, we may add, in the completeness of all three spatial dimensions. In other words and relatively to such a process we must maintain for sculpture that in it the inward or ideal content of Spirit are first revealed in their eternal repose and essential self-stability. To such repose and unity with itself there can only correspond that external shape which itself persists in such unity and repose. And this condition is satisfied by configuration viewed in its abstract spatiality.[157] The spirit which sculpture represents is that which is essentially sound, not broken up in the play of chance conceits and passions; and for this reason its external form also is not dissolved in the manifold variety of appearance, but exhibits itself under this one presentment only as the abstraction of space in the totality of its dimensions.

Assuming, then, that the art of architecture has executed its temple, and the hand of sculpture has placed therein the image of the god, we have in the third place to assume the community of the faithful as confronting the god thus presented to vision in the wide chambers of his dwelling-place. Now this community is the spiritual reflection into its own world of that sensuous presence, the subjective and inward animating life of soul, in its union with which, both for the artistic content and the external material which manifests it, the determining principle may be identified with particularization in varied shapes and qualities, individualization and the life of soul[158] which they imply. The downright and solid fact of unity the god possesses in sculpture breaks up into the multiplicity of a world of particular souls[159], whose union is no longer sensuous but wholly ideal.

Here for the first time God Himself is revealed as veritably Spirit—viz., the Spirit revealed in His community. Here at last He is seen apprehended as this moving to-and-fro, as this alternation between His own essential unity and His realization in the knowledge of individual persons and that separation which it involves, as also in the universal spiritual, being[160] and union of the many. In such a community God is disengaged from the abstraction of His unfolded self-seclusion and self-identity, no less than from the immediate absorption in bodily shape, in which He is presented by sculpture. He is, in a word, lifted into the actual sphere of spiritual existence and knowledge, into the reflected appearance, whose manifestation is essentially inward and the life of heart and soul. Thereby the higher content is now the nature of Spirit, and that in its ultimate or absolute shape. But at the same time the separation to which we have alluded displays this as particular spiritual being, a specific emotional life. Moreover, for the reason that the main thing here is not the untroubled repose of the God in himself[161], but his manifestation simply, the Being which is for another, self-revealment in fact, it follows that, on the plane we have now reached, all the varied content of human subjectivity in its vital movement and activity, whether viewed as passion, action, or event, or more generally the wide realm of human feeling, volition and its discontinuance, become one and all for their own sake objects of artistic representation.

Agreeably with such a content the sensuous element of art has likewise to show itself potentially adapted to such particularization and the display of such an inward content of heart and mind. Media of this description are supplied by colour, musical tones, and finally in sound as mere sign for ideal perceptions and conceptions; and we further obtain the means of realizing with the use of such media a content of this kind in the arts of painting, music, and poetry. Throughout this sphere the sensuous medium is found to be essentially disparate in itself and throughout posited[162] as ideal. In this way it responds in the highest degree to the fundamentally spiritual content of art, and the coalescence of spiritual significance and sensuous material attains a more intimate union than was possible either in architecture or sculpture. At the same time such a union is necessarily more near to soul-life, leaning exclusively to the subjective side of human experience; one which, in so far as form and content are thus constrained to particularization and to posit their result as ideal, can only be actually effected at the expense of the objective universality of the content as also of the fusion with the immediately sensuous medium[163].

The arts, then, which are lifted into a higher strain of ideality, abandoning as they do the symbolism of architecture and the classical Ideal of sculpture, accept their predominant type from the romantic art-form; and these are the arts most fitted to express its mode of configuration. They are, however, a totality of arts, because the romantic type is itself essentially the most concrete.

(c) The articulation of this third sphere of the particular arts may be fixed as follows:

(α) The first art which comes next to sculpture is that of painting. It avails itself for a medium of its content and the plastic configuration of the same of visibility as such, to the extent that it is differentiated in its own nature, in other words is defined in the continuity of colour. No doubt the material of architecture and sculpture is likewise both visible and coloured. It is, however, not, as in painting, visibility in its pure nature, not the essentially simple light, which by its differentiating of itself in its opposition to darkness, and in association with that darkness gives rise to colour[164]. This quality of visibility made essentially ideal[165] and treated as such no longer either requires, as in architecture, the abstractly mechanical qualities of mass as appropriate to materials of weight, nor, as is the case with sculpture, the complete dimensuration of spatial condition, even when concentrated into organic forms. The visibility and the making apparent, which belong to painting, possess differences of quality under a more ideal mode—that is, in the specific varieties of colour—which liberates art from the objective totality of spatial condition, by being limited to a plane surface.

On the other hand the content also attains the widest compass of particularity. Whatever can find a place in the human heart, as emotion, idea, and purpose, whatever it is capable of actually shaping—all such diversity may form part of the varied presentations of painting. The entire world of particular existence, from the most exalted embodiment of mind to the most insignificant natural fact, finds a place here. For it is possible even for finite Nature, in its particular scenes and phenomena, to form part of such artistic display, provided only that we have some reference to conscious life which makes it akin to human thought and emotion[166].

(β) The second art which continues the further realization of the romantic type and forms a distinct contrast to painting is that of music. Its medium, albeit still sensuous, yet proceeds into still profounder subjectivity and particularization. We have here, too, the deliberate treatment of the sensuous medium as ideal, and it consists in the negation and idealization into the isolated unity of a single point[167], the indifferent external collocation of space[168], whose complete appearance is retained by painting and deliberately feigned in its completeness. This isolated point, viewed as this process of negation, is an essentially concrete and active process of cancellation within the determinate substance of the material medium, viewed, that is, as motion and vibration of the material object within itself and in its relation to itself. Such an inchoate ideality of matter, which no longer appears under the form of space, but as temporal ideality[169], is sound or tone. We have here the sensuous set down as negated, and its abstract visibility converted into audibility. In other words sound liberates the ideal content from its fetters in the material substance. This earliest[170] secured inwardness of matter and impregnation of it with soul-life supplies the medium for the intimacy and soul of Spirit—itself as yet indefinite—permitting, as it does, the echo and reverberation of man's emotional world through its entire range of feelings and passions. In this way music forms the centre of the romantic arts, just as sculpture represents the midway point of arrest between architecture and the arts of the romantic subjectivity. Thus, too, it forms the point of transition between the abstract, spatial sensuousness of painting and the abstract spirituality of poetry. Music carries within itself, like architecture, and in contrast to the emotional world simply and its inward self-seclusion, a relation of quantity conformable to the principles of the understanding and their modes of co-ordinated configuration[171].

(γ) We must look for our third and most spiritual type of artistic presentation among the romantic arts in that of poetry. The supreme characteristic of poetry consists in the power with which it brings into vassalage of the mind and its conceptions the sensuous element from which music and painting began to liberate art. For sound, the only remaining external material retained by poetry, is in it no longer the feeling of the sonorous itself, but is a mere sign without independent significance. And it is, moreover, a sign of idea which has become essentially concrete, and not merely[172] of indefinite feeling and its subtle modes and gradations. And this is how sound develops into the Word, as essentially articulate voice, whose intention it is to indicate ideas and thoughts. The purely negative moment to which music advanced now asserts itself as the wholly concrete point, the point which is mind itself, the self-conscious individual, which produces from itself the infinite expansion of its ideas and unites the same with the temporal condition of sound. Yet this sensuous element, which was still in music immediately united to emotion, is in poetry separated from the content of consciousness. Mind, in short, here determines this content for its own sake and apart from all else into the content of idea; to express such idea it no doubt avails itself of sound, but employs it merely as a sign without independent worth or substance. Thus viewed, the sound here may be just as well reproduced by the mere letter, for the audible, like the visible, is here reduced to a mere indication of mind[173]. For this reason, the true medium of poetical representation is the poetical imagination and the intellectual presentation itself; and inasmuch as this element is common to all types of art it follows that poetry is a common thread through them all, and is developed independently in each. Poetry is, in short, the universal art of the mind, which has become essentially free, and which is not fettered in its realization to an externally sensuous material, but which is creatively active in the space, and time belonging to the inner world of ideas and emotion. Yet it is precisely in this its highest phase, that art terminates, by transcending itself; it is just here that it deserts the medium of a harmonious presentation of mind in sensuous shape and passes from the poetry of imaginative idea into the prose of thought.

Such we may accept as the articulate totality of the particular arts; they are the external art of architecture, the objective art of sculpture and the subjective arts of painting, music, and poetry. Many other classifications than these have been attempted, for a work of art presents such a wealth of aspects, that it is quite possible, as has frequently been the case, to make first one and then another the basis of division. For instance, you may take the sensuous medium simply. Architecture may then be viewed as a kind of crystallization; sculpture, as the organic configuration of material in its sensuous and spatial totality; painting as the coloured surface and line, while in music, space, as such, passes over into the point or moment of time replete with content in itself, until we come finally to poetry, where the external medium is wholly suppressed into insignificance. Or, again, these differences have been viewed with reference to their purely abstract conditions of space and time. Such abstract divisions of works of art may, as their medium also may be consequentially traced in their characteristic features. They cannot, however, be worked out as the final and fundamental principle, because such aspects themselves derive their origins from a higher principle, and must therefore fall into subordination thereto.

This higher principle we have discovered in the types of art—symbolic, classical, and romantic—which are the universal stages or phases of the Idea of beauty itself.

Their relation to the individual arts in their concrete manifestation as embodiment is of a kind that these arts constitute the real and positive existence of these general art-types. For symbolic art attains its most adequate realization and most pertinent application in architecture, in which it expatiates in the full import of its notion, and is not as yet depreciated, as it were, into the merely inorganic nature dealt with by some other art. The classical type of art finds its unfettered realization, on the other hand, in sculpture, treating architecture merely as the enclosure which surrounds it, and being unable to elaborate painting and music into the wholly adequate[174] forms of its content. Finally, the romantic art-type is supreme in the products of painting and music, and likewise in poetical composition, as their preeminent and unconditionally adequate modes of expression. Poetry is, however, conformable to all types of the beautiful, and its embrace reaches them all for the reason that the poetic imagination is its own proper medium, and imagination is essential to every creation of beauty, whatever its type may be.

To sum up, then, what the particular arts realize in particular works of art, are according to their fundamental conception, simply the universal types which constitute the self-unfolding Idea of beauty. It is as the external realization of this Idea that the wide Pantheon of art is being raised; and the architect and builder thereof is the spirit of beauty as it gradually comes to self-cognition, and to complete which the history of the world will require its evolution of centuries.

FIRST PART

THE IDEA OF FINE ART, OR THE IDEAL

I. THE POSITION OF ART RELATIVELY TO FINITE REALITY, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY

The conclusion of the introduction brings within sight the more methodical exposition of our subject. It will in the first place be useful as a point of departure for a true philosophy of the beautiful to sum up shortly the position of Fine Art in its general relation to the Real, no less than to emphasize the salient features which distinguish the philosophy of Fine Art from other philosophical inquiries.

(a) With this object in view we will first enumerate the diverse attempts which have been made to apprehend the beautiful in thought, placing each in the order which will best assist a critical verdict. We have already contributed something to this in our introduction. And, moreover, we may add that the mere inquiry what others have contributed either rightly or wrongly to our subject, at least with the hope of ascertaining something really instructive to an exposition which claims to be wholly scientific, will not assist us much. So far from this being so we must preface our remarks with the admission that, in the opinion of many, the beautiful, for the very reason that it is the beautiful, does not admit of such intellectual apprehension, is, in short, no object intelligible to human thought. To such a thesis we must for the present—in our response to those who at this time of day contend that all Truth is ultimately incomprehensible, and only the finiteness of the phenomenal and the contingent matters of temporal existence is within our mental grasp—reply that it is precisely Truth, and Truth alone, which is to be thus comprehended, and for this reason that it possesses the absolute notion, or, more succinctly, the Idea for its basic support. Now beauty is no other than a particular determination under which the True is expressed and revealed to us; and it lies open to the fullest comprehension of thought in so far as such can equip it with the armoury of the concrete notion. It is quite true that no idea has suffered more severely in our own time from misconceptions than this which we call the notion in its fullest explication. One is only too often misunderstood to mean a determination which is abstract and one sided, or at least a conception of the analytical understanding. As thus understood neither the totality of Truth nor the idea of beauty as a concrete whole can be brought home to a thinking consciousness. But the idea of beauty, as we have already observed, and shall seek to make more intelligible as we proceed, is no such abstraction of the mind: rather it may be defined as the absolute notion in its self-evolved concreteness, or still more specifically defined, the absolute Idea.

(b) And, further, we cannot more succinctly define the absolute Idea, in the above use of the expression, than by saying it is mind (Spirit): and we may add that the mind thus referred to is not mind regarded as finite, that is, subject to the conditions and limitations of sense-perception, but the universal and absolute Intelligence[175], which, out of its own free activity, determines Truth in the profoundest signification of the term. To the ordinary consciousness of everyday life the object of perception, no doubt, breaks away from mind, as though our thought stood in opposition to Nature, which receives from us a validity equal at least to the consciousness which perceives it. But in this way of looking at Nature and the conscious subject as two neighbours set over against one another in territories equally self-subsistent it is only the finite and limited mind, not that which it is as an infinite substance and in its notional truth, which is apprehended. Nature is not thus to be set over against absolute Mind, either as conjoint with a sphere of the Real of equal worth, or as an independent boundary thereto. Rather the aspect which Nature appears to hold in this respect is that which mind or spirit itself sets up, and of which it becomes the product as a Nature in which limit and boundary are themselves determining constituents. In fact, Mind in its absolute or infinite substance can only be apprehended as this free activity, which is manifested in self-development through differentiation. This object, this other, through which such differentiation proceeds, is regarded in such opposition as Nature, but as the object of intelligence it is quite as much indebted to Mind for the free gift and fulness of its own essential substance. We must therefore conceive Nature as herself containing in potency the absolute Idea. She is that Idea in apparent shape, which mind, in its synthetic power, posits as the object opposed to itself. She is so far a product, a creation. The truth of Nature therefore is simply the determination by mind of its own substance, its ideality and power of determination, through a process which no doubt begins with a separation of itself into two factors which apparently negate each other, but which, by the very activity of such negation and separation, passes beyond the contradiction it implies to a unity which heals the fracture. Instead of finding our-elves opposed to a limit and a barrier we have a totality in which the parts which opposed each other are fused together by the free universality of mind. This ideality, in other words this infinite power of determination[176], is that which constitutes the profound notion of Mind's subjectivity. As subjectivity mind is, in the first instance, merely Nature, Mind, or Spirit that is not explicitly unfolded, mind which has not arrived at the grasp of its true notion. Nature is here set up in opposition to Mind, not as an object which itself has created, but as one whose limits it fails to overcome, an object, moreover, which, as assumed to be already subsisting in independence, Mind remains alongside of in the internal seclusion of knowledge and volition, and is only able to constitute the other side of Nature. The finiteness of scientific theory, no less than that of practical life, is to be, found in this limited mode of consciousness, where intelligence is restricted to the use of finite categories and the formal "ought" in the realization of ethical perfection[177]. We find here, as we have pointed out was the case with Nature, that the phenomenal is not adequate to the essential truth of that which appears; what we receive is still the confusing medley of abilities, passions, intentions, opinions, and talents, which no sooner make themselves felt than they are displaced, working at cross purposes as often against as on the side of each other, in a strife between volition, opinion, and reflection, which brings to the surface every phase of fortuitous experience in all its confusing variety. It is the standpoint of the entirely finite, temporal, contradictory, and for that reason transitory, unsatisfied, and unreconciled spirit. For the satisfactions which obtain in such a consciousness, through the finiteness which inseparably clings to its entire outlook, itself so limited and confused, are of a purely relative and isolated validity. It is inevitable that consciousness, volition, and thought should make an effort to rise above this condition and seek for the universality, unity, and satisfaction which it eventually finds in the infinite substance of Spirit and its Truth. This unity and satisfaction, to which mind is carried forward by the impulse of its own ideal activity, transmuting the raw material of its finite conditions, constitutes the first revelation of that which the world of appearances is under a more notional grasp of it. Mind grasps its finiteness as the negation of its own essential substance, and is aware of its infinity. And this essential truth of the finite mind is the absolute Mind or Spirit. In this form of self-consciousness mind is merely actualized as absolute negativity. The element of finitude which it confronts is apprehended as such and annulled. In this, the highest sphere of its activity, mind becomes the object of volition. The Absolute itself becomes the object of mind. Spirit, as self-consciousness, differentiates itself as the knowing subject from the absolute Spirit as the object of knowledge. Mind in this latter sense, in contradistinction from mind which has not overcome the conditions of finite perception, may therefore be defined as a finite mind in possession of the principle of differentiation from its true object. In the higher and more speculative consideration of truth, however, it is the absolute mind itself, which, in order to unfold explicitly the knowledge of itself, essentially becomes a principle of differentiation to itself, and thereby posits the finitude of mind, within which it becomes for itself absolute object of the knowledge of itself. It is now absolute mind within the ideal community[178] which belongs to it, the actual Absolute of itself in the form of Mind and knowledge[179].

This is, in fact, the starting-point of the Philosophy of Fine Art. For the idea of Fine Art is neither the logical Idea, absolute Thought, that is, which develops itself in the medium of its freest activity, nor is it the Idea of Nature apprehended under more finite categories. Its province is rather that of Mind untrammelled by either the judgments or the actions of the finite spirit.

(c) The realm of Fine Art is the realm of absolute Spirit. We can but briefly indicate the reason why this is so. A fully philosophical proof belongs rather to treatises which immediately deal with those questions of philosophy we have noticed already, by which we mean those which treat of Logic, whose content, as above explained, is that of the absolute Idea, or the philosophy of Nature, or lastly, the philosophy of Mind in its determinate spheres of finitude. For in these sciences the object is to show not merely how the logical Idea presupposes the objective particularity of Nature as a vehicle to its determinate existence, but also how it is capable of passing from such externality to mind, and, finally, of freeing itself from all the finitude that clings to it and of attaining to Spirit in its eternal concreteness and truth.

From such a point of view, which is also applicable to art when regarded in all the fulness of worth it in truth implies, we are justified in associating it with the self-same province which belongs to religion and speculative philosophy. In every direction in which Mind or Spirit becomes identical with the absolute Mind it frees itself from the restricting limits of its positive existence, and, while liberating itself from the contingent relations, which pertain to it in its temporal existence, and the finite content of its objects and interests, is made aware of and discloses the entire wealth of reality it contains.

It may be of service here to expand more completely the position which Art thus occupies in its relation respectively to the life of Nature and Spirit.

A survey of the entire field of human existence presents to the ordinary consciousness of mankind the widest variety of interests and means of satisfaction. There is, in the first instance, the complex system of purely physical necessities, to the satisfaction of which the whole economy of industrial enterprise, through all its complicated tissue of commerce, merchandize, and technical crafts, is actively pursued. If we raise the level of our review to a more spiritual range, we are confronted with the world where rights are established and enforced, the world of legislative enactment, family life, division of social classes, in a word, the concrete living organism of the State. And more than this, there is the religious want, which asserts itself in the hearts of particular men and women, and finds its satisfaction in the life of a church. Finally, there is the many-sided and intricately specialized activity of scientific research, the organized effort to integrate all knowledge, and the comprehension which that knowledge implies, in one all-embracing system. Within this latter are comprised the activities of the fine arts, the interest, that is to say, in beauty, and which derives its spiritual nutriment in the realization of that beauty in plastic shapes.

(d) The question becomes inevitable how far a spiritual want of this kind is bound up as a necessary element in the life of man and his world-history. In the first instance these two spheres[180] appear simply as immediate factors of our entire survey. It is, however, the requirement of philosophy to probe more deeply into that which binds them as essential and necessarily interacting constituents of one organic whole. For on closer inspection it will be found that they do not stand in relation to one another on the mere basis of utility; rather we shall discover that only through the one we shall fully comprehend the other. In other words, the one circle overlaps the other, in the sense that the higher forms of its activity are found to be a part of the other; and that which is of less value in its own province is lifted into a finer atmosphere; and what had failed to free itself from its original bounds is now enlarged to liberty through the profounder satisfaction it receives in the widening of the range of its interests[181]. And it is this which makes clear the necessity of the ideal bond.

We will recall now for a moment the analysis we established of the notion of the beautiful and that of art generally. Two opposed aspects come under notice. In the first place we have a content, an end, a significance; and in addition to that we get the artistic expression of the same, the appearance and realization of such content; and, thirdly, these two aspects of the artistic product so pass into each other that the rationality or particularity is nothing short of the expression of the artistic purpose, nothing more or less is given us than the essential expression of the entire content. What we designate as content, "significance," is just this simplicity of idea, the work of art resolved into its simplest yet most comprehensive determinants, as it exists for mind in contrast with the actual work executed. As an example we may summarize the content of a book from a few words or sentences the book contains, and nothing may be necessary to expound the content of that book sufficiently in its general import. This simple idea, the thesis or main problem of our book, which forms the fundamental basis on which the entire structure is built, is the abstract significance. It is only the detailed exposition which gives us the concrete totality.

Both sides, however, of this opposition do not stand in an indifferent or purely external relation one to the other, as, for instance, is the case when we contrast with it the particular content of an abstract mathematical figure, such as a triangle or an ellipse, to which the external particularity of its size or figure is related without affecting its significance. Rather in the former case we shall find that the content of its form, taken in abstraction in itself, possesses a determinate impulse in the direction of realization and thereby concreteness. There is in it essentially the "should" of purpose. However strongly form is here posited in independence, we are unable to rest satisfied with such abstraction, and ask for something more. This is at first apprehended merely as an unsatisfied want, a desire in the conscious subject, which strives to annul itself and secure satisfaction. From such a standpoint all we can say is that the content is purely self-contained, or subjective, over against which the objective other-than-itself is placed in opposition in such a way as to emphasize the desire to make the subjective content objective. Such a conflict between the subjective content and the objective, reality which confronts it, no less than the mere impulse to transcend the opposition, is a universal characteristic of the determination of all self-conscious life[182]. Even that aspect of human life which we call physical, and still more that world of man's spiritual aims and interests depends on this necessity to carry forward that which is at first purely subjective and ideal into the objective world, that a fuller satisfaction in its essential substance may be realized. But so long as the content of aims and interests is merely and at first apprehended in the one-sided form of subjective consciousness, and that one-sidedness is apprehended as a mere limit, this loss makes itself simply felt as unrest or pain. It is a negative something which is bound to resolve itself as such negativity, and, in order to remove the sense of defect, exerts an impulse to transcend the barrier itself, already an object of consciousness and thought. And, moreover, this transcendency does not merely amount to this, that the objective "other" ceases to be an opposed factor to the general subjective consciousness: rather in the more determinate connection, this defect of subjective thought is itself and within itself a defect and negation which involves an impulse to negate and pass beyond. In other words the conscious subject is implicitly and according to its essential notion the complete whole[183], that is, not merely what is inward, but the realization no less of that which is inward or ideal in and through what is without. If we assume that it exists only abstractly in one form we have to face the contradiction that whereas it is, according to its concrete notion the whole, yet according to its mode of existence it remains merely one side of that totality. It is only through the entire resolution of such a contradiction that life becomes affirmative. To pass through each phase of this opposition, contradiction and its final abrogation is the higher and legitimate demand of conscious life. That which remains always affirmative, is, and remains, without life. Life is built upon negation and pain. It is only by crushing out such contradictions in the crucible of fuller life and knowledge that it remains in its affirmative substance. If it anchor wholly on contradiction without such a possibility of resolution it must be infallibly wrecked thereon.

Such, then, is the nature of these determinations of thought regarded in their abstraction to which it was necessary to draw attention at the present stage.

The most exalted content which lies within the grasp of self-conscious life may be concisely called freedom. Freedom is the highest determination of Spirit. In its formal aspect freedom, in its first instance, consists in this, that the subject thereof ceases to find a limit or barrier in the material which is set over against it; this is no longer an element foreign to it, but one in which it finds itself again. Even under this formal definition of it all necessity and misfortune disappears; the individual consciousness is reconciled with the world, finds satisfaction in such reconciliation, and all opposition and contradiction is thereby dissolved.

But over and above this, on closer inspection, we find that it is universally the rational—that is to say ethical relations in practical life, truth in thought—which constitutes the content of freedom. But, furthermore, inasmuch as freedom itself is in the first instance only subjective, not wholly carried into effect, there must remain for the individual an element of unfreedom, a somewhat purely objective opposed to it as a necessity of Nature; and it is accompanied likewise with the demand to secure a reconciliation of this opposition. From the reverse point of view a similar contradiction is apparent in the internal domain of the subjective consciousness itself. We have, on the one hand, that which is universal and self-subsistent in its own right, in other words the universal dictates or principles of justice, goodness, and truth. On the other there are the various impulses of mankind, all the emotions, preferences, and passions which exercise their power over the heart of each man and woman individually. This opposition no less than the other excites conflict and contradiction, and in this strife man becomes subject to every conceivable longing, the profoundest grief, and, in a word, to every kind of worry and discontent. It is the prerogative of the spiritual life of mankind to be a veil severed and broken asunder, tossed as it must be on the waves of contradiction. The animal creation lives at peace with itself and its environment. Man is unable to find a complete refuge in that which is exclusively inward, the soul as such, pure thought, in the world of legal obligation and its universality. He is dependent also upon his sensuous existence, his emotions, and all that appeals to his heart and soul. It is the part of philosophy to give expression to this contradiction in thought, as it extends throughout its all-embracing compass, and to overcome the same with a reconciliation equally comprehensive.

In the immediacy of everyday life, however, man seeks to secure an immediate satisfaction. Perhaps the most obvious example of such a resolution is to be found in the domain of animal wants and their satisfaction.

The states of hunger, thirst, fatigue on the one hand, and feeding, drinking, sleep on the other, with all such similar states, illustrate the contradictions and resolutions to which we here refer.

In this sphere of human existence, which is fundamentally the same as purely animal life, the content of such satisfaction is, however, of a finite and limited range. Such satiety carries with it no permanence, but moves forward without rest to a renewed sense of want. Men eat, drink, and sleep, and on the morrow are as hungry and weary as before. Man is compelled, therefore, to strive for a freedom more lasting in that element of the spiritual life which he appropriates in knowledge and volition, the sciences and his social activities. The ignorant man is unfree because he faces a world which is foreign to himself, a world which tosses hither and thither aimlessly, to which he is joined as an appendage, unable to unite that foreign world to itself, and to feel itself at home there as in its own demesne. The merest impulse of curiosity, the awakening of the love of knowledge, the lowest phase of animate unrest, and the highest grasp of philosophical insight are ultimately derived from the same source, namely, the desire to overcome every condition that is unfavourable to freedom, and to bring the world of everyday life, and that of the subject which reflects upon it, into one harmonious unity. If we consider the world of action the result is the same; freedom in human action is the attempt to make positive or real the reason of the Will. Reason is realized by voluntary action through the life of the State. In a State that is differentiated through itself on any rational principle, all the laws and social institutions which belong to it are simply a realization of freedom according to their own essential determinants. This being so, the reason that belongs to any citizen discovers in such institutions its own essential life: and, so long as such is not in revolt from those laws, proceeds with them as with its own kith and kin rather than a foreign adversary. We not infrequently find licence identified with freedom. But the freedom of licence is irrational; it depends upon a choice and self-determination which has nothing to do with a rational will, but is rather the product of accidental impulses and their dependence on the world of sense and physical Nature.

We may conclude, then, that the physical needs of man, no less than his knowledge and power of volition, receive in fact, each in its own sphere, a satisfaction in the world, and deliberately break up the contradiction between the subjective and objective, that is to say, between the freedom of consciousness and the external necessity of things with which it is confronted. The content, however, of such a freedom and the satisfaction which is therein experienced is still subject to limitations, and for this reason both still retain an element of finitude. And wherever we find such an element supervening it is inevitable that the original contradiction should again reassert itself, and the self-satisfaction only maintain a relative significance. For example, in the sphere of jurisprudence and its realization in the State it is true enough that the rationality of each citizen, his will and his freedom are recognized; he is a person and as such is respected; he is the owner of property, and if that property is in danger the courts of law reassert his rights in their integrity. This recognition, however, and the freedom it establishes are confined to single relations and isolated objects, such as a particular house, a sum of money, some particular right or law, in fine some particular transaction in the practical world. What the consciousness has at any one time before it are particular things, which no doubt are related to one another, and in fact form a nucleus of such relations; but, on the other hand, they are appropriate to categories of purely relative validity, are subject to various conditions of tenure, which make the satisfaction only immediately experienced when their predominance is reasserted, or at any rate fail to establish any degree of permanence. And further than this the life of the State in its organic entirety, as a related whole of monarch, government, courts of justice, military control, and general grouping of all the various societies which compose it, no less than the obligations and duties which such arrangements presuppose, the aims and satisfaction to which they are directed, the entire scope of its civic and commercial activities already referred to, in one word the complete organism of a nation's life, is indeed in a genuine State complete in itself, and in a sense rounded off as a real totality. At the same time we must observe that the fundamental principle, for the realization of which the State exists, and wherein the individual man finds his satisfaction as a citizen, is, despite all the variety of that life, all the manifold differentiation of class within itself and as related to the world without, still a whole that is one-sided and in a real sense abstract. It is only the rational freedom of the will made explicit in a particular totality. It is, in short, only the national life, and further the life of a particular nation; a life, moreover, in which freedom is realized in a particular sphere of existence as individualized reality. And on this account it is that we are necessarily conscious, that rights and obligations in the mere bounds of civic existence, on the plane, that is to say, of merely this world's or temporal existence, do not discover the absolute satisfaction we are seeking. We require as rational beings a higher realization of their objective truth as private individuals, a fuller sanction of their imperative validity than they themselves, in such a sphere, can offer us. What mankind, pressed on all sides by the boundaries of his purely terrestrial life, in fact requires is that region of more essential reality, in which every opposition and contradiction is overcome, and freedom can finally claim to be wholly at peace with itself. And this is, of course, nothing other than absolute Truth itself, no merely relative truth. In the Truth, according to its highest notion, all must be brought home to one unity. In it there can be no more opposition between freedom and necessity, Spirit and Nature, knowledge and the object of knowledge, law and impulse, between whatever form, in fact, the opposition of these contradictory phenomena of human experience may assume.