Chapter 10

(b) As already observed, it is unquestionably true that Spirit discovers in its own bodily organism the notion of life completely realized. This is so much the case that, in contrast with it, the forms of the animal world appear not only as incomplete, but in inferior species as even pitiable objects. The human organism is also, however, broken up, if to a less, degree, in racial subdivisions and the ascending grades of beauty which distinguish such races. Moreover, in addition to this obviously very general line of demarcation, we have presented to us all the accidental variety of qualities, peculiar to distinct families and their interfusion with one another, such as modes of life, facial expression, and general demeanour. We must further associate with such characteristic traits, which all of them emphasize a condition of essentially unfree particularity, those peculiarities which are inseparable from activity employed in the endless round of commercial life or professional career; qualities which find their ultimate expression in the specific habits or idiosyncracies of any exceptionally marked character or temperament, or, as the reverse side of the picture, in the various confusions of arrested development. Poverty, care, anger, coldness, and indifference, the rage of passion, the obstinate retention of narrow purposes, indications of change and division in the spiritual world, entire dependence on that of Nature—in one word all that is implied in the transitory condition of human life—leaves its indelible, if quite incalculable, expression on the varied surface of the faces of mankind. Who has not crossed weather-beaten types of such, on which thestorm of all the passions has imprinted its disturbing wave; or others, where the coldness and superficiality of the soul within is all the impression we receive; or, lastly, as the final verdict of self-absorbed particularity[268], cases in which the general type seems almost totally to have disappeared. There is no end to the caprice of the human features. Speaking generally, we would associate with this ground the fact that the beauty of children most arrests us. In their faces we find all pronounced idiosyncracies slumber as it were beneath a quiet veil; no dominating passion as yet ravages their soul; not one of the thousand interests of the grown man has engraved for ever the expression of its necessity on these mobile features. This envisaged innocence of the child, however, though we may discover in its flexible animation the possibility of Life's completed fulness, obviously fails to reveal those profounder indications of a spirit which has been carried forward to explore the range of its own recesses and to make its life one with rational purpose.

We may regard, then, immediate existence, both in the purely physical and spiritual sense of the term, as afinitude, or more justly as a finitude which does not satisfy its notion and for this very reason declares its finitude. For the notion, and more concretely still, the Idea, is essentiallyindependentandfree.Purely animal life, although as Life it is the Idea, is no manifestation of infinity as such or freedom. This is alone possible under conditions, where we find the notion penetrate so completely the reality which is adequate to it, that it finds itself entirely at home therein, with no extraneous matter, to disturb its possession. Then alone do we find it a really free and concrete individuality. The natural life, on the contrary, is unable to overcome the element of feeling to which it is attached, and which renders it incapable of penetrating the entire reality which enrings it. It finds itself, moreover, immediately conditioned in itself, restricted in its range and dependent, a result which is due to the fact that its freedom is not truly self-determinate, but conditioned by the external: object. And the same thing is true of the immediate and finite reality of the spirit world in its knowledge,volitional action, and fateful history. For although in this latter case we find centres of unity expressed which have a real significance, neither these any more than the particularities they unite have truth as they stand by themselves; but only that truth which, in their reciprocal relation to each other, they manifest as constituent parts of a whole. And this whole, albeit in a sense adequate to its notion, does not correspond to it in such a way as to manifest itself in its full totality[269], which consequently still remains aloof from such envisagement, or rather, is only apprehended in the ideal world of thought. In other words, the notion finds no fully adequate presentation in external reality, such as is powerful enough to marshal homogeneously all the numberless fragments of particularity, and to concentrate them intooneexpression andonesingle form.

(c) This, then, is the fundamental reason which prevents Spirit itself, on the finite planes of determinate existence, and under the restricting conditions of its externality and necessity, from rediscovering the immediate vision and enjoyment of its freedom. It is consequently driven by its absence to seek that vision in a higher sphere. That sphere is art, and its realization is the Ideal.

We have thus seen that it is the defects of immediate reality which drive us forward inevitably to the idea of the beauty of art. We are further under an obligation to prove that its fundamental object[270]is to manifest here on this very plane of rational reality and in its freedom the envisagement of life, and, most important of all, the life of Spirit. Here, then, we have at last the external revealed to us in a form adequate to the notion. Here, for the first time, truth is lifted up from its environment of temporal conditions, from its running to and fro among the whirl of finite particularity, and attains repose; nay, more than this, discovers an external form, from which the hunger of Nature and the prose of life no longer stare at us. Here at last we have a form worthy of substantial truth, which is wholly self-contained and self-dependent, determining with freedom its own content, and not driven from such self-assertion by the weight of that of others.

[201]Als Beseelung sich kund gäbe.The reference is to the second class which follows rather than truly animates life. The sun is such an animating principle. How far modern physics with its investigations of the laws of motion that obtain among the chemical atoms of any specific form of matter and its denial of all dead matter would have modified Hegel's view is an interesting question.

[202]Wir wollen betrachten.Hegel seems to be conscious himself that there is something fanciful in this interpretation of the significance of what is simply an arbitrary, if systematic, arrangement of bodies according to natural laws.

[203]Ein besonderes Moment.See note [191] on p. 152. I think what Hegel means here is that every body as a vehicle of light reflects the mode in which the identity of the notion as system in the different parts asserts itself.

[204]In other words what should be phasal elements (Momente) of a whole integrated within that unity remain independent units. They are not Momente in the full sense.

[205]Als bloss real unterschiedener.The meaning is that the distinction is only in the totality, not as in the former case in a body which though part of a system, could be viewed as an independent body like the sun.

[206]Gewöhnliches Bewustseyn,i.e., the ordinary view of understanding (Verstand) and sense-perception.

[207]Blosser Zusammenhang.Fortuitous is rather too strong. He means a bond of union cemented by one principle without which either side fails to possess its specific character,e.g., the human body apart from the human soul its animate individuality, ceases to be human.

[208]Als Begriff seyende Begriff.The reference I take to be to the logical or dialectical movement of the Idea.

[209]Viele tausend empfindende, or centres of feeling.

[210]Die realen Unterschiede,i. e., the distinctions of the body viewed as part of the physical process of Nature.

[211]Zu ihrer subjektiven Einheit, that is to say, their unity with the notion of Life as objectively realized in Nature, subjective only in the sense that it is ideal, not apprehended by sense-perception as such.

[212]Nähere.I think Hegel usesnähein the idiomatic sense in which he uses it in the phrase (p. 150) when he speaks of Nature asdas nächst Daseyn der Idee,i.e., most elementary, more near to it when the notion first presses out of abstraction into totality.

[213]Lötze apparently disputes this distinction, but it appears to me very clear.

[214]Seyn.The logical terms are here employed in their technical Hegelian sense.Seynis "being" as part of a process, it is rather a tendency to become than a particular or determinate being (daseyn.)

[215]Das Negiren, the negation of them as entirely independent structures.

[216]Des Idealisirens,e.g., the principle of ideality which is in one aspect of it negation.

[217]Affirmatives Fürsichseyn,e.g., the explicit ideal totality of Life apart from the process.

[218]Bilderin.

[219]Das Innere, otherwise called subjective (see note above) and meaning what is not externally visible asmateria, though it may be visible indirectly as explained further on.

[220]The rather difficult German here is:Da nun aber in der Objektivität der Begriff als Begriff die sich auf sich beziehende in ihrer Realität für sich seyende Subjektivität ist.The comma afterBegriffis clearly a misprint.

[221]The words here aredas subjektive Fürsichseyn,i.e., the self-conclusion of an explicit whole in virtue of a principle of ideal unity (i.e., life) asserted, throughout.

[222]Ein Beharrendes,> one that persists in an inert form.

[223]Hegel uses the wordscheinenboth for the ideal manifestation of the Idea in the object and the appearance of material reality reduced by it to mere "show" (herabgesetzt zum scheinen),i.e., deprived of its independent reality. This introduces a slight confusion I have endeavoured to avoid by using different terms.

[224]Unseres Verstandes.We supply the notion of intelligent purpose.

[225]That is, the assumed subordination of all organs to one definite end.

[226]Sichbewegens.The emphasis is of course on the self. But even then the statement is rather an excess. For it seems difficult to attribute all the beauty visible in the spontaneous movements of so many living creatures, notably that of birds, to their purely formal character. At least there is something given by such motion analogous to the impression we receive from music and the dance; they aregesetzmässigin short.

[227]Zufällig—capricious as opposed to a uniform principle. There is, however, one apparent bond of external similarity, between the majority of such members, namely, their covering of skin; this not merely relates the cheek to the neck, for example, but to some extent destroys the distinction.

[228]Physical parts, that is to say.

[229]That is to say, it is based on a purely limited experience which does not necessarily concern the true nature of the objects perceived.

[230]Stangen.The word may express the branches on which the flowers are carried or the stamens they carry at their apex.

[231]Geistreich, "intelligent,"i.e., an ingenious way of regarding such facts.

[232]Dies wunderbare Wort.

[233]The use of the wordSinnto which Hegel here alludes is not quite identical with our wordSense.In the English use of the term there is more stress on themateriapresented to sense-perception and perhaps less reference to intellect when the word is employed in such an expression as "That man has sense." However, Milton has "What surmounts the reach of human sense," and no doubt both are employed very similarly in many writers.

[234]Bleibt bei der Ahnung.

[235]Naiver Weise, a common epithet of Hegel to denote freedom from all philosophical prepossessions, a frank and simple attitude of reception.

[236]Betrachtungappears to imply in its contrast withAnschauungthe presence of that intuitive sense or imaginative co-ordination above discussed.

[237]Gestaltende Macht,i.e., plastic force.

[238]This account of the criterium to be adopted in determining beauty in the animal creation is open to some criticism. Mobility is no doubt one element of beauty, but it is only one. Professor Bosanquet points out in his criticism of the passage ("Hist, of Aesthetik," p. 338) that it amounts to the assertion that ugliness is purely relative. The defect is not only due, it seems to me, to Hegel's insufficient regard for Nature as a modern painter would so regard it, but it may be traced also to his manifest preference for motion in all the manifestations of Nature.

[239]Schnabelthier, otherwise called theduck-billed platyptis, a mammal found in Australia, much the size of an otter, with the horny beak of a duck and paws formed for swimming.

[240]Getrübt, we have the wordtrübenabove, translated there "troubled," life merely seen through the thick veil of instinctive sense.

[241]That is, the unity manifested is as abstract from all concrete totality as the form itself.

[242]This shows clearly that symmetry is only in an analogous way applicable to musical tones.

[243]In other words, uniformity is outside the purely qualitative relation, whereas symmetry is not so.

[244]Beseelte Lebendigkeit, lit., the insouled life-principle.

[245]Lit., "Is continually thrust out into the external." Its activity as life is directed outward.

[246]Was schon im Sichverzehren begriffen ist.I think the distinction implied is that in smell we are in actual contact with a part of the object. The same thing would, however, be true of sight according to former theory exploded by Newton's hypothesis.

[247]Gesetzmässigkeit.I cannot think of an English word that quite reproduces it. I am not sure that either conformity to rule or law singly quite expresses it. It implies both.

[248]As in uniformity.

[249]As in symmetry.

[250]That is to say, apart from symbolical meaning, it possesses no hidden law to be discovered in the relation of part to part.

[251]The words aredie grosse und kleine Axe von wesentlichem Unterschiede.These refer primarily, it appears, to the axes of an ellipse, but the expression may possibly include the axes of a parabola parallel to the sides of a cone. However I admit frankly I find the wordsvon wesentlichem Unterschiededifficult to interpret closely.

[252]In the textgrossen, obviously a misprint.

[253]The incorrectness of this statement according to more recent analysis does not, of course, affect the argument.

[254]Nicht einseitig.I think the meaning here is that colour is not an abstract idea for independent qualities, but is the generic notion of a really existing totality.

[255]Alles melodische, primarily, organic, of course.

[256]Namely, that of abstract unity.

[257]Hegel expresses this rather differently by saying that they tend to pass over into pink (röthliche) or orange (gelbliche) and green. I have put the same statement rather more directly.

[258]I think this is the meaning of the wordsaber nur äusserlich, d.h.,nicht beschmützt.Violet, however, is now regarded as a cardinal colour. It may also be doubted whether the difficulty of harmonizing pure colour is as Hegel states it.

[259]This of course is a very questionable position from the point of view of aesthetic taste no less than the conformity of our sight to natural objects. The obvious retort is, it all depends what the nature of the green is. Why is there such a preponderance of green in Nature as we find it?

[260]That is to say, under the Platonic view of universal.

[261]So I have interpreted the words,Die Subjectivität nun aber liegt in der Negativen Einheit als Ideellsetzen der Unterschiede und ihres realen Bestehens.

[262]Das Insichseyn,i.e., the incipient singularity of a feeling subject.

[263]I have translated the wordsbleibt nur die innre Macht"merely areflexof the inherent energy," etc. I do not pretend thereby to clear up all the difficulties of this paragraph. I would rather remind the general reader that in this entire discussion of the principle of individuality and its modes of real existence we are face to face with one the fundamental difficulties of the Hegelian philosophy, the passage of the Idea to Nature. Readers who wish to see difficulties more fully developed on this aspect of Hegel's thought should read Professor Seth's interesting and on the whole moderately worded criticism contained in his little book "Hegelianism and Personality" (Blackwood and Sons; see particularly Lecture IV, Thought and Reality).

[264]Aus Anderem,e.g., the not-self of experience.

[265]Des totalen Zwecks.

[266]I think the expressiondas Ganze der Sachemeans this rather than the entire "organic whole of living reality."

[267]It is well for the general reader to remember that we have here no full account of what constitutes thecontentof a free will. The emphasis throughout is on human activity as exercised in a world conditioned in its external aspect by necessary laws of Nature.

[268]The reference here must I think he mainly, perhaps wholly, to the distorted face of the criminal, outcast, or insane classes. But it is just possible that a certain type of aggressive genius may also be denoted.

[269]The totality of the notion.

[270]Beruf,i.e., that which it professes to do.

In our consideration of the beauty of art we will confine our attention to three fundamental points of view:

First, the Ideal in its essential import.

Secondly, the determination of the Ideal in a particular work of art.

Thirdly, the creative subjectivity of the artist.

1. The most general conclusion which may be gathered from the examination we have already made in a merely formal way of the Ideal of art may be thus summarized. Truth, in its unravelment as external reality, is only fully in possession of a true and determinate existence, however much it may combine and retain in embracing unity a manifold content, in so far as every portion of the content thus unfolded permits this unity, which may be called either the animating soul or the unified totality, freely to appear. To take the human form once more under review as the most direct illustration of this, we have already remarked that it is a totality of organic members each of which is penetrated by the notion, differentiated thus in every particular organ by some particular mode of activity and the specific motion congenial to it. If we ask ourselves now in which particular organ the soul appears as such in its entirety we shall at once point to the eye. For in the eye the soul concentrates itself; it not merely uses the eye as its instrument, but is itself therein manifest. We have, however, already stated, when referring to the external covering of the human body, that in contrast with the bodies of animals,the heart of life pulses through and throughout it. And in much the same sense it can be asserted of art that it has to convert every point of the external appearance into the direct testimony of the human eye, which is the source of soul-life, and reveals Spirit. Take the famous adjuration of Plato to the stars in the lines:

When thou gazest forth at the stars, my star,Would that I were the heavens and thence on theeCould gaze forth out of a thousand eyes.

Conversely we may exclaim that art gives to her forms the dilation of a thousand-eyed Argus, through which the inward life of Spirit at every point breaks into view. And not merely is it the bodily form, the expression of countenance, the attitude and demeanour which thus avails; the same appearance is everywhere visible in actions and events, speech and voice-modulation, in short, under every condition of life through which it passes, and under which it is possible for soul to make itself recognized in its freedom and ideal infinity.

(a) And, in close connection with this inquiry into the interpenetration through all parts of the animating soul, we may justly ask ourselves, what precisely we understand under this conception of a soul which is throughout visible: or to restrict attention to definite limits we may inquire what are the specific characteristics of the soul whereof art reveals to us the truest manifestation. For in ordinary parlance one refers to the animating principle[271]peculiar to metals, stones, wild animals, to say nothing of that belonging to every kind of human character and its expressions. To natural objects, however, such as stones and plants, the expression "soul" in the complete acceptation of the term above mentioned is not strictly applicable. Such soul as purely natural objects possess is entirely finite, transitory, and rather a specific nature than a soul. The determinate individuality of such existences is consequently completely exposed in their finite existence; and, inasmuch as all thatis present there is a positive limit of restriction, such appearance as there may be of a further claim to independence and freedom is only an appearance; ideal characteristics which may indeed be imported into them from without by means of art, but are not in the nature of the objects by themselves. In the same way the soul of sense-feeling, through which Nature manifests first the Life-principle only betrays a subjective individuality, which still remains shut within itself, unable to assert its reality in the further sense of a return upon itself in a consciousness which shall attach to it the form of infinity. Its content is, therefore, of a restricted nature, and its manifestation in part the unrest, power of motion, sexual impulse, anxiety or fear of the dependent life; and, in part, it is the mere expression of aninwardnesscapable of overcoming its finitude. The animating life of Spirit (mind) brings us first into contact with the free infinity capable within its own external and determinate existence of remaining constant to the inner principle of unity, and, in the act of expression, still reflected back upon its ideal substance. To Spirit consequently is it alone permitted to impress the hall-mark of its infinity and free self-recurrence on its external expression, even though by such expression it enters the realm of narrow boundaries. At the same time we may observe that Spirit, too, is only free and infinite in so far as it truly apprehends its universality, and deliberately posits for itself and accepts those ends which are adequate to its own notion. Consequently, in so far as it fails to grasp its own freedom it can only exist in a restricted content, a character that is stunted, a temperament at once crippled and superficial. In combination with nullity of this kind the manifestation of Spirit must perforce remain wholly formal. We shall only find here the abstract crust of self-conscious Spirit, whereof the content contradicts the infinity of its freedom. Only by virtue of a genuine and essentially substantive content through which the restricted and mutable particularity derives its essential self-subsistency—so that definite structure and intrinsic worth, determined limit and substantial content, are realized in one totality—is such existence thereby able, through the very mode of expression which confines it, to proclaim itself also in its universal substance of self-contained soul-life.It is, in short, the province of art to comprehend and enunciate determinate and rational existence in itstruth, that is to say, in the form adequate to its substance, the truly explicit content. And, consequently, the truth of art cannot consist in a mere conformity such as that to which we restrict the so-called imitation of Nature; external form must express harmoniously an internal content which is in itself harmonious throughout, and consequently can express itself as such.

(b) Art then, by comparing what is otherwise stained and rent through the contingent elements of external existence with the harmony that is essential to its notional truth, rejects that in the world of appearance which it is unable to combine in such a unity, and for the first time through thispurificationreveals the Ideal. It is possible to regard such a result as the flattery of art, as we sometimes hear it said, for example, that portrait-painters flatter. But even the portrait-painter, a type of art in which the Ideal is less prominent than in many others, should at least flatter in this sense, that he is bound to treat with indifference all that is merely the external detail of form, texture, and colour, the mere adjuncts, that is to say, of physical life such as hairs, pores, scars, and other external accidents, in his undivided effort both to apprehend and deliver the subject selected in its universal character and permanent spiritual individuality. It is one thing to imitate a physiognomy in the general outlines of purely superficial repose apparent at any time; it is quite another to detect and delineate the particular features which reveal the fundamental soul-life or character of the sitter. As already remarked, the Ideal is only truly found when the external presentment is in itself a vehicle of the soul. It is one of our latest fashions to attempt, by means of those so-called "living pictures," an intentional and gratifying imitation of famous masterpieces. In these we find a fair reproduction of general accessories, such as grouping and draping; but, instead of the spiritual expression of the figures, have only too often to put up with faces absolutely commonplace. Such a defect mars the entire reproduction. The Madonnas of Raphael, on the contrary, in every detail of their countenance—whether it be cheeks, eyes, nose, or mouth—exhibit with harmonious consistencyone supreme type of sacred joy, the pious, modest love of a devoted mother. We may affirm, if we will, that all women are capable of such emotion; but, at any rate, not every formal shape of feminine countenance is capable of expressing the depth of the same so consummately.

(c) This reference, then, of all points of external existence to their spiritual significance, so that the external appearance unveils in adequate measure the spirit thereof, is just what constitutes the nature of the Ideal. It is, however, a "carrying back" into inwardness, in which we do not find the universal thus carried back to its extremest limit to the form of abstractthought, that is to say, but is rather suffered to rest halfway at the point in which we find the purely external and the purely inward meet together harmoniously. The Ideal is consequently the reality selected out of the mass of chance particulars, in so far as the inner core in this external totality thus raised in opposition to universality is itself manifested asliving individuality.[272]For the individual subjectivity, which not only carries in itself a substantive content, but permits the same to appear in its own external appearance, stands in this central position, that in it all that is substantially the content is not suffered in its universal aspect to appear as an abstraction of itself, but still remains enclosed within the sphere of individuality, and consequently appears associated with a determinate existence, which now for its part, freed from mere finitude and transitory condition, is gathered up in a free and harmonious expression of most intimate soul-life. Schiller, in his poem "The Ideal and Life," contrasts the reality and its pains and struggles with "the still shadowland of Beauty." Such a land of shadow is the Ideal. Thespiritswhich rise up here have lost in death immediate existence, are released from the hunger of Nature, freed from the claims which fettered them in subjection to external forces and all the changes and confusions which are linked together with finite appearance. But however much the Ideal treads under foot the mere object of sense and natural form, it draws at thesame time the very wealth of it to itself, for it is art that is able to assign the very limits to all that the external appearance required for its self-preservation within which the external thing may appear as the manifestation of spiritual freedom. For this reason it is the Ideal which alone among things envisaged to sense presents a free and self-contained content reposing on its own resources, in complete sensuous enjoyment and satisfaction with itself. The music of this rapture may be heard through every embodiment of the Ideal. However far the external form may be carried the soul of the Ideal is never wholly absorbed in it. And in truth such manifestation is only beautiful in so far as its beauty not merely permeates the whole, but is a subjective unity, by virtue of which the subject-matter of the Ideal must appear emergent from all the fracture of its former individual parts and their respective ends and energies, raised in the Ideal itself to a higher totality and self-subsistence.

(α) We may in this respect point to the blessed repose[273], this self-contentment in its own self-secure consummation, as the crown of the Ideal. The ideal form of art stands like some blissful god before us. For the blessed gods are ultimately above and beyond the grim earnest of actual necessity, anger, and interest in finite existence and purely finite ends; and this positive withdrawal involved in the negation of all isolated particularity give them the characteristics of cheerfulness and repose. In this sense we may interpret that phrase of Schiller: "Life is earnest, Art ischeerful." Pedants, no doubt, have often enough cracked a joke over it, inasmuch as poetry in general, and Schiller's in particular, is a serious matter; and in truth no ideal art is without such a quality; but for all that in this very earnestness the essential character of cheerfulness[274]remains. This force of individuality, this triumph of self-concentrated freedom, is that which we recognize in an exceptional degree in ancient works of art and the blithesome repose of their figures. And this is not merely the case when we face asatisfaction that involves no struggle, but even in an example where the subject is rent by some breach in the entire content of its existence. For when the heroes of tragedy are represented as subject to Fate we find that the demeanour they present, which may be summed up in the words, "It is so!" still remains a simple withdrawal into personality[275]. The subject thus depicted remains throughout true to himself. He surrenders that which is seized from him, but the aims he pursued are not simply taken away; he suffers them to lapse and consequently does not lose his initiative. The man who is the bondman of Destiny may lose his life, but not his freedom. This repose on the essential birthright of Spirit is that which is able to preserve and reveal the blithe atmosphere of repose in grief itself.

(β) In romantic art, it is true, the breach or dissonance of the subjective principle is carried further, inasmuch as in it the exposed contradictions are emphasized and their division can be preserved. Thus, to take an example, we find the art of painting, in its representation of the Passion, not unfrequently dallies round the expression of ribaldry visible in the hideous contortions and grimaces of tormenting common soldiers; and, in its attachment to such discordant emotions, especially when depicting what is criminal, shameless, or evil, permitting the glad serenity of the Ideal to pass away. Even when such disruption loses its force, we find frequently that ugliness, or, at least, the absence of real beauty, is set up in its place. In another school of the earlier Flemish art of painting the downright directness and truth of the representation, no less than the inextinguishable confidence of the faith to which it testifies, tend to assert, in despite of itself, a reconciliation in the feelings of all who behold it[276]. But such an unyielding result falls[277]short of the entire cheerfulness and satisfaction appropriate to the Ideal. However, it is possible also in romantic art, albeit here the representation of suffering and grief penetrates the soul andits emotions more deeply than is the case with antique art, that the delineation may reveal to us a spiritual intimacy, a delight in resignation, a blessedness in pain, a rapture in sorrow, nay, even a voluptuous ecstasy in martyrdom[278]. Not only in painting but in the profoundly religious music of Italian composers, we find this ecstasy and illumination of grief abundantly expressed. We may, as a summary definition in romantic art, call it "the smile through tears." The tears have their origin in affliction, the smile in blithesome serenity, and consequently this smile through weeping indicates, as it were, the point of self-repose in the midst of pain and suffering. It is hardly necessary to add that the smile indicated here is no mere sentimental emotion, no mere vanity of the subject treated or dabbling with beauty[279]over painful effects and insignificant traits of subjective feeling; rather (on its artistic side) it must appear as the firm delineation and freedom of beauty in defiance of all pain, in the spirit of what was said of Ximenes in the romances of the Cid, "how beautiful she was in tears." In contrast to this emotional abandonment in men is either ugly and repellent, or actually ridiculous. Children, for example, break into tears at the slightest provocation, and we can only laugh at them. The tears, however, in the eyes of a man of earnest and self-contained character, under stress of deep feeling, betray a very different type of emotion. Laughter and tears can, however, very readily fall apart as unrelated, and are, as such, falsely utilized as a vehicle of art in such abstraction; the laughter chorus in Weber's "Freischütz" may be cited as an example. Laughter, after all, is a kind of explosion, which it is impossible to exercise without restraint and preserve the Ideal. Another example of this laughter, which is nothing but laughter, occurs in a duet of Weber's "Oberon," throughout which we are in a continual state of anxiety for the prima donna's throat and lungs. How very differently the inextinguishable laughter of the gods affects us in Homer, a sound which breaks from the blessed repose of divinity, and rather expresses gladsome serenity than abstract and wanton abandonment. Just as little ought weeping, devoid of all restraint, to be introduced intothe ideal work of art, of such a kind as that we may hear in all its comfortlessness in another part of the "Freischütz." And speaking generally, in music singing must take to itself the kind of joy and rapture which we catch from the lark in the open sky. Shrieking, whether of pain or delight, is not music at all. Even in the expression of suffering the sweet tones of the plaint must penetrate and clarify the sorrows, so that it continually may seem to us worth all the suffering to arrive at such sweetness of plaint in its expression. And this is the sweetness of melody, the singing of every kind of art.

(γ) Regarded in a certain relation to this fundamental axiom of art we may find some justification for the principle of irony in its modern sense; but it must not be overlooked that irony is frequently destitute of all real seriousness, and is particularly prone to expatiate over bad subject-matter; and, in another aspect of it, it is apt to run to seed in the mere yearning of emotion rather than actively participate in practical life, as is proved by the case of Novalis, one of the finer temperaments who have made this point of view their own, and for lack of definite interest, or through shrinking from the real world, are driven up and down, and cajoled into this sort of spiritual consumption. This is the kind of yearning which will not descend to mere practical business and production, because it is afraid of soiling itself with the contact of finite things, although it already secretly feels the defects of such exclusion. No doubt we find in irony that absolute principle of negativity, in which the subject of consciousness becomes self-centred through the annihilation of definite relations and particulars; but in this case the act of annihilation of definite relations and particulars, as we have already pointed out when discussing the principle, is not, as in comedy, essentially in its right place, simply exposing its own want of substance, but is directed quite as often against everything else excellent in itself and of sterling worth. Whether we regard irony, then, as this art of universal destruction, or as the yearning of which we have spoken in contrast with the true Ideal, it betrays a secret lack of proportion and restraint which is detrimental to the artist. Substantive form is what the Ideal demands, which, owing to the fact that it is clothed in the form and figure ofexternal things, is unquestionably qualified by particularity no less than limitation; but this limitation of its form is at the same time included in such a way that everything merely external in its appearance is annulled and abolished. Only through this negation of mere externality is the determinate form of the Ideal a real exposition of the substantive content which belongs to it in a mode of appearance susceptible to sense-perception and the imagination.

2. The plastic presentment of form, which is as much a constituent feature of the Ideal as it is of the essentially homogeneous character of its content, and the way these two aspects are fused together, render necessary an inquiry into the relation obtaining between the ideal representation of art and Nature. For this external aspect and its embodiment is closely associated with that which we generally call Nature. In this connection we once more come upon that old and ever-renewed and still unsettled dispute, whether the representation of art should follow the objects of Nature as they appear strictly to sense, or should rather ennoble and illumine them. The right of Nature, the rule of beauty, the Ideal and the truth of Nature—with indefinite conceptions such as these arguments for and against may be bandied about for ever. A work of art, we are told, should unquestionably be natural, but there is such a thing as a mean or ugly Nature, we must not of course imitatethat; on the other hand—and so our disputants wrangle on and never come to a satisfactory conclusion.

In recent times the opposition between the Ideal and Nature has once more been emphasized and received an exceptional significance through the writings of Winckelmann. Winckelmann's enthusiasm, as already pointed out[280], was first awakened by his study of the antique and its ideal forms. This insight into the peculiar excellence of classic art he thoroughly mastered and only ceased from his labours after making all that he had learned through his study of such masterpieces famous throughout Europe. From this recognition, however, originated a kind of craze for ideal representation, which, despite all its belief in the discovery of beauty, was really a relapse into flatness, absence of vitality, and superficiality. It is this kind of emptiness more particularlyin the art of painting, which Herr von Rumohr had before him in the polemical writings I have already noticed.

The theory of art has to solve this difficulty. As for its interest, on the practical side of art, we shall do well to pass it wholly by. We may formulate principles as we please for mediocrity and the talents that express it, the result is always the same. Whether our theory is a distorted one or unexceptionable all we shall get is something commonplace or weak. At the same time Art and more particularly painting has unquestionably received a stimulus other than that we have deprecated from this very quest of so-called Ideals; and, through the renewed interest thereby excited in old Italian and German painters, has at least made an effort to secure a profounder and more vital content in its work.

The world is quite as tired of hearing the praises of that equally exclusive Ideal in the opposite camp, namely, that of undiluted realism in art. Theatregoers are, to take an example close at hand, heartily sick of the realistic type of domestic drama. The old story over and over again—disputes between husband and wife, sons and daughters, the source of our income, the inventory of our expenses, the servility of ministers and the intrigues of their lackeys and secretaries, down to the question of the last sixpence between the dame of the house and her kitchen-maid, or up to the last gossip of the daughters over their touching love-affairs in the parlour—such tales of woe most of us will prefer to take where, we may at least get them without adulteration—at home.

In this opposition between Ideal and Nature writers have been inclined to regard one type of art to the exclusion of others, with an especial predilection, however, for painting, whose subject-matter is the particularity of sense-perception. We will test our problem by putting the question to start with wholly in general terms, thus: "Is art to be prose or poetry?" Now what is truly poetical in art is just that which we have called the Ideal. If the question of difficulty in question is a mere matter of terminology we are quite prepared to call the Ideal something else. But, however called, the question remains what it is which constitutes poetry orprose in art. And although the adherence to what is in itself poetical in the determination of it by certain crafts may lead those arts into confusion, and, indeed, has already done so, it is contended that in so far as any subject has an express affinity with poetry, such has been also the subject of genuine pictorial treatment, genuine for the simple reason that such a content is unquestionably of a true poetical nature.

Well, let us examine a concrete case. The present exhibition of art (1818) contains several pictures, all of which are of one school, the so-called Düsseldorf. Every one of these have borrowed subjects from poetry, and indeed from the emotional side of poetry peculiarly adapted to pictorial representation. The more often and carefully we examine these pictures, the more complete will be our impression of their excessive sweetness and insipidity[281].

In the foregoing contradiction there are present the following general characteristics[282]:

(a) First, there is the formal ideality of the work of art, that is to say, the element of poetry in its general signification, which is, as the term implies, something composed and brought together by man, which he has taken into his imagination[283]and then actively worked into the artistic composition.

(α) The nature of the content of such a translation may however, be a matter of indifference or, apart from the artistic representation we thus obtain of common life, may only interest us indirectly for the moment. In this way the Dutch school of painting, for example, has recreated, as it were, by means of human workmanship, the evanescent everyday appearances of natural objects in countless new artistic effects. Velvet, armour, light, horses, work-folk, old cronies, peasants puffing their smoke from old pipe stumps, the glitter of wine in transparent tumblers, rustics in soiled jackets playing with cards as ancient—such and a hundred other subjects like them which trouble us little enough in everyday life, forthe best of reasons, that although we too may have our game at cards, our drink, and our gossip we are really occupied with quite another class of interests—all this medley of objects is brought before us in their pictures. Now the claim of art in the representation of such things is precisely this external show, or reappearance of them as a product of spiritual activity, which has transmuted that which was purely external and sensuously material into a new medium supplied by mind. For instead of wool or silk that are tangible, instead of actual hair, glasses, flesh, and metals, all we see now is colour; instead of the three dimensions which are essential to external Nature, we have only superficies; and yet, despite all our losses, we have a representation identical with that of reality.

(β) In opposition to the immediate and prosaic reality of objects, then, thisshowof things which is effected by the mind is the wonder of ideality, a jest, if anyone cares to put it so, and an irony directed against purely external existence. Only contrast with it the preparations Nature or man has to make in ordinary life, the countless instruments of every kind they have to employ to effect the same result. What opposition the material of such objects—take a metal for example—may offer to any active effect upon it. The world of ideas, on the contrary, out of which art creates its products, is a malleable and simple element, which readily converts everything, which either Nature or man in his purely natural existence is forced to leave bluntly just as they are, to the uses which are appropriate to it. In the same way the objects of ordinary apprehension and man as we meet him in everyday life are of no incommensurable wealth, but subject to limitations—precious stones, plants, animals, etc., by themselves are of a certain positive and particular character. But man in his creative capacity is an entire world of content, which he has filched from Nature, and piled together in the comprehensive treasure-house of his world of images, and which he is now free to give forth again simply and without the restraint of external conditions and the detailed processes of actual phenomena. In this idealization art stands midway between the purely objective and restricted existence and the entirely subjective world of idea. It gives indeed objects, but they are supplied fromthe life of mind; it offers them for uses other than those which belong to them; it concentrates their entire interest in the abstract form of the ideal show which it therewith manifests to aesthetic contemplation, and to that alone.

(γ) Art consequently, through the ideality above explained,exaltsobjects otherwise unimportant, determining them, despite their ordinary character, in a fixed relation to her own medium and essential aim, and by so doing secures from us a sympathy in subject-matter which otherwise would not have enlisted our serious attention. We find the same transformation in the relation of art to Time. Its position is here too frankly ideal. That which in Nature rapidly passes by in art is secured with permanence; the flash of a smile, the sudden curve of roguish merriment on the lips, a glance, a gleam of sunshine, together with all those evanescent traits of human life, events and accidents which come and are gone, and are as quickly lost to memory. There is nothing which she cannot wrest from momentary existence, and in this respect even becomes the vanquisher of Nature herself.

In this formal ideality of art, however, it is not the content itself which makes the pre-eminent claim upon us, but the satisfaction we derive from the act of artistic reproduction. The representation must certainly strike us as natural, but it is not the reality of Nature that we require; it is rather that of the process of reproduction, this very deposition, in fact, of material conditions which is the poetical and ideal element of the work in the formal sense above indicated[284]. We delight in a manifestation, which appears to us a product of Nature, and which is nevertheless a product of mind without the means at Nature's disposition. The objects charm us not so much by virtue of their approach to Nature, but rather because theartisthas been able to effect that approach.

(b) A further and still profounder reason for our interest in artistic products consists in this, that the content is not brought before us in those forms in which it is found inimmediate existence, but, being itself minted by the mind, is capable of considerable extension and modification within such forms. All that exists in Nature is particular, and, indeed, limited in every direction by such particularity. The creative faculty[285], however, contains an intrinsic determination of universal import. And all that it produces possesses forthwith a character of universality distinct from the particularity of Nature. The creative faculty thereby secures this advantage; that being of a wider range it is more qualified to grasp ideal significance, and to insist on that explicitly in all that it shows us.

It is quite true that a work of art is not entirely the imaginative concept in its universal aspect, but rather the determinate form of its envisagement. It is for all that bound, emanating as it does from the creative medium and operations of mind, and despite the living resemblance to real things we may find upon it, to permeate the whole with this universal quality. And in this we have that higher ideality of the poetical product as contrasted with the purely formal ideality of the art of production. From this point of view it is the task of a work of art to grasp the object in its universal relations, and in the envisagement it presents to let fall everything which stands in a wholly external or indifferent relation to the content. An artist for this reason will refuse to accept all forms and means of expression offered him by the external world, on the mere ground that he finds them there. His main effort will be, if at least his aim be a real poetical creation, to secure that which will appropriately work in with his own imaginative conception; and, if he looks to Nature for assistance in supplying him with details, or, generally, as material to translate into his work, he will utilize such, not because he finds them so in Nature, but because they fall in theirrightplace as a part of his composition and are rightly made for him. This "right" of the artist is a higher one than the mere right of immediatefact.

In his representation of the human form, for instance, an artist will not attempt such imitation as we find attempted by those restorers of ancient pictures, who reproduce old cracks, which through the swelling of either paint or varnishhave involved all the older parts of the picture in a kind of arabesque, even on the portions restored. The portrait-painter will rather permit the tracery of the flesh, anda fortiorisuch incidents as freckles, pustules, warts, and so forth, to disappear entirely. In this respect the painter Denner, so famous for his close realization of Nature, is by no means an ideal master. For the same reason indications of muscles and veins may be given, but their distinction and relief should be far slighter than that we observe in Nature. In all such impressions little or nothing of spirit is manifested, and the expression of spirit is what is essential in the human form[286]. I cannot think it therefore wholly a disadvantage that we moderns have less to do with the nude in sculpture than the ancients. On the other hand the general style of our dress in comparison with the ideal drapery of classical times is less artistic and more commonplace. The object in both cases is to cover the form. The drapery, however, we find in the antique is, taken by itself, a more or less formal smooth surface only so far determinate in its adjustment to the frame by its attachment to the shoulder. In other respects the garment remains entirely formal[287], hanging down simply and freely by virtue of its own immanent weight, or only determined through the position of the body and the pose and motion of the limbs. In the determination thus implied we find the external shape entirely reflecting the mutable expression of the spirit which animates the body. The particular form of the garment, the folds of it, the motion of it either up or down is clothed in the shape dictated direct from the inward impulse, and as each may momentarily appear appropriate to the particular pose or movement—and it is this form of determination which constitutes the ideality of such drapery. In the clothing we have adopted nowadays, on the contrary, the entire material is, from the first, cut out and worked up stiffly into the forms of particular limbs, so that anything approaching spontaneityin its rise and fall is impossible. Even the character of the folds is determined by previous models, and generally both cut and fall are worked out wholly by the technical rules and craftsmanship of the tailor. It is true, of course, that the configuration of the limbs determines generally the form of such clothing; but in this arrangement of the bodily form we merely have either a perverse imitation, or an enveloping of human limbs according to the convention of fashion and the accidental taste of the times. The cut of our cloth once made is irrevocably made, and neither the position of the body nor the motion of the limbs can appreciably affect it. We may move our arms and legs about as much as we please, the sleeves of our jackets and our trousers remain unalterable. Folds or creases may perhaps appear in them, but even then only on the lines of the original cutting out, as we see them, for example, on the statue of Scharnhorst. Our modern way of clothing is consequently, as an external cover, not sufficiently differentiated from the inner life to appear on its reverse side as the formal expression of that life; instead of this we have a false imitation of the human form stereotyped in the preordained and unalterable cut of our tailor.

A criticism similar to that we have directed to the representation by art of the human form and its exterior clothing might be applied to a whole multitude of things which make up the external show of life, or minister to its wants, such as eating, drinking, and sleeping—things necessary enough in themselves and useful to all men, which, however much in their manifold variety, as constituent features of the physical life of mankind, they may blend with those activities more directly related to its spirit, do not themselves form part of such activities, or stand in essential relation either to their determinations or their interests, and thereby contribute to what is the truly ideal or universal element in the content of human life. Physical aspects of life such as these may no doubt receive poetical treatment in art; and it is generally admitted that the descriptions of a poet such as Homer in this direction adhere very closely to Nature. Yet we find that even Homer, despite all hisἐνἐέργεια, all the vividness of his presentment, is forced to limit his descriptions to general observations; no one expectsto find in him an entirely accurate picture of the facts in all their detail as they actually would occur in life. He may give us, no doubt, in his delineation of the bodily presence of Achilles, the lofty brow, the prominent nose, the long and stalwart legs, but he is not likely to include in the picture every detail of the veritable existence of limbs point for point, and the relation in which they stand to one another in colour, size, and so forth, in other words to offer us Nature's reality instead of an artist's portrait. And the reason is obvious inasmuch as in the art of poetry the type of expression is always the universal concept of the imagination as distinguished from the bare particularity of Nature. Instead of the fact the poet always gives us the denominant, the word, in which the particular thing is universalized; for the word is a product of mental conception, and as such already carries in itself the nature of a universal. One is entitled to say, of course, that it isnaturalin the formation of concepts and speech to employ a nomenclature, the word, as such an infinite[288]abridgment of the existence we find in Nature; but if we do so the Nature to which we refer it would not merely be opposed to the natural existence with which we compare it, but would be just that which cancels it. We are therefore confronted with the question in what sense we use the word Nature when we contrast it with the characteristic of poetry. The mere undefined use of the word Nature by itself tells us nothing at all. What poetry should always give us is the energetic, the essential, the truly characteristic; and this fundamental expressiveness is precisely the Ideal and not the merely immediate, to enumerate all the details of which in the narration of an event or the portrayal of a scene will render either of these simply dull, spiritless, tedious, and intolerable. In the manifestation of this universality, however, one type of art will reveal more clearly its ideal characteristics; another will rather emphasize, by a restricted use of material form, the infinite detail of external reality. Sculpture, for example, is in its presentments more abstract than painting; in poetry the epic type, in its realization of the external appearance of lifeitself, will not be so complete as a dramatic poem should be. On the other hand it will surpass the latter in its portrayal of the fulness of its imaginative vision, the epic poet being most indebted to concrete pictures his imagination borrows from past history. In contrast with him the dramatist is mainly restricted to the motives of an action, the attitude of the will to it, the psychological problem in short.

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